Here's One Way to Get a Poker Show on TV

At the end of the month, people who think they might have come up with the next hit TV show will descend upon Mandalay Bay and do their best to convince a TV executive to air their creations.

There will be no shortage of people pitching poker shows.

At last year's National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) Conference, veteran TV producer Mark Fracalossi says maybe five companies were there to pitch poker programming ideas.

This year, he estimates there will be around 50.

The NATPE convention, which takes place Jan. 24-26, is a time and a place where companies that have produced a show or have an idea for a show can try to sell it to television networks or syndication companies.

"The big networks are there, the big companies are there, and they're looking for content.," Fracalossi said.

Fracalossi is the executive producer of the Small Town Poker Tour (STPT), which will soon begin filming low buy-in charity tournaments all across the United States to try to showcase the best amateur player with or without a TV deal. The show will also focus on the everyman players as characters, sharing the stories of players in between the poker action.

"There are a lot of cool stories out there," Fracalossi said. "We're going to be the premier amateur tournament in the world."

Despite expecting a large pool of competing ideas at this year's convention, Fracalossi has full confidence that his show will be picked up by a network.

"We're very confident. We're in the driver's seat with this program. We probably have a 99 percent chance to get this on," he said.

Production companies prefer their shows to land a home at a network, where it would be promoted more heavily than if the show went into syndication.

With the soaring popularity of poker, which was directly fueled by poker on television, it's no surprise so many companies are coming up with poker-based ideas for television shows.

And despite the fact that there are so many tournament poker shows now being aired, it seems like the TV poker market is still hot.

A new show, "Pokerbeat," a magazine-style poker show, has found a home in regional markets in New England and the cable network America One Sports. And the Heartland Poker Tour (HPT), which films regional tournaments in Wisconsin and Minnesota, has also found regional success.

The HPT, which features tournaments with buy-ins around $1,000, is aired on 11 stations as far north as Canada and as far south as Florida on ABC, FOX, UPN, and WB affiliates.

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