GSN’s 2 Months 2 Million is the Latest Poker Show to Fail

Following the epic ratings the 2003 World Series of Poker produced, a lot of people tried to cash in on the poker “Boom”, and a slew of poker related shows started appearing around the television dial. In the beginning these poker telecasts focused on major tournaments -basically imitating the WSOP telecasts– and eventually moved into the realm of high stakes cash games. These copycat shows -for lack of a better word– were able to hold their own in the ratings, which is basically the only thing that matters on television. However, there has been a rash of poker programming lately that falls somewhere in between irrelevant and downright failure.

The PPT

As the networks started branching out in their poker telecasts, trying to create an original product, things started to turn sour. The first attempt at a “made for TV type of poker game” was the Professional Poker Tour, which sought to eliminate buy-ins by generating the prize-money through sponsorships and advertisements. The PPT faced three major hurdles:

First off their initial prize-pools were not enough to capture the public’s attention -1^st place was worth $225,000 and places 2-6 were worth $25,000 to $100,000.

Secondly, the entrants -already poker’s biggest stars– were basically in a freeroll, and one of the major allures of poker tournaments is seeing the players risk their own money.

Finally, the PPT eliminated the “everyman” quality from the show by making the tournaments “invite-only”. In doing so the PPT eliminated a major component of what made the 2003 WSOP so successful; the rags to riches amateur who comes out of nowhere.

Face the Ace

The next disaster came when they decided to combine a poker tournament with a game show, and created Face the Ace. While they found a way to boost the payday –by having only 1 competitor– and really push the rags to riches storyline –having an amateur face off against the best in the world– the show still had many problems.

The chief issue with Face the Ace is that the professional players are playing for no reason! They were being paid by the show regardless if they won or lost the match. Additionally, the amateur was free-rolling from the get-go, which was one of the issues with the PPT.

So, even though Face the Ace was able to highlight the amateur vs. pro aspect, and make the potential payday quite large, they were unable to figure out a way to overcome the PPT’s other problems -in fact they made them worse.

2 Months 2 Million

The most recent poker show to fail was GSN’s 2 Months 2 Million, with the premise being a challenge for four online poker phenoms to earn $2 million collectively over two months. The show was mildly successful with young males, but the idea of watching four twenty-something’s ridicule their opponents on a computer, party in Vegas, and basically act like rich frat boys likely turned off a lot of viewers.

Not to mention that with a week or so to go in their quest to earn $2 million the four had combined to make around $200,000. With a solid push they did end up earning $600,000; still a far cry from the $2 million in the show’s title.

Future Shows

It will be interesting to see if someone can create a “reality” type poker show with all the good qualities of a poker tournament/high-stakes cash game without creating a whole host of new problems, or highlighting the negatives of tournaments and cash games -which is basically the long periods of little action, and the been there done that aspect.