Betting on Cable
Nets Weigh Gambling Concerns As Program Winnings Mount
By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 10/17/2004 8:00:00 PM
Once considered filler programming for sports networks, fare based on casino games like poker and blackjack are helping entertainment networks hold a significant share of young, affluent viewers.
Networks such as Bravo, Travel Channel and GSN are joining sports networks in televising casino games. But with so many networks offering casino-oriented programming, some executives are concerned that genre will eventually fold under the weight of its own success.
Others say the industry could be dealing a bad hand to would-be compulsive gamblers, who may be moved toward destructive, addictive behavior due to the glorification of such games.
Industry observers note that the growth of casino-based programming coincides with the explosion of gambling outlets around the country. The development of riverboat and Native-American controlled casinos has exposed more people games of chance. As a result, some 53 million people visited a casino in 2003, with consumers spending approximately $60 billion in casino-related activities and products.
“Ten years ago, gaming in the U.S. was just two destination sites — Las Vegas and Atlantic City — and now you have it virtually in a two-hour drive for everybody in the country,” says Nick Rhodes, president and CEO of Casino Games Television (CGTV), a new network set to launch next year that will focus on casino-related and strategy games.
Cable has capitalized on the genre’s exploding popularity by creating technologically advanced coverage of card games, says Mike Antinoro, executive producer for ESPN’s Original Entertainment division. ESPN has televised the annual World Series of Poker for the last 10 years and will debut next year a fictional poker-oriented series dubbed Tilt.
The result has been a visually more compelling and exciting presentation that has evolved from two or three stationary cameras that just captured contestants playing out their poker hands around a table to camera angles that actually let viewers see each player’s hands.
“It has capitalized on a technological advancement, which is the lipstick cam that shows the viewers the cards in your hand and makes you as a viewer feel like your playing the hands with a huge advantage, where you can see everyone’s card,” says Bravo president Lauren Zalaznick. The network’s four-season-old Celebrity Poker Showdown has been a ratings staple, averaging a 0.98 rating during last year’s campaign.
“It’s dumb-seeming, but the difference between seeing the back of someone’s [card] hand versus seeing their face and their hand is new and appealing,” says Zalaznik.
Along with the competitive nature of the games, executives say such programming taps into the realism and suspense that has made the reality genre so popular. As such, the new shows have attracted a younger, more affluent viewer than the older, male demographic that had been associated with gambling shows, executives say.
“Unlike traditional television programming and game shows, [casino games] offer programming that people can relate and identify with and find dramatic and compelling,” says Keith Richman, co-founder of Edge TV, a new network dedicated to games of skill, strategy and chance set to launch in 2005. “It’s high-quality programming with compelling characters and situations. The challenge for casino programming is to replicate that across a broad spectrum of programming and games.”
So far, only poker has truly captured the imagination of viewers, but Richman is betting that other games such as craps and roulette will catch fire with viewers as well. Overall, Edge TV will devote about 50% of its programming lineup to casino-based games.
GSN has also found moderate success with blackjack. Its Celebrity Blackjack series starts its second season this month, after averaging a 0.6 rating during its freshman campaign. GSN senior vice president of programming Ian Valentine says the series, along with its World Series of Blackjack special, has complemented the network’s lineup of original and traditional game shows.
TOO MUCH?
While network executives say the genre is white hot, some have concerns it may soon suffer from marketplace over saturation. “With GSN, casino gaming is so much in our wheelhouse [that it] will always be on our air,” says Valentine. “But we need to look at it and say if we’re doing a poker show, how can we be innovative and make this a unique GSN experience and not just a copycat?”
While Bravo’s Zalaznick believes there is a potential for oversaturation, she thinks there’s enough interest in the genre to keep it going for years. “It’s like saying there’s too many cookbooks — there are going to be recipes for apple pie, you just have to figure out the best one,” she says. “The genre has an arc that we haven’t tapped yet.”
But the fervor for such programming could serve as a double-edged sword for the industry. There’s growing concern that the proliferation of betting-based programming could spawn a new class of compulsive gamblers. “I’m sure more people are playing poker because we’re televising poker,” ESPN’s Antinoro says. “All we can do is be a responsible as we can and really monitor it and decide each year whether we should do more to get the message out that our players are professional players.”
Some networks are taking a more proactive stance. CGTV — an upstart network targeting gaming lifestyle enthusiasts set to launch in 2005 — says it will run public service announcements every hour to educate viewers about the potential for addictive behavior.
“This is a subject matter that has addictive behavior associated with it, so we will be upfront, very responsible and aggressive about public service announcements,” says CGTV’s Rhodes. “We’ll offer community-oriented programming that will help people identify where the fun ends and the trouble begins — we don’t want to create problems for people.”
Edge TV says it will promote responsible gambling via spots within each of its shows.
Given Bravo’s reduced emphasis on financial prizes — its celebrity players donate their winnings to charity — Zalaznick doesn’t feel that its show promotes gambling. “Bravo feels strongly that [Celebrity Poker] is more pop-culture driven and fun along with being a charitable cause,” she says. “It’s not people spending a paycheck on a slot machine instead of milk. Unless the genre is abused, I don’t see it being subject to any major backlash.”
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