Despite the progress with advertisers that GSN has had in the last few years, it's obvious that there is still an amount of resistance among some to the channel. That is still to be expected, because game shows are not going to shake the fact that they don't attract the demographics that advertisers desire.
Rich Cronin and Bob Boden's plan was to try to package the old shows in a way that would satisfy a mass audience and develop new shows that would be contemporary but not turn off the over-50 audience they already had. For the most part, they've been successful so far--but it seems that certain advertisers are not satisfied. Also, Sony management, who I've always blamed with the Fleming/Tauber attempts to go after the lad mag audience rather than Fleming and Tauber themselves, doesn't seem to be satisfied with the channel's progress and after two years of keeping quiet after the partial sale to Liberty and Liberty bringing in Cronin is beginning to make noise again. Hence, the experiment--and let me emphasize that this is an *experiment*--with the video game block--something that may attract new advertisers who've never used the channel before and something to shut up their bosses at Sony--at least temporarily.
I'm tending to believe that it won't work for one big reason--there generally hasn't been a reason for video gamers--who are the exact opposite of the typical GSN audience--to go to GSN. TNN can make a transition to a ladmag channel because they've got a lot of that audience already watching wrestling and \"Baywatch\" reruns. GSN skews female and is not going to go the other way overnight. How are they going to get that crowd to come to them--ads in gaming mags?
Once again, it is only six hours in a week that is still almost-entirely game shows (and we'll get a few half-hours back once \"Naturally Stoned\" ends, since it hasn't been a success with the numbers). If it works, the block may expand to every day and may get a repeat--but we've still got mostly game shows the rest of the day. Besides, it's not like you don't have a choice of at least a couple of *first-run* game shows on other channels between 5-7 p.m. ET in most markets...
