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my guess is that it is simple business decision making.
skypoker is a separate company to sky tv. skypoker does not choose to pay sky tv a lot of money for a dedicated channel, plus the costs of production.
skypoker does not attract advertising revenues. a good proposition is to produce single programmes. to start, the 2 hour live programme will run on skysports on tuesday.
if the programme produces reasonable advertising revenues it will continue. if it produces high revenues it will continue in more slots, if it produces low revenues the cost from sky tv to skypoker will increase. skypoker will monitor these costs against their own revenues and will decide to continue or not.
just my guess.
Unfortunately, I saw this coming too, after the "survey."
The TV channel was why I stayed with SKY for all sorts of reasons - it lifted it out of the muddy pond of "skins" that is online poker and was the most unique aspect of the site. It was fun, friendly, educational, and I have to say that the presenting team were A+.
I wish them all well, but I won't be upgrading to SKY sports to watch them in action.
But there does not appear to be any legal reason why it should not continue as has been implied.
Good luck to you all in the future and especially Richard Orford in his quest to become a pro poker player. Richard has been the backbone of the presenters imo and if I walk past him one day, I will surely throw a pound coin into his hat.
Ta ta
Steve
I'd like to keep a few show recordings, including the last one, on my Sky box.
Just wondering if the encryption Sky employ expects the original channel to be present in the EPG? I guess at some point 861 will be removed.
So hoping the recordings don't 'go bad' due to the protection.
If I know in advance I can get them onto DVD.
Thanks.
It remains there at the moment as "no longer available", but I guess it will disappear altogether shortly, eventually to become something else. Sky (Big Sky, the TV peeps) retained ownership of 861, which was part of the whole headache really.
Not sure why we did this, but there was a touching moment after last night's Show. After the Show finished, at 11.55, we all gathered in the gallery, to watch the very end.
At midnight exactly.....nothing happened, except the "ticker" kept going, cue mild panic in the Gallery, as the ticker is part of the Teleshopping & Compliance headache.
Chan (Director) said, "don't worry, there is a 10 secomd delay on that", & sure enough, at 10 seconds after midnight, everything disappeared, & "channel no longer available" came up.
It was all a bit emotional, in truth. I've been so busy & stressed with stuff it sort of washed over me a bit at the time, but Anna & a few others were in floods of tears, the great big silly soppy sausages. It sort of hit me a bit when I got home, but I did the psychological trick, "it's only a TV show" sorta thing. It's a defence mechanism I suppose.
I'm definitely one of those silly soppy sausages.
I'm only about 58.37% through the show right now, which is why I'm hoping it won't vanoosh if the channel does.
You know if you record something from Sky Movies and then cancel your subscription to Sky Movies - you can't watch the recording any more. Okay that's not really the same thing but it shows how their protection works.
I've just never encountered this situation where I record a show and then the channel disappears.
First the end of the show, then the Orford & Ryan hand rankings segment*, the ticker, then fade to blue and "channel no longer available".
It was like losing Oracle and then Ceefax all over again.
Sad times.
*this technically means that Orford ended Channel 861, another line for his CV - Closed a TV channel.
the TV got me into sky poker and once it was decided I and a few mates were going to Vegas it was what I used to get the basics.
even got a hand on and chatted to James Hartigan. I'd only been playing a few weeks
RIP you will be missed
No one needs me to tell them how excellent the analysts have been-Jen,Ryan,Stu,Redmond,Joe,Ross and Karl-but I shall always remember how genuinely modest they all were,and I have learnt valuable lessons from them all -not just about poker but also about how to behave on and off the table and treat everyone with respect and kindness.For what my opinion is worth,my favourite guest was Jamie Sykes,perhaps followed by Simon Deadman and Simon Hemsworth but even during the 2 years I have watched there have been too many splendid ones to recall and the standard has of course been almost universally high.But in a category all of his own at the very top is the legendary Neil Channing.No words of praise from me for the great man could ever get close to doing him justice.[Ambassdor?He should be made a Lord or at least Knighted as an absolute mnimum] Thanks also to the back-room staff,and the presenters and of course TeKay without whom much would not have happened and especially the players without whom nothing would have been possible.At least now I have more time to play poker and I hope to have the privilege of meeting many from the wonderful Sky Poker community at forthcoming live events.Very Best Wishes,and thanks again to everyone.
I think there's a lot of us who felt the same way and loved the show. Settling in on a Sunday night with the live show in the background had become a regular event, last night just didn't feel quite the same. Thankfully there
was Barcelona V Madrid to fill the void and as well as quite a few a regulars railing the Roller and livening up the chatbox. You just don't get that on any other site so a big thumbs up to Ivanovich, Tommy D and all the others who were chipping in and providing some entertainment - lets hope that community aspect doesn't die along with 861.
For the record, Mr Channing already has a title - Lord Grumpy.
It was a bit sad for all of us, yes, of course, but life goes on, & we'll all be fine.
But no regrets from me, we had 8 great years, it was a great freeroll in some ways, & I gave it eveything I could, left nothing on the table. That's all we can ever hope to do.
The Community? Fingers crossed it will continue to thrive, which is part of what I try to help with. We poker players do love a little grumble & chunter, most of us do I suppose, but most people soon get these things in their proper context.
Thank you very much for those kind words. My Twitter Feed, & the Show on Thursday, were flooded with lovely comments, & they mean a great deal. Anna piped her eye - the big soft soppy sausage - but I'm a man, well hard, so I was OK.
here's my latest thoughts....
if the number of people watching the skysports show is high then there will be more shows. very high and there may be more shows a week.
861 was good, but maybe skysports was the better option all along
so, watch skysports at 10pm on tuesday.
you never know what good things might happen if you do.