Velocity: Cable TV Home of the Epic Poker League

The Epic Poker League will feature 20 hours of original televised programming in its inaugural season, split between mainstream network CBS (7 hours) and soon-to-be-launched cable channel Velocity (13 hours).

Aside from the press releases from Epic Poker, I knew nothing about the Velocity channel. But earlier today, the New York Times published an article by Brian Stelter titled "Discovery Woos the Man With Cash for Cars, Sports and Fancy Toys":

Replacing the low-rated HD Theater on Oct. 4, Velocity is being billed as a high-end men’s lifestyle channel about fast cars, fancy auctions and football stars.

The HD Theater channel currently reaches about 40 million cable subscribers, and presumably, Velocity will reach those same people.

“It’s not going to have a huge audience,” said David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications. But, he asserted, it doesn’t necessarily need to; if Velocity can attract the relatively elusive Rich Man, it can charge a premium to advertisers in much the same way that CNBC does.

That's a lofty goal, but later in the article, Discovery Communications is a bit more realistic about who their new channel will actually attract:

In part that’s because the channel knows that many of Velocity’s viewers will be aspirational — the men who, in Mr. Scanlon’s words, “drive a Pontiac, but are going to drive a Porsche.”

While Velocity is a relatively small cable channel, with far fewer subscribers than ESPN (home of the World Series of Poker) and FSN (home of the World Poker Tour), that's not a bad fit for a new show (Epic Poker) that is just starting to build its brand and make a name for itself. A new network with a relatively small reach means less pressure on the early ratings, and more time for the show to build an audience.

It's easier to be a big fish in a small pond.

Of course, on CBS, things will be quite different. Even if, as rumored, Epic is paying for their timeslots on CBS, there will be pressure to bring in decent ratings, or the show might not get picked up for a second season, paid or not.

The two different networks make a certain amount of sense for Epic's programming. The smaller channel, Velocity, will be showing episodes that focus on the pre-final table action. That will appeal to a much smaller demographic, but one that is more willing to seek out the show.

The larger channel, CBS, will be broadcasting episodes about the final tables, which will appeal to a much larger group of casual fans. (The episodes that premier on CBS will also air as reruns on Velocity.)

Fortunately for Epic, their first event seemed to be an instant poker classic. The 6-handed final table featured Jason Mercier, Erik Seidel, Gavin Smith, Huckleberry Seed, Hasan Habib, and Chino Rheem. While Rheem may not have been CBS's first choice as Epic's first winner, the heads-up battle between Rheem and Seidel was quite dramatic.

The episodes are being produced by 441 Productions, the Emmy Award-winning team that produced the WSOP on ESPN from 2003-2010. Early buzz from the producers is that the episodes from the first Epic Poker event are among the best poker shows they've ever done -- and they've done a lot.

So when the first episodes of the Epic Poker League air, and the ratings come in, don't worry about the numbers for the Velocity channel. CBS is where the real pressure is.

(Better-Late-Than-Never Disclosure: I work as a freelance tournament reporter/photographer for the Epic Poker League, just as I do for the World Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker, and others. As always, the opinions expressed here are entirely my own, and do not represent any of the companies that occasionally employ me.)