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medusa

why skydiving is not a lucrative sport??

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[replyso my question is were is the money going???>:(
why skydiving is not as popular as surfing or snowboarding or some other sport? >:(

when will be the day that a skydiver is in the front of a Wheaties cereal box and is getting paid for it?;)



Probably never. ESPN dropped skydiving for a number of reasons. One of these is that skydiving is not readily accessible to the public to try other than through tandem. You can run, ride a bike, ski, or do any number of other sports fairly quickly and easily. Skydiving requires an enormous amount of time, committment and money just to get a basic license, let alone get proficient. There's not a lot of bang for an advertising buck in it for a sponsor.

Here's the other thing that always gets me into trouble when I say it. For a non skydidver, skydiving is the dullest sport imaginable. At it's world class level, it's too subtle for most people to grasp, as all they really want to see are funnels and crashes anyway, much like why I would ever deign to watch NASCAR. I've yet to get any whuffo to sit through more than five minutes of video before they get bored.

All in all, it's an expensive niche aviation sport. What we spend on it is a drop in the bucket compared to aerobatic pilots, and you don't see too much of that on TV either.

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So if they got that busy either the business would spread out and/or the DZs would get more planes.



Or the DZO would put more money in his pocket;)
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey

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Or many DZO's would actually do all the maintence on their airplanes instead of the min/none they do now. :S



:ph34r: Oh wait, you're not making a joke:S
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey

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Where did you get these numbers?

I can tell you that they are in no way close to reality.

If they were we would not have so much turn over of students.




Census says population around 300 million. USPA says around 30 thousand skydivers. I rounded those figures to make math easy.

30k of 300m equals 1 in 10,000 or 0.01%.
 
"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-J. K. Rowling
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Actually its .0001%.

USPA numbers include a lot of students in there too. At some DZ's you must get your USPA membership before AFF Level3. Realistically the number of jumpers that are out making more then 100 jumps a year is less then 15k.
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

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Census says population around 300 million. USPA says around 30 thousand skydivers. I rounded those figures to make math easy.

30k of 300m equals 1 in 10,000 or 0.01%.



.0001%

Also a good number of the "Jumpers" the USPA reports don't jump anymore. A very large number are students that quit but were made to join the USPA. Another segment don't jump much.

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There has got to be more then 1 in 10,000 people in this county that want to skydive on a active bases.



OK so that has been proven wrong.

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I'm willing to bet 1 in 100 would jump if they saw the safe pure fun side of skydiving regularly



And the retention numbers show this to be wrong.

Simple cold fact....Skydiving is boring to a whuffo after 5 mins. They can't relate to it, and don't want to relate to it.

People can relate to NASCAR since most people drive. People can relate to Football since most have played it in one form or another. Even "Extreme" sports like BMX and Skatebording are easy to try and most have tried them.

Ask the folks you work with these questions:

1. Have you ever run?
2. Have you ever thrown a Football?
3. Have you ever ridden a bike?
4. Have you ever drivena car?
5. Have you ever made a skydive?

After they answer each question ask them if they would like to try. Have a football, bike and car ready. Most will try them, or have done them.

A good number will think you are crazy for skydiving.

You can throw a football, or ride a bike with little to no training and little to no risk. It is not the same with Skydiving.

Also it will never have a big market since we can't target kids...BMX and Skateborders market to children.....We can't do that.

Skydiving is a great sport to those who do it, and a stupid sport to those that don't.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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OK so that has been proven wrong.



No, I wasn't proven wrong you just don't like the source of the documented numbers.

Maybe I didn't state my opinion clear enough:
Right now roughly only 0.01% (most likely a lot less) of population jump. I believe with better marketing it would be around 1%.

Almost everyone I know who skydives was a climber, dirt bike rider, pilot, bull rider or scuba diver before they found out how much fun and less dangerous skydiving was. Most sold there other sport gear to get into skydiving. I myself would have gotten into auto racing if didn't do research about skydiving first.
 
