Television is now obsolete technology, and its audience continues to shrink. At the same time, though, the number of broadcast and cable channels is increasing faster than the number of television shows produced, so there is more competition for the programs which are being produced. Television executives started looking for programs that were cheap to produce in an attempt to keep prices down.
At first the cheapest programs TV could find were so-called reality shows. These had the advantage that you didn’t have to pay the contestants. However, soon TV producers stumbled on a type of show where the performers paid to take part – the poker show. The prize money on these shows came from the entrance fees, and the participants paid their own travel and hotel bills. NBC has even been able to coax big-name poker players to cough up $20,000 apiece to play on Poker after Dark.
And – the shows were popular! Internet poker is wildly popular, and people who play internet poker like to watch shows that might help them play better.
But television was becoming one-dimensional. Before the 2011-12 season the executives of all major television operations sat down and decided what to do to help restore a wider range of programming for fall of 2011. After careful consideration they decided to – show more poker! Here are the exciting new shows you will be following eagerly this fall:
- CBC Poker Night: The CBC celebrates the diversity of poker throughout Canada by running a copy of a foreign poker show.
- CTV Poker Night: CTV celebrates the entrepreneurial flair of Canadian poker players by running a copy of a foreign poker show.
- Antiques Pokershow (Newsworld) : “In perfect condition your hand would take the entire pot, but with it in this condition I’d fold immediately.”
- Intelligently Designed Poker (Crossroads TV): This show demonstrates that poker must be the product of superhuman design, since the individual hands occur so infrequently in nature that they never could have combined by any natural process to form a new species of game.
- Gangsta Hold ‘Em (MTV): At press time the future of this show depended on whether the participants would make bail for the unfortunate incident during the first taping.
- Poker is America (PBS): Ken Burns’ latest documentary shows how poker was formed by America and America was formed by poker. Fifty-two cards of different colours and motifs overcome their differences to work together to create effective game-winning hands, and the big money goes to the guys who own the tables.
- NDP Poker Night (CPAC): The New Democratic Party introduces a new form of hold ‘em in which most of the pot goes to the winner and the remainder to the remaining players in proportion to the amounts of money they put in the pot. The NDP still loses.
- Hold ‘Em Québécois (TVA): Bets may be made in either French or English, but the English bets must be smaller than the French ones.
- Ontario Hold ‘Em (TVO): Players get extra chips for replacing cards in their hands with energy-efficient light bulbs. Steve Paikin hosts.
- Alberta Hold ‘Em (pay channel) : Whatever the players do, their stacks just keep getting bigger.
- People’s Republic of North Korea Resolute Anti-Imperialist Hold ‘Em (Omni): Players compete for the right to support the will of the people of the People’s Republic of North Korea by donating the grand prize (an egg) to the state and resolutely pledging to redouble their commitment to the thought of Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il.
- People’s Republic of China Hold ‘Em (Bloomberg): This series has been cancelled following the recall of the decks of cards because of lead contamination.
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