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Hi all,
I'll respond to the questions & comments as soon as I am able. I'm a bit if a busy boy today.
Thank you.
Many thanks for taking the time to write the blog, which is very informative.
I like the sound of the final table action from the main events early in the week being shown. I think this will encourage people to play. Sure, it's not quite the same as having the live tv show, but at least they won't be forgotten, which has perhaps happened over the last couple of months (I know you used to name check the nightly ME winners on a weekend show, but hasn't happened recently I don't think).
I am also quite enjoying the 2D hand reviews, which I didn't think would be the case to be honest, as I thought some of the interraction may be lost, but as TommyD comments higher up, the reviews seem now to be more card/hand focussed, and it won't be as easy for transgressions to effectively allow occasional hands to be played out in their entirety without any feedback. That isn't to say that the banter isn't great entertainment, but perhaps in 2D it will occur between the hands more and not over the top of them.
If I had one small gripe in the past, it would be to finally see one of your hands from an MTT appear on TV, but the hand may almost have played out before the presenter/analyst banter from the previous hand had finished.
Kepp up the excellent work Sky!
bob
Morning.
I'll try & address all the questions, & where approrpiate, feedback on this thread, now.
Several questions & feedback(s) (can we have plural feedback?) are "repeats", so if I miss an individual, it's because I think I've covered it already.
Meanwhile, I've been overwhelmed with PM's on this matter, too, & am struggling to keep up. ALL PM's to me will be replied to in due course, but in the interim, please bear with me.
Also, I type very slowly, so please try to read slowly, too, or it will be like a 33rpm gramaphone record played at 45rpm.
I am reliably informed, from the horses mouth in fact, that we SHOULD already have "series links". Attila is going to look into this, & will sort it out if it's not already in place.
You must pardon my ignorance in his matter - I have no idea what "series links" is or are, as I almost never watch TV Series or suchlike. In fact, I almost never watch TV, & that's been the case for over 30 years. Its odd that I ended up actually BEING on telly. Hard to explain how these things happen.*
* That's an expression I perhaps use too much, but it just reminds of something. One day I must relate some of the wonderful stories from a really terrific book (& later, an Audio Book) by Garrison Keillor, entitled "Lake Wobegon Days".
In it, some old buffer, 80 years old, goes out for a drive in his car with naggy moany wife of 57 years. He loves her, & she him, but he lives in fear of her, she's a right old nagger, & what is more, she never stops talking. A sort of very old version of LML I suppose.
He stops at a service station for a cup of coffee, & she's got a mood on, & she decides (much to his relief) to stay in the car. He returns 15 minutes later, & resumes the drive.
He's driven another 45 minutes & 23 miles before he suddenly susses that something is not quite right. His Missus is not nagging, moaning, or even talking. He takes a look at her, & she is not......in the car.
She'd decided to go for a leak whilst he was having his cup of coffee, & when he got back in the car, he never noticed her absence. He then tries to find his way back to the Diner, but gets lost, & then the car breaks down. (This was before the days of mobile phones). As you can imagine, he's in a tinsy winsy spot of bother now.
And with beautiful understatement, Garrison ends the chapter with the expression "how do these things happen?"
I've already commented above on a specific problem I'm having with the 2-D graphics but I also want express wider views. In Tikay's blog it says:
"For now, certainly until we move Studios, & quite possibly beyond, we will be 2D, as moving the software across is not really do-able."
As a former ops director of an internet development company, I find that ridiculous and would love to see some technical explanation. As I have said elsewhere, the 3D graphics don't need a new pit dug in the new floor - they are just graphics. All you need is a blue floor and I have set blue rooms up in half a day. It cannot be a long term problem for Sky.
As with many other people, it was the visual quality of the 3D presentations that attracted me to Sky in the first place and unless we can see the presenters' reactions as the hands develop, the shows wont work for me.