"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-J. K. Rowling
willtofly.com Videos, Pictures & News

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Almost everyone I know who skydives was a climber, dirt bike rider, pilot, bull rider or scuba diver before they found out how much fun and less dangerous skydiving was. Most sold there other sport gear to get into skydiving. I myself would have gotten into auto racing if didn't do research about skydiving first.



I didn't get into those other sports till after I started skydiving.

I'm wondering why you want skydiving mainstreamed so badly?
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey

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>I believe with better marketing it would be around 1%.

That would suck. I'd hate to have skydiving become skiing, where you don't know anyone at the mountain, the operators are faceless suits, and most of your time is spent in the two-hour line in front of manifest.

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That would suck. I'd hate to have skydiving become skiing, where you don't know anyone at the mountain, the operators are faceless suits, and most of your time is spent in the two-hour line in front of manifest.



I'm sorry but I don't agree with that view. It's not like we have limited planes or airports. If there were more jumpers then there would be more instructors and coaches. Just ask any person who use to be a full time RW or Freefly coach at skydiving's peek. The more skydivers the more money and demand for those three.
 
"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-J. K. Rowling
willtofly.com Videos, Pictures & News

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There is a lot of talk these days about skydiving not being a viable spectator sport. The most prevalent argument is that it will never work because the sport doesn't lend itself to live spectators. However, that kind of reasoning is flawed because live spectators are not the backbone of a successful spectator sport in the twenty-first century. In today's market, television spectators are the key. As I sit here flipping through the seventeen sports channels on my digital cable service, a few of the events I see covered include bowling, darts, ski jumping, skateboarding, drag racing, BMX bicycling, and hunting. None of these events appear to have more than a few hundred spectators, at most; however, the television coverage is spectacular. Although I am not involved with any of these sports, they each manage to catch my attention as I channel surf past them. Other naysayers argue that skydiving cannot hold the public's attention because there is simply not enough public involvement in skydiving. This leads me to question to what extent sports like figure skating, ski jumping, and the many variations of auto racing rely on actual participants to build a viewer base. My guess is that these sports rely more on their visually stimulating nature than a wide base of participants for their core audiences. As Hollywood has shown us again and again, the general public is much more interested in watching something that depicts the life they wish they lived, rather than their own humdrum lives. How many NFL football fans actually play football on a regular basis? Perhaps the argument that has done the most damage to this cause is the one that dropped skydiving from the X-games--the notion that sponsors will never support skydiving because eleven year old Average Joe America can't watch skydiving on TV and then talk Mommy and Daddy into buying him a parachute for Christmas. I maintain that his chances are about on par with talking his parents into buying him a stock car, and NASCAR is the fast growing sport in America. As McDonald's and Coke figured out long ago with the NBA, the most lucrative sponsorship deals don't involve gear endorsements; they involve product placements completely unrelated to the sport. After watching the bottom of a Twin Otter disappear into the distance in three or four competitive skydiving rounds, somebody is going to get the idea to put their company logo on the bottom of that plane. And that's just the beginning--The possibilities are endless. Skydiving has the potential to grow and prosper as a spectator sport without first undergoing a substantial structural change. Skydiving does not have to first become the commercialized monster snow skiing and other sports were mutated into to be a viable spectator sport. To immediately discount skydiving's potential shows the same shortsightedness demonstrated by the many people throughout history who have said "It can't be done," only to be proven wrong.
I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

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>It's not like we have limited planes or airports.

We don't right now because there are few skydivers. If 23 million people were skydivers, that would change. How many airports in the US can handle a part-121 skydiving operation? I'll bet it's under 1000. That's 23,000 people per DZ. The biggest boogie in the world only draws 5000 right now. Really want your DZ to become five times bigger than the WFFC at its largest?

>If there were more jumpers then there would be more instructors and
>coaches.

Yes. But we don't have any shortage of them now. Indeed, if the sport grew very fast, we'd have a chronic shortage of both, since training them would lag introduction of new people.

>Just ask any person who use to be a full time RW or Freefly coach at
> skydiving's peek. The more skydivers the more money and demand for
> those three.

