response 1 of 32:

Dec 11 03:51 UTC 2005

 As Marc mentions, watching televised poker play is less like watching
 a sporting event and more like watching a 30-second highlight reel
 shown on some news program hours after the game.

 The awful truth (from a broadcaster's standpoint) is that most poker
 hands do not play dramatically enough to keep an audience's interest.
 And the awful thing from an enthusiast's standpoint is that editing
 the game down to just dramatic showdowns completely excises vital
 context information that's necessary for any real understanding of
 what's going on.

 So I've personally been somewhat astounded by televised poker's huge
 success in the past three years.  Poker broadcasts used to be a once-
 a-year recap of the WSOP, shown for about a week or two on one of
 the ESPN channels about six to eight months after the event took place.
 Now it seems like one can watch some sort of televised poker game
 nearly every night (although maybe it only seems that way to me because
 I don't flip on the television all that often..)