GSN

World Screen Weekly, January 18, 2007

COUNTRY: U.S.

LAUNCH DATE: December 1, 1994, as the Game Show Network. Rebranded as GSN, the Network for Games, on March 15, 2004

OWNERSHIP: Sony Pictures Entertainment (50 percent) and Liberty Media Corporation (50 percent)

NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS: GSN has more than 60 million subscribers in the U.S. through all major cable and satellite providers. GSN is also available in Canada and the Caribbean. It is currently developing VOD and SVOD services.

DESCRIPTION: GSN is the only U.S. television network dedicated to game-related programming and interactive game playing for adults. The network, mainly targeted at adults aged 25-55, features over 133 hours per week of multiplatform interactive game programming where viewers have the chance to win prizes by playing along with GSN’s televised games via the network’s website, GSN.com.

PRESIDENT AND CEO: Rich Cronin

SENIOR VP, PROGRAMMING: Jamie Roberts

SENIOR VP, DIGITAL MEDIA &

INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT: John P. Roberts

PROGRAMMING STRATEGY: GSN has been building on its game show base by adding more reality series, documentaries, casino games and Participation TV, or Call TV as it is known in Europe, to its lineup of original programming. The network’s motto, according to Jamie Roberts, GSN’s senior VP of programming, is “watch and play and win.” The channel ensures that every show has an interactive component, whether it’s playing along on the GSN website or interacting in chat rooms. For Roberts, a British television veteran who left BSkyB to join GSN in August 2006, maintaining a high level of interactivity in GSN’s programming is a top priority.

“All the original stuff that we’re looking at doing, it’s absolutely vital to us to get the interactive front and center, so it doesn’t feel like an afterthought,” explains Roberts. “Our objective is to make sure that every idea that we consider and then commission has a very real and meaningful integrated interactive element. Our audience on GSN is a pretty engaged lot.”

The bulk of GSN’s programming across all day parts is acquired, but Roberts says that for the prime-time lineup, from 7 p.m. to midnight, there is “a really even balance between acquired and original shows.”

GSN’s original series Playmania, which launched in April 2006 as the first live participation TV show in the U.S., has become one of the network’s biggest hits. It currently airs Tuesday through Sunday from midnight to 2 a.m. “We think Playmania is a top brand for us and will continue to be part of our schedule going forward. We’re going to look at ways we can expand on that.”

Other successes on the network include Lingo, the game show hosted by Chuck Woolery and Shandi Finnessey that has been picked up for a sixth season, scheduled to premiere on April 2. Chain Reaction from Michael Davies, another prime-time word game show, has been renewed for a second season and is set to premiere on March 13. Casino games have also done well for GSN. The third season of High Stakes Poker, a cash game featuring pro and amateur players, premiered earlier this month and the fourth edition of World Series of Blackjack is set to be taped at the end of this month for a June launch.

The network has also premiered original game show-related documentaries such as The Chuck Barris Story: My Life on the Edge. Upcoming specials include The Women Who Changed Game Shows, set to air January 28. “They’re a bulls eye for us in terms of our target audience,” says Roberts. “Interesting, clever, well written and well put together documentaries based on things that the whole game show arena knows and understands.”

WHAT’S NEW: The interactivity component will continue to dominate in upcoming new shows. Roberts also aims to shift the network’s programming towards more unconventional reality series. “There’s the traditional game shows with the shiny floor and podiums and buzzers and bells, and complementing that we’re going to see a number of more reality-based ideas with a competitive element,” says Roberts.

Projects in development include Lion Television USA’s The Box, a live, nightly reality game show event where contestants have to live and compete in a glass box in the middle of a large American city. GSN is also working with Michael Davies on a project entitled Grand Slam, in association with Sony Pictures Television. And production is currently underway on an American version of the International Emmy Award-winning format Without Prejudice? from 12 Yard Productions.

WEBSITE: www.gsn.com

—By Irene Lew