Norman Chad On the WSOP: "The Viewers Don't Care"

Did you ever wonder why ESPN finds time to show Phil Hellmuth throwing Frisbees, but only has time to show about 11 hands of poker in a World Series of Poker episode? Norman Chad sums up ESPN's attitude towards poker broadcasting when he says "It's part reality show, part sitcom, part docudrama. And the results, as we see, don't even matter. The viewers don't care. They just want to see the episode again where two guys argue over who put the ante in."

Or perhaps it's ESPN that doesn't care... about their viewers. How can we expect quality poker from a network that views the show's potential audience as channel-surfers who may stop to veg out for a few minutes if they can't find a Friends rerun to watch? ESPN won't be able to produce good poker TV until they gain some respect for their customers and realize that we actually care about what we're watching. My only hope is that ESPN executives will start applying their poker-show logic (it's boring, so we should ignore the game in favor of more interesting things) to football coverage as well... and get themselves fired.