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We - the Team at 865 - are really incredibly pleased with the positives, the new Analysts, etc, & the Show wll be allowed to bed in for a while before it is reviewed by the Suits, and any changes made.
As with the "old" Show, the Producer sends a Show Report to the Management Team after every Show, including viewer feedabck via e-Mail etc. This is then reviewed the very next morning.
Once a week, "Channel Bullets" are composed by Mother, who sends them to the Sky Poker Management Team, together with the viewing figures, in graph form (pretty graph it is, too, a bit like Nutter5932's Sharkscope graph), & they in turn send them round to the entire SB&G Management Team.
Then, every Tuesday, all this info is discussed & debated in the weekly Management Meeting, to ensure it is meeting its objectives - Education, Entertainment, Commercial.
It would appear that Mother remaind quite unwell, & is not expected back this week, so there will not be any "official" response until she returns, but I'll field the questions unofficially in the interim. But she is da boss, not me.
The feedback is all very welcome, but we do hope you will also read the replies, because things are rarely as straightforward as they might seem if you are not party to how the business works.
Thanks.
I have to admit that I have only watched one of the new shows in full so far and odd bits of the others, but I was a little disappointed by them. I am sure that the format will evolve with time though, the old show certainly underwent huge changes over five years.
So I should try to find positive things to say about it apart from the sofa looks nice !
Having been on the show a couple of times, I know what a tough job the presenters and analysts have always had. And for Scotty, Yoyo and Reds to suddenly turn their talents to this is a huge task. And they are doing it brilliantly. As for lack of banter now between presenters and analysts, I suspect this will come as their confidence grows.
But to me the best entertainment and the educational aspects of the show have always come from the hand analysis. Our analysts and guests can keep telling us what to do or not do, but it is far more effective in the form of pointing out good or bad play when a hand is shown. And I think there is a good case for showing tournament hands more than cash hands, because the progressive nature of a tournament asks different questions, with more emphasis on stack sizes/blind levels as well as the actual hands.
One little moan here, is that the current software hides the players stack while a hand is in progress, which makes it difficult for the viewer and for the analyst too.
Does the new format get the best out of our guests ?
Get well soon Claire
Having the chance to see your hand on tv and your play analysed was of real interest and entering the nights main event was a real buzz.
There was good interactive stuff, such as studio guests playing in the events, the odd £100 bounty if you knocked the studio guest out and spot prizes for certain plays or what not, I even found a Sky Poker t-shirt posted through my door in a brown jiffy bag, no idea what I'd done to deserve it, probably gave the audience a laugh with one of my 'moves'.
The show format appealed and in particular there was one guy with funny looking yellow hair, who used to be the brunt of a few jokes, but was seriously entertaining and gave some really good advice.
It must have been a few years back though as the guy with funny yellow hair has now gone grey!
I know Ed has gone now and we all move on, but hopefully no harm in pointing out that Ed was very good at involving the watching public, his analysis was to the point without being offensive and his £5 bets with Richard Orford were always good value, not just for Ed but for entertainment in general.
Yes some of the new guest analyists have been excellent, personally I always enjoy listening to Paul Jackson and the involvement of Julian Thew on the shows and the tables is a real bonus.
I don't watch every show, but I can only think of one occasion where the evenings guest didn't come across very well and perhaps made me switch channels when I might have stayed tuned for the night.
Sky Poker presenters and analysts have real strength in depth with no real weak links, for me James Hartigan and Richard Orford are excellent in their own unique way and a thumbs up to the local boys (local to Sky Poker) doing good, such as Ryan and Redmond, I particularly enjoy Ryan's honesty, perspective and thought process on the game.
Hearing the general views of quality professional poker players at first is almost jaw dropping, but after a while it can become as mentioned in previous posts.....a little tedious.
Now from a purely selfish point of view (and I think the majority of sky poker players), tuning into to listen to a top poker pro who every now and then might analyse one of my hands (or even players I come up against every night), well that will keep me interested, where else could I be publicly humiliated by one of the 'games names'?
I think the show's have become more polished as time has moved on, which shouldn't be a bad thing, though perhaps a certain Tiswas and Sally James element could be retained!
As has been said numerous times on this thread, the analysts and guests have been excellent but "horses for courses" needs to be borne in mind when collating the guests against the planned content, as mentioned above re the Poker School episiode when Alex Rousso was the guest.
Custard pies it is then.
That said, I think the guests and analysts are fantastic and doing a great job. I would just like to see more live poker, being able to watch the main event when playing it (not that I play that many) was all part of the appeal.
I appreciate it's early days and will still be watching 865 on a regular basis.
It was much easier for the first lot of analysts to make an entertaining show because we had the live tournament hands and a remit to being entertainment with poker tuition/education, seems the remit now is poker education full stop. You'd need to be a genius to make that entertaining for 5 solid hours.
