Analysis: GSN Needs To Play Its Own Game Of High Stakes Poker

Authored by Jay Baage on July 11, 2007 - 6:38am.

GSN President and CEO Rich Cronin said Tuesday that he is departing the network at the end of the month, but did not give a reason why. While Cronin under his six years with the network led a team that pioneered interactive television games and expanded its distribution from 31 million to 64 million homes, the channel still suffers from a bit of an identity crises.

While Cronin leaves the network a profitable operation, it is still a somewhat random collection of game-related programs that the owners, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Liberty Media, have in their hands.

To me, the most notable original series GSN has produced are "World Series of Blackjack" and "High Stakes Poker" that was part of a conscious effort to shed any image of itself as a loop of re-runs of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" and the like (which I guess is at least partly why the network rebranded itself from The Game Show Network to GSN).

So while GSN still has a core base of housewives watching the reruns, it now also has successful programming about poker and other card games, that appeal, at least in part, to young men.

This programming based on Poker is not only controversial because it means a stretch of the GSN brand, but also because the online gambling companies that support these tournaments are outlawed in the US.

Then we have the digital expansion. This is when it gets really interesting.

While the company has been in the forefront of two-screen (TV/PC) and one-screen (TV-only) interactive TV applications, including last months introduction of interactive mobile texting, it has received little credit for it.

Perhaps because GSN could have done a better job of letting people know about what it is doing and why.

Already last year, GSN had over 30 advertisers that offered interactive commercials as a way to leverage GSN’s combined TV/Internet platform.

It works like this: GSN still have traditional 30 second spots, but they have added an interactive feature where viewers can opt to answer questions about the commercials and get points in return.

For example, last year Burger King asked viewers to weigh in on their favorite type of sandwich.
“They can then use those points to enter various sweepstakes, or they can redeen points for discounts on merchandise,” explained Rich Cronin to Xchange Magazine.
“It’s pretty significant discounts. If you play for just a couple of weeks on GSN, you can get $200 off a Sony Camera or a Sony TV set.”

To Cronin, this was very exciting:

“(The advertisers) see this as the ideal way to combat the ability of people watching TiVo or other PRVs to skip commercials,” he said.
“Now people have an incentive for watching commercials. If you’re watching GSN and playing along with the show, when it comes to a commercial break, if you change channels, you’ll lose all of the points that you’ve gained up until that time. So we have a lot of incentive for people to stay through the breaks and watch those commercials.”

According to Cronin, 80% of the viewers that play along with the programming participate in the interactivity related to commercials. That is a major accomplishment that perhaps did not get the attention it deserved. Add to that a number of interactive features on the GSN website, many directly related to the shows, some not.

So, I think that Cronin has built the foundation for what could be a very successful and progressive network. It just needs more and better programming like World Series of Poker and, basically, just decide if it wants to be a rerun network or embark on its own game of High Stakes Poker. By that I mean go all in with the digital entertainment and the gaming revolution in a logical way that people will relate to and feel compelled to tune in for.

Just my 2c for Sony and Liberty Media to ponder when recruiting a new CEO.

Jay Baage