They won't read it. They are too busy high-fiving each other.

ESPN is a buisness. More people are watching thier broadcasts of WSOP then ever. They are trying to appeal to the masses. The masses want to see all in hands and AA vs. QQ and AK vs JJ etc. etc. etc. They want to see brutal river cards and people win when they are drawing to one card. It sucks, but people are watching. Look at the card rooms. Look at all the sunglasses.

Let's be honest. Tuning in to ESPN WSOP to watch poker is like getting your news from tabloids. You get all the all-in hands with a ton of B.S. like "The Nuts." If you want the Wall Street Journal (to continue with my brutal analogy), you are not going to get it from ESPN.

Personally, since we are discussing the subject of televised poker, I want to go back to the old days where WSOP was like an obsurd carnival. I saw the WSOP '95 on ESPN Classics and some other one from (I think) '91. Totally outrageous. Harrington had a mini fan set up in front of him, and he turned it on when the guy to his right lit a cigarette. There was like four guys smoking at all times. The table looked like they were playing a home game. There was [censored] strewn all over the place. And you can't beat the outfits. Every guy was wearing a Members Only jacket dude. And it is all about the brown polo shirt with oversized collars and huge pocket (obviously for cigarettes and large glasses). Then there are the commentators. No pocket card cams. Big raise over the top and we get, "Oh boy, I think were looking at a full house here, possibly quads." Just great. I could watch that all day long. I say lets drop the card cameras. It was more interesting when we could put people on hands.

Finally, I want to point out that ESPN does a decent job with popular sports, but with things that they are not familiar with (like hockey and poker), the game just isn't enough. Take hockey. We can't just have the game. I was at a Rangers game (when there was hockey) and it was on ESPN. Suddenly we have smoke machines, pregame starting lineup presentations, interviewing players during the game while they are on the bench, etc. They have to sensationalize everything. The sport is never good enough. Same thing with poker.

WPT tries to do a good job. The HU championship was so watered down I couldn't even watch it. WSOP on ESPN is nothing short of a joke. Fast Freddy and the gang on NY vs Boston is brutal. Celebrity poker, speed channel poker, comedians vs. the pros poker, it goes on and on. We play a game that absolutely sucks on television and it is going to take much more than a couple of emails fired from 2+2 to change it.