As for content, of course it must evolve; but I would add my pleas for having fewer mind-numbingly tedious repeats of interludes and for having as much live poker as the site can afford to produce. Of course these mean paying presenters and crew and the old nightly shows must have been a loss leader - but they are what produced the vibrant growth the site is now enjoying and are what could sustain this growth in the future.
Incidentally, I love the repeats of the Five O. It is great to see the old presenters like Kara and Norman.
(Finally, I would like to agree with Scotty77 (no,really!) when he says that the large field 9pm live tournament was a major attraction of the site. We don't have enough large field tournaments. Sadly, the only way to guarantee a large field is to offer a guaranteed pool, but it doesn't have to be large. If we look at other sites, the biggest fields are produced by guarantees of around £1000 against a buy-in of around £2. It would also work here.)
Personally, I cannot think of anything less appealing, (except, perhaps, Davina), but the fact that several people mentioned it suggests I'm out of step with most. Notrhing new there, then.
It was interesting to note that on last night's Show thread, it was Posted that there are actually some positives on the way the 2D action panned out - more hands were shown, & more analysis. For both sides of the debate, there needs to be some reflection & re-appraisal, & in a week or two, everyone will have a better feel for it, & it's relative merits.
It's like a new hair-do - it takes some time to get used to.
No, we are moving a mere 5 miles east, to "Big Sky" in Osterley, from Feltham, which is on the fringes of Heathrow Airport.
What was nice last night was that there more hands shown as was stated and although I can see why people prefer the 3D option, imo the set up was great and how nice it would be if all presenters/analysts were to play the competition as is the set up now (as ed did last night) and for some of their hands to be shown so that their words can be seen in action as well.
The desk thing may hide LML's cutticles so to speak but it does give the OAP an opportunity to sit down rather than collapse
Yeah, I'll have a word in his ear......
SkyBet, which own Sky Poker, is a standalone subsidiary of BSKYB. As such, like all Group Companies, it optimises resources across it's broad portfolio.
Currently, Channel 865 lease a studio in a Studio Suite shared with Eurosport & others, 6 studios, & each TV Company has it's "own" Studio in the suite. The studio move will be to a Studio in the "Big Sky" Studio complex at Osterley, which obviously makes more sense, & optimises use of Group resources. It will bring with it both advantages & disadvantages. We plan to work hard to make it successful.
It's not, imo, so much that "people don't like radical change", it's more question of two things.....
1) "Radical change" is fine. Take any model of motor Car - a 3 series BMW, Golf, Mondeo, & after a few years, we grow comfy with the look, feel, design. When the "new" Model is introduced, nobody likes it at first, as it takes time to adjust to the difference.
2) Communication is the key to this. We failed - totally - to communicate the change. There were a number of reasons for this, & there is no finger-pointing at this end. As a Team, we failed to communicate a radical change. That was wrong, wrong, wrong, & whilst it's possible to throw up excuses & caveats, the fact is, we shot ourselves in the foot by failing to communicate. It's not a hanging offence, we've made well over a thousand Shows here, & largely speaking, been OK with communication. We got that single thing wrong though, & that's all there is to it, & we regret that.
There will always be change, though, there has to be change, or we would all be driving model T Ford Motor Cars, & using Wilkinson Sword wet razors (mainly the men).
But over & above everything, & in all things, to gain acceptance of any idea or notion, communication - or lack of it - is key.
There are no excuses from this end, & we have never tried to make any.
I know & admire the classically art-deco Hoover Building on the Western Avenue (A40) very well indeed, as well as the "Vanguard" building some 3 miles west. The new Studio is some 10 miles from there, probably our current Studio is about the same distance.
But it is rather spooky that you should mention this. As students of the genre would know, the Great West Road from Chiswick Roundabout, in a westerly direction, is pretty much the epicentre of British art-deco buildings, with Beechams (as was, now SKB), Lincoln Motors, & most of all, Gillette, & Gillette Corner. "BIG SKY" at Osterly is in fact on the Great West Road, & right in the midst of all that splendid architecture. So I'll be able to bring you lots of photos of those lovely buildings, too.
