Lou Kreiger with some interesting thoughts on the pre-Big One run-up, too.
He makes some good points, and isn\’t ready to throw the poker baby out with the bathwater yet. Likewise, I\’m not jumping to any conclusions yet. But I am starting to think that a delay in principle may indeed be the right thing to do … but it should be more like two weeks, not two months.
Give the players time to tidy up their affairs, ink a few deals away from the table (with a clock ticking on potential clients), and air it as close to live as possible. Then follow up with the produced version starting from Day 1 (or even Event #1). The live event would get people to tune in to see what happens, and it would serve as ideal promotion for people who want to then invest several weeks following the story of how it all happened.
Here’s what he ignores: how can ESPN show the lead-up to the event and show the final table in two weeks? Those are incongruous.
The point of the delay is to make the final table results unavailable to the masses so more people tune-in. In order to do that, you need to show the whole build-up. That takes months of editing and time to air the shows (weekly). Can’t have your cake and eat it too, I’m afraid.
If HBO’s Hard Knocks can edit several hundred hours of footage in a weeks time just to get ready to air a short program weekly during the NFL preseason….ESPn can do with it a poker Tournament too.