GSN Cuts Back on Poker in Wake of Government Crackdown
It’s been a rough week if you’re a poker fan. Last Friday, April 15th, the US government began a major crackdown on online poker sites. The case U.S. v. Scheinberg et al. lead to the three largest online poker destinations being shut down, those being PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet. Many of you have been rightly concerned about what this will do to some of your favorite poker television programming, most of which are at least somewhat sponsored by the major sites. GSN has made its decision in regards to its very popular program High Stakes Poker, hosted by Norm Macdonald.
Starting this weekend, April 23rd, GSN will cut down their poker programming to only one night a week, with fewer hours. High Stakes Poker will only be seen Saturdays from 10PM ET to 3AM ET. All Sunday poker programming has been removed for the schedule. Prior this change High Stakes Poker occupied 13 hours of the weekend schedule of the 36 potential hours. In its place, viewers will see the return of GSN’s original version of 1 VS 100, the NBC version of 1 VS 100, Deal or No Deal, and other new shows such as Love Triangle and Improv-A-Ganza. The full schedules will be available shortly at the bottom of the page.
“As a result of the indictments and by mutual agreement, PokerStars.net and Full Tilt Poker.net have withdrawn their presenting sponsorships, brand integrations and ads from GSN’s poker programming. Beginning this weekend (April 23-24) our poker schedule will incorporate those and other changes, and we will evaluate additional adjustments to our schedule as warranted,” according to a GSN spokesperson.
It’s too bad a perfectly good company is closing, but I’m glad to see these poker shows go. I hated watching that stuff on the weekends when nothing else was on.
What? Were you too stupid to change the channel?
I wasn’t too stupid, there was nothing else that I was interested in watching most of the time, meaning that I’d either be stuck watching Poker on GSN, or be stuck watching COPS on G4. And honestly, once you’ve seen one episode of COPS, you’ve seen them all.
Wow. Real opportunity to get some better programming on the schedule. But not surprisingly, instead we get more Deal and 1 vs. 100. God, do I miss the old GSN.
Well, this is the best they can do at this time with what they have.
Maybe the future will bring something different, like classic game shows.
I wouldn’t hold my breath, but one can always hope.
Hopefully they’ll take advantage of the newly-open slots and do something good with them.
Remember, this is GSN we’re talking about… not likely.
Does that mean some more Match Game?
Good! I instantly HATED the moment they began Double Up Weekends. It was taking it way too far! Glad to see that game shows, crappy or not, are finally returning to the weekend night lineup! (Newlywed Game and Baggage at 9 PM doesn’t count IMO)
I’d be interested to hear why not, seeing as how both very much are game shows.
This is definately a huge blow for everybody. Espcially since I don’t have a hyphothesis on who wanted the law passed that made it illegal (essentially) for gambling websites to do anything over telephone lines. As an aside…the anti-online gambling people now will have a reason to keep it illegal.
Yes, we’re all losing sleep over it. Bring on some actual GAME SHOWS.
THANK GOD!!
Airing High Stakes Poker from 6 pm to 3 am on Saturdays and 10 pm to 2 am on Sundays has got to be one of the WORST decisions the Game Show Network has ever made! Maybe seeing Improv-A-Ganza’s lack-luster ratings performance has gotten their executives re-visiting the idea of showing non-game-show programming on their channel.
Dare I suggest that perhaps GSN will start casting for actual game shows once again, or even bring back “Big Saturday Night”? … You’re right, I’m hoping for the impossible…
No Big Saturday Night. It killed 20Q and the Money List in 2009. Both shows would’ve laasted more than 9 episodes had it not been for Big Saturday Night, OR had both shows given us new episodes on a night other than Saturday. So, really it’s best to blame the cancellation of both shows on the idiot whose idea it was to put those shows on Saturday Nights to being with.
Regardless of what you think abiout GSN’s programming choices (irrelevant to me because Insight Cable does not carry it anymore), this is going to cause GSN a great deal of grief just to scrub all the branding from the programming. One wonders what will happen to other poker programming on Fox Sports and NBC, much of which was heavily sponsored by Full Tilt Poker. One also wonders about the potential impact on ESPN and the WSOP. Yes, America, Prohibition is back. I am amazed at how thrilled so many on this comment thread seem to be.
“Prohibition is back”? It never left. They just called it the “war on drugs”. Now, we have the War on Poker.
And the War on Poker is stupid. But, the glee isn’t about the War on Poker, it’s about televised poker leaving GSN, and just maybe having GSN put some real game shows back on weekends.
To answer your question on the latter, ESPN said they will still air the World Series of Poker this summer (no surprise there since it is the network’s cash cow as far as non-sports programming goes). But they are pulling advertisements for fulltiltpoker.net and pokerstars.net. No word on whether NBC or Fox will follow suit.
The WSOP is owned by a legitimate casino, Caesar’s Entertainment, so they are not affected. Comcast owns the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, so that’s not affected. There is no online gambling site that is the presenting sponsor.
dang what about catch 21! why doesn’t that get put back on the air too?
It’s about time. Maybe now the people who work at the network will get a better idea of what the letters G-S-N stand for.
Let’s be truthful, love or hate poker, it has been what has been paying GSN’s bills as of late, and now to have a large source of income for GSN gone may accelerate it’s departure.
So, GSN will be gone for good?
No GSN won’t go away, they will lose money due to the scandal.
Oh. Then they’ll have to have a better schedule, right?
I know what they can fill the late-night poker slots with. The remaining eps of Card Sharks.
Man that sucks, I enjoyed watching it. The US Government always seems to screw things up.. I am glad the world series of poker will still be on ESPN. I am sure they won’t make as much money on it as they use too
Just gives GSN a reason to head back into the dusty vault. Once GSN is given the time to re-evaluate their schedule, I think we might see something unexpected.
Personally I wouldn’t mind a Wayback Playback block during that time.