Equally irrelevant, I'm sure, but Attila & myself started prepping for this move some 3 to 4 months ago, since when, she & I have worked from Big Sky in Osterley every Monday.
You have mentioned two entirely different matters there - the Shows, & the type of Tournaments that Sky Poker offer. They are unrelated, & if you don't mind, I think we need to keep this thread to Channel 865 stuff. Feel free to start a new Thread on Sky Poker's Tourney fayre, as you know, I have pretty strong views on that myself, too, which I'm happy - keen in fact - to discuss & air.
The channel has changed so much? Well yes, it has, & so has the market in which Sky Poker operate.
I think if they could have their time again, they'd have started the whole thing off in a different manner. It began as 7 nights a week of Live programming, which, with hindsight, was bizarre. Better, surely (with hindsight....) to have started as 1 night per week, & built up from there.
It costs a breathtaking amount of money - enough to make your eyes water - to produce Live TV for a single night. Multiply that by 7 nights per week, multiply that by 52 weeks per year, & it starts to get to eye-watering numbers.
Each year, Marketing - who, in essence, fund it from their budget - try to find different & better way to optimise their spend. I'm not going to list all their Promotions, but as a basket, or package, there are a lot of different demands on the Promo Budget, & the "spend per player" is a high as any. Did you know, by the bye, that a whole lot of Sky Poker players NEVER watch the Channel? Or want more Freerolls, or bigger or better this that & the other? It's not easy to be all things to all men.
Meanwhile, the Online Poker market has entered a severely competitive phase. You will have seen the results of all the European facing sites recently - all of them down big percentages year on year. Sky Poker's traffic remains vigorously UP year on year, and intends to remain that way, by listening to it's players & trying to serve them well.
But it HAS to change, innovate, experiment, to keep that graph going the right way. And communicate.
I was watching last nights show and really missed the usual standing interaction between presenters & analysts...I know that more hand were shown but to be fair Giddo usually cruises through hands anyway!!! I'd like the 2D for basic tourneys like ploppypoker show but i think you've lost something quite special by losing the green room!
I know that there is nothing we can do at the moment but in time and increasing skypoker take up I would hope that a green room can be installed into the new set at some point.
One question though, Rich mentioned on the show that the download is DEFO on it's way...is the plan to have the download client in 3D like some other sites with talk overs? Ths would indeed negate the use of a green room...
x
p.s. unrelated I know but.....can you chase up my question on the ask tk thread..pretty please??
Peace to you, too, Tommy.
PS - How COULD you call me with that 4 high flush? Outrageous.
Fascinating alias - raptors are awesome birds, though quite what a "metaraptor" is I don't know.
You make some excellent points there, which may or may not be do-able. I'm not sufficiently versed in the technicals to know the answers to most of the questions you pose, so I'll pass that one upstairs, & let you know how they respond.
It's no surprise to me that you make some excellent points there.
Is Omaha now showable, in 2D? It'd be pretty neat if it were, how good would THAT be? I was so revved up by that question that I sent it upstairs in the middle o the night, as I agreed with you 100%. It appears the issue of showing Omaha is now not so much a studio issue, as a gallery matter. (The Gallery is where the Producer, Director, Vision Mixer, Graphics Peep, Technical Blokey-Wokey, Hand-Pickers, Sound Crew etc all sit).
The hands are sent down from the Head Office Server about 2 minutes afer being played out (they cannot come down in real-time for obvious reasons), & they arrive in the form of an on-screen animated Hand History, street by street. They are viewed, in the gallery, on a "Console" from which the Hand-Picker has the task of finding "interesting" hands from the thousands played. And it is this "console" which is the key bit of kit, & would need some serious tinkerage to adapt to the 4 card game. But Attila is on that case, & is reviewing the financial & practical impediments to showing Omaha in the near future. If - IF - it happens, it will be after we move studios.
