Poker Central, the 24/7 dedicated poker TV channel is closing down a little over a year since they opened with their President saying that they need to curate new content for millennials.
After listening to The Minimalist podcast, I decided to participate in their 30-Day Minimalist Challenge. The rules were simple. Each day for 30-days I was to get rid of items on a scale that worked like this:
1 item on day 1
2 items on day 2
3 items on day 3
Do you get the drift?
The first thing that went was my television. It was the last bastion of bygone times. It was the last soul sucker. An invader of grey matter. A terrible role model.
It had to go.
So I wasn’t surprised when I heard Poker Central had folded its 24/7 dedicated TV channel over the festive period. I was surprised that it ever existed. Opened up a television channel dedicated to poker, was like Commodore making a comeback to take on Sony and Microsoft. It was commercial suicide.
Then they launched with nothing but a hoard of old poker clips. Over time they expanded into more Netflix-style original content, but even then they couldn’t seem to release their grasp from the old American greats. A year later and they have finally woken up.
“We saw our millennial audience wanted more content. But they wanted new, original content,” Poker Central Prez Joe Kakaty explained in a piece for Multichannel News. “The legacy part of our business is not a place where we wanted to put our resources.”
Poker Central will still exist as a digital platform, albeit more of a nomad. The Poker Central sponsored Super High Roller Bowl has become one of the biggest pro-heavy events of the calendar year and ready made for current digital entertainment consumption.
According to PokerNews, Poker Central will work with the likes of NBC Sports Network and CBS Sports Network to generate future content. Kakaty described the move as a ‘digital pivot.’ The collapse of Poker Central is a timely reminder for media moguls to understand what their audience wants before creating a platform.
I should have done the same with my TV.
Days after getting rid of it, my Mum gave me a rollicking for not giving it to her.
“But you have a TV in every room,” I told her.
“You can never have enough TV’s,” said my Mum.
Poker Central should have been marketing their product to her.
