The last post I wrote looked at a few of the online trends occurring in poker today that might make one wonder if the game is in any sort of danger as far as losing its popularity among people.  This post is going to focus on the TV side of poker and some of the major shakeups that have happened or may be in the works with regards to the televised side of the game. 

First, let’s go over what has already occurred:
– At this point it looks like the [[Game_Show_Network|Game Show Network (GSN)]] is moving towards canceling the show [[High_Stakes_Poker|”High Stakes Poker”]].  This comes after news surfaced that no new episodes were filmed in March or April which is when they filmed them in the past.  
– There have also been some reports that the [[World_Poker_Tour|WPT]] is in trouble after lackluster ratings.  This is only speculation but they can’t be in real good standing with GSN after PokerStars chose to no longer advertise during WPT’s time slot.
– The already oft-reported news about the [[World_Series_of_Poker|WSOP]] final table being moved to boost ratings for ESPN’s coverage of the Main Event is just another event which makes me wonder what kind of state the popularity of poker is currently at.

Now these events certainly don’t spell the doomsday for poker as I’m fairly sure that the game of will always be around since too many people enjoy playing it for poker to ever fade away.  But the TV occurrences coupled with the online trend of the FTOPS definitely raises some questions though.

And most of these questions revolve around whether the glory days of poker – that saw Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu have become household names and tons of people flock to card rooms across the Internet daily – are starting their decline. 

I sure hope not but we’ll have to wait a couple of years to truly find out.