Showing Friday night Tourneys, & by implication, returning to 4 days of Live Shows? There's nothing I'd love more. In fact, I presented a "How Can We Do Better?" document to the Suits this week, in which I said that we plan to give the Head Office Boys a big problem next year - by making the Show so good, & driving so much extra traffic via the Show, that they'd be "forced" to think about returning to 4, 5, 6 or even 7 days per week. So, we'll have to see. Or not.
"If you are advertising Primo, JUST show Primo, don't duck in & out of it". Could not agree more (personally), but it's a case of trying to please as many players & viewers as possible. I get more complaints about that subject than anything else, & I wholly sympathise, as it really does spoil the flow. But you & me are not everyone, & not everyone thinks alike. To "come off" the Monthly "BIGGIE" & show a half-hour from the £500 Gtd can, from some angles, seem annoying & stupid, but it depends if you are playing the £500 or not.....! Really, the Producers try to squeeze in as much varied Content as possible, & who can blame them for that?
Showing me, a deep-stack lover, advertising/promoting "Russian Roulette" is mad? Not really. I would never play that game in a month of Sundays, I'd rather watch Davina (well maybe not), but that misses the point completely. MANY players HATE deepstacks, & WANT to play Russian Roulette. I went to the house of a Sky Poker playing family recently, & it was a real eye-opener. The Lady of the House insisted on a Tourney that lasted a MAXIMUM of 30 minutes. So she could watch Corrie & play the Tourney at the same time. My gob had never been so smacked, but that's the real world - we are all different, & I see & have no issues with acknowledging & addressing that.
Primo is the best Show of the week? You bet. It's back this Sunday. To stay, I hope.
Take care now Ryan, see you soon I hope. You coming to the Nottingham Grand Final? The cash games will be awesome.....
When you refer to a non3d studio being the same as "many similar poker formats", who are they, please? I'm not aware of "many" Online Rooms that even cover their own Online Tourneys on Live TV.
I know we all want 24/7 free poker on telly, but it really is a huge ask, which is why it is such a rare thing for an Online Poker Room to offer.
We'd love to offer 7 Live Shows per week, & 24/7 "fresh" content, but I have to be honest, it's just not that easy to do in the real world. We are trying though.....
Thanks Lozzy.
I agree about Orford. Hopeless, helpless & hapless.
Nice to see more of them in a Live environment? Watch this space, then. I did mention earlier that there are a few surprises in store, down the line, did I not?
We usually communicate well, is perhaps more accurate. But thank you. We certainly respect everyone.
Years ago, many yars ago - in 1962 in fact - Hertz Rent-a-Car had some 90% of the world market in hire cars. Then along came an upstart called Avis, & they had a great advertising line. "We try harder". With "because we are 2nd" as a clincher. And that's the thing.
Pardon my diversion here, but Avis Car Rental is a right stonker of a story, in so many ways. It began in the Internationally famous "Willow Run Airport" in Ypsilanti (where else?), by a chap named Warren Avis. These days, it's Corporate HQ is in a place called......Parsippany-troy. Eh?
It was the first fleet operator ever to introduce a tracking system to it's cars. They called it, with great wit, "Advanced Vehicle Identification System". Or, "AVIS" for short!
Which is nearly as clever as the famous page ranking system that google use. Which many claim (erroneously, imo), to have been designed by one of the two founders of google. That'd be Mr Page.
To be fair, to expect a Presenter or Analyst to play the Tourney (in itself, quite possible given that they are at a Desk, with an attached Laptop module if necessary), and at the same time....
1) LOOK at the (correct) camera - a must must.
2) Take talkback instructions down their earpiece from Producer & Director in the Gallery.
3) Concentrate on addressing the viewing audience, & be respectful by not ignoring them a la "ooh, can't talk now, I have Aces" or "I'm in the Big Blind, can't talk now" would be a tall order.
The Presenters (more than the Analystys) have a very tough job on, & do a brill job to look & sound natural. Adding to their brief "Play the Tournament, & don't put a foot wrong, because you'll be called out big time if you do" is maybe a step too far.