Broadcast Poker News
You probably don’t know this but my uncle is a high level TV executive named Gandalf Stevens*. He is currently head of commissioning for the E-Channel and is based in Los-Angeles, recently he rang me up in a bit of a state, “Kev my old son” he opened with, “the networks got a major problem, and I’ve been tasked with fixing it and I need your help” at these words my balls begin to rise up inside my body, this a automatic defensive measure the body takes upon hearing a request for a favor from Uncle Gandalf.
I try to make my reply as non committal as possible, “umm, well, you know, If I can, like” to which he manages to hear only a resolute yes, “thanks Son, here’s the problem, we have ran out of celebrities, literally we have none left to use in our shows, even Paris Hilton now has three different series airing weekly” he sounded desperate, “Can’t you just get Simon Cowell to run up a new batch?” I enquired, “No way Pedro, he’s demanding too much money the greedy bastard, and besides that last lot he churned out where crap, I mean what are we going to do with Sue Boyle? Hardly the cover of ‘Maxim’ material is she?” he angrily responded.
“So what are you looking for from me?” I dare to ask the question even though I’m dreading the answer, “Well, my assistant signed me up to some charity BS last week, you might have heard of it ‘Folding for Fiji?’ Gandalf asks, “umm yeah, think I did a piece on it, charity run by Ultimatedebt to build a luxury rest home for burnt out online gaming executives on one of the South Pacific islands if I remember correctly, excellent cause” I reply “Sure, whatever” say’s Gandalf completely ignoring my response, he continues, “well I was sat next to this arsehole called Devilfeet or something or another and he kept telling me how big a deal he was, well he thinks his a celebrity, he acts like a celebrity, so as far as I’m concerned he is a celebrity, I mean he’s better qualified than most, right?”
I answer in the affirmative and I can feel we are getting close to finding the purpose for his call, “you’re a poker writer, you know the industry, it must be full of egotistical arseholes, am I right?” and without waiting for an answer he strides on “so come up with some names of poker players, contact their agents and get me some suggestions for what they might be good at presenting, I’ll make it worth your while” I think, yeah I’ve heard that before.
So I contact a few poker players agents and other poker related media types and before you know it the word is well and truly out there and the proposals are soon flooding in. Phil Hellmuth is first out of the blocks with a very detailed submission for a sixteen part show called, “The worlds greatest sportsmen”.
You can tell Phil and his “People” are very interested because they have even gone to the trouble of preparing a budget, which is a little premature at this stage of proceedings. Intrigued by the fee Phil would have demanded for something like this I have a quick thumb through the numbers and am surprised there is no cost associated for any guests. I ring up Phil’s agent to ask how Phil is going to get all these top sports stars to appear for free, “oh no, there won’t be any guests in season one, Phil thought it best to concentrate on one sport at a time, Season one would be poker”, momentarily stunned I eventually regain my composure and ask, “So what your proposing is a sixteen week series with Phil talking about himself?” Phil’s agent seems oblivious to the absurdity of this proposal and I falsely promise to get back to them soon.
The next proposal to fall on my mat is from Scotty Nyguen’s people, there idea is for a sitcom starring Scotty and 1996 main event winner Huck Seed as two single guy’s forced to bring up a baby on there own after the mother disappears, the show’s title to be “Two players and a baby, baby”. A quick glance at the script reveals the whole show’s premise and comedic content seemingly derives from Scotty’s habit of saying ‘Baby’ a lot, I throw it on the maybe pile.
Easy passes are ‘Raymers Master Chef’, ‘Uncle Amarilo’s Girl Guide Adventure’ and ‘Fishing with the Devilfish’ which turns out to just be a title written down on a packet of Rothmans that then had a stamp affixed and arrived with a Hull postmark.
A more promising proposal arrives from Phil Ivey’s people, Ivey wants to share his apparently encyclopedic knowledge of Victorian architecture on a tour of Britain entitled Ivey on Ivey. It’s promising but his in a competitive market though, the list of players hoping to present their own documentary series is seemingly endless, I receive proposals for, Daniel Negreanu on sexuality, Mike Matusow on medication, Farha on Fire and The Boatman’s on Boats.
I’m just preparing to FedEx all these proposals off to my uncle when the phone rings, “Kev, hope you haven’t moved on that poker thing we where talking about? Turns out it’s a non-runner” he says, angrily I reply “Hey, yeah well actually I have…’ he quickly cuts me off, “Yeah, yeah, good look shut up and listen, I’m really sorry but the test audience response results to the players where terrible, they seem to think all poker players are scum bags, apparently Joan Rivers told them on TV so it must be true, just glad we didn’t waste much time on it, Ciao” and with that he was gone, along with the hopes and dreams of a significant portion of the poker community of reaching the heights of popularity only main stream fame can offer.
* Gandalf isn’t his real name, his real name is Tony, they nicknamed him Gandalf long ago because of his amazing ability to make other peoples money disappear.
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[...] Island in the Bahamas on Sunday night. – Click To Read More From The Sourcegogiz.com Broadcast Poker News 08/24/2009 You probably don’t know this but my uncle is a high level TV executive named Gandalf [...]