Television
The year-round WPT television show, building on the annual broadcast of the World Series of Poker, has contributed to the Poker boom in American homes, in local casino poker rooms and online. The key sponsors of the WPT are casinos and online poker sites.
The WPT television show, which is syndicated internationally, features commentary and analysis by World Series of Poker bracelet winner Mike Sexton and actor Vince Van Patten. Interviews and sideline reporting are provided by a female host. Shana Hiatt served as the show host and sideline reporter in its first three seasons. Courtney Friel took over the host role for the fourth season, and Sabina Gadecki for the fifth. Layla Kayleigh and Kimberly Lansing began serving as hostesses in season six. Poker player and reporter Amanda Leatherman was the host for season seven. For Season 9 (2010/11), Kimberly Lansing has returned to the hosting role.
Following the November 2009 acquisition of the World Poker Tour by PartyGaming plc, the new owners have added a second series of televised WPT events under their Party Poker (PartyPoker) brand name. This series has, to date, focused on televising the European stops of the WPT. Mike Sexton continues to provide commentary, though he is partnered with Denmark-based American commentator Jesse May rather than Vince Van Patten. The role of female show host and sideline reporter has been served by a number of personalities, often from the country where the event is held. One exception is Canadian born poker player Kara Scott, who has served as host for a number of the Party Poker branded telecasts of these European WPT events.
Read more about this topic: World Poker Tour
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“Addison DeWitt: Your next move, it seems to me, should be toward television.
Miss Caswell: Tell me this. Do they have auditions for television?
Addison DeWitt: That’s all television is, my dear. Nothing but auditions.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)
“There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials ... despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners.”
—Peter Ustinov (b. 1921)