Please skypoker increase the live tourny coverage !
Thank you for the comments friends .
i was in my local petrol station earlier and, like a number of new feature films, i saw that four of last night's channel 865 "live" programmes have already gone straight to DVD.
;-)
p.s Please pass on my best to SkyClaire. get well soon.
update --- recovered with the richard and tikay show last week. i think it must be their talent that keeps the show afloat despite the format. james and anna are fine presenters too. however the format is not quite so buoyant nowadays.
The show on Tuesday was one of our best ones to date. We had plenty of hand requests, a great Chat Box full of poker news stories, live calls with James Hartigan, a brilliant guest and the only 'criticism' we got was that the 5 hours went to quickly.
ALL the talent on the books are outstanding and bring their own personalities to the channel.
I think it is ignorant to think that after only 4 weeks on air we are going to get everything perfect. The TV channel team are adding new elements to each show, each day. BUT we can only do so much at once.
Maybe it was me, but I flicked through the usual sky sports channels a few times and checked the scheduling, but couldn't find any reference to the Sky Sports Bounty Hunter or in deed any reference to Sky Poker.
Likewise on 865, there didn't seem to be any coverage of the main event until after 10.00pm?
Maybe I caught 865 at the wrong moments, but there didn't appear to be much link up with the live sky sports bounty hunter until later in the evening, which for me gave it a bit of an 'after the lord mayor's show' feeling, even though I enjoyed playing in the tournament and managed to cash in 35th place.
claire,
i am only expressing my opinion. you are too. i know that you can ignore and dismiss mine, after all, it is your opinion that determines what happens. the view i have expressed is about the format and, you will see if you re-read my post, not about the presenters. however you are keen to respond to a different issue.
it is a shame to hear you say the only criticism you've heard is praise. perhaps you should hear a greater range of comments.
to infer that i might be "ignorant" is stepping over the line. you might consider that unfair.
Unfortunately we cannot choose when we go on Sky Sports, they just tell us. Would love a regular booking on there, and this is something I am pushing for.
I agree we need to cover more action from the tournaments on a Thursday and will try and get this in from next week.
Please do help though and if you are involved in any of the tournaments that night send in your hand ID's and we will do our very best to get them to air
Thanks
The customer is always right.
It occurs to me that most of the other people commenting on here are also loyal Sky customers, and so, are also not the target audience.
The viewing figures will surely show whether the shows are good or not, or popular or not. Initially there will have been a surge in viewers - people who have lapsed from watching the shows coming back to see what's new or what has changed. If those figures are sustained, all the moaning in the world on here, will ultimately just be people whining because things are different. I wish they'd show The Clangers on TV again - yet apparently Teletubbies and The Tweenies were more popular - who knew?
What I will say, is that pretty much all the comments in here from the regulars have been polite and constructive, yet the responses from Sky have been more about defence of their product, and less about "taking things on board" than I'd expect - including some language used that was, frankly, unnecessary and offensive.
The customer is NOT always right - I know that full well from my own commercial enterprises, yet I know I am also NOT always right (despite what my wife says).
'Can we have more hands on the show'- yes no problem. We are now showing Master Cash tables in the first hour and desperately requesting people send in their hand ID's. We do need your input too.
Of course I am going to be defensive regarding the channel. It has been incredibly hard work and everybody has a right to their opinion. Do you not think its upsetting for us to see people write 'i was in my local petrol station earlier and, like a number of new feature films, I saw that four of last night's channel 865 "live" programmes have already gone straight to DVD'
The viewing figures has gone through the roof. From an average of 1,500 per day to last week getting over 20,000 on some days. I must be doing something right! We had our highest month every on the webstream too with nearly 300,000 clicks.
At the end of the day nobody really likes change, but 6 months ago I was given the option, make changes or have no channel. Some of the changes in place might not be the greatest, but give it time and they will be.
What I ask of our regular viewers is that you support the team infront of the camera and behind. Of course ask if we would consider doing certain things, can we show more tournament, cash, more time with the guest etc, but do not make snap decisions on a new format that is only 4 weeks old.
Thanks
We also have the following happening in the next few weeks:
SPT Brighton
SPT Glasgow
GUKPT Walsall
New poker dictionary
Anything you would particularly like to see more of in those breaks? Interviews, mini Sky Poker Schools, Top Tips?
That guy used to give me nightmares whenever I stayed up on school nights watching Sky Poker back in the day :')
Might shoot a new version, but if there is a demand to see something else then we can do that instead. The breaks are exactly 5 minutes in length so thats our only restraint
Yet calling a punter "ignorant" is....... well, I'll leave it for you to ponder.