Ah, you think that skydiving should be a source of major income for people. Again, I have no interest in turning skydiving from a niche sport into a cash cow. Turning skydiving from a niche sport into a big-money mainstream sport would mean that most decisions would get made on the basis of profit rather than what people really wanted to do - and that's not an improvement. Do you really want hundreds of DZ's who bump you for tandems, because they simply make more money for the DZO? If the DZO is a jumper himself, and he wants to keep skydivers happy, he's generally not going to do that. If he's the CEO of MegaJumpers Inc. you can bet he's going to be responsible to stockholders and bump the low-income upjumpers for the lucrative tandems.

I simply don't understand the "bigger is better" thing. Perris is great, but so is Otay and so is Airtight in Tulsa, OK. The WFFC is no better than Lost Prairie. Our time would be better spent making the sport better rather than bigger.

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I'm sorry but I don't agree with that view. It's not like we have limited planes or airports. If there were more jumpers then there would be more instructors and coaches. Just ask any person who use to be a full time RW or Freefly coach at skydiving's peek. The more skydivers the more money and demand for those three.



But there is a limited amount of airplanes and airports. I've been in the sport the same length as you and I have seen it in that short period of time. There are plenty of DZ's that get shut down by the locals or FBO. Even DZs like Sebastian and Deland have airport access issues and they have been around for some time. A popular DZ in WA has a local McNasty sitting at the edge of the airport taping any FAR/BSR violation he can notice.

Planes? The Skyvan fleet will be gone within ten years, if not sooner due to mandatory cost of maintenance. IIRC the Casa and the TO will follow that a few years later. Newer planes will be needed and most DZs cannot afford to purchase a used TO or KA, let alone a PAC.

Every time a bounce happens it brings the wrath of sensationalized press down upon the entire sport. Some reporters get a bug up their ass and crusade for closing down a DZ (read up on Lodi) because they think they are doing good and trying to win an award for investigative reporting.

Yes, more people will bring more money, more coaches, more TMs, etc. It will also bring in more that will try to steal money from other jumpers, steal gear, or websites. It will also bring more ratings to people that don't deserve them and are not safe - word of mouth safety will be harder. You would probably introduce a new fatality category "fatalities caused by instructor error." More money will also drive unsafe gear sales. The vibes will die, the bullshit will get worse and those that were in the sport because it was their passion will leave. The quality of the game will not be the same.

Speaking of death - there will be more blood on the ground. The numbers we have now will scale with the larger population. We are over 50% with good canopy fatalities - imagine what that would be like with 10,000 more jumpers. Now imagine with 100,000 more jumpers. Do you want to see 100+ deaths in a year (per country)?? It will happen because jumpers always find ways to kill themselves (or imagine everyone getting the new toy and it turns out to be as safe as the Nova). How much press do you think we will get with two or three people going in per weekend?? How many locals will want that in their backyard? How much of an airport access issue will we have then? How tired will the NTSB and FAA get with constant skydiving reports?

FYI - USPA tried the "Skydiving is Mainstream" advertising approach a few years back. Doesn't look like it worked.
_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

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There use to be a 25+ DZs in Florida. Ask any old time skydiver (in sport 20+ years) where there home DZ was and you would be surprised at most of there answers. As far as air port access issues. Those are easy to deal with when you have more skydivers making money for the town. Pahokee went out of business due to management issues and then 3 owners ago the owner had some legal issues (putting lightly).

You guys seem very negative about new jumpers. I love jumping with someone once they get an A license!!! We need fresh skydivers to keep this sport fun. I can see almost all of you nit-picky the first free flyers.
 
"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-J. K. Rowling
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Finally back to the subject. I think your points are very good. I think it would be great if skydivers had there own TV channel. There is defiantly a lot of video out there. Does anyone know if this has been tried? If darts can get on TV then skydiving can. Does anyone know there phone number?

:)
 
"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-J. K. Rowling
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You guys seem very negative about new jumpers. I love jumping with someone once they get an A license!!! We need fresh skydivers to keep this sport fun. I can see almost all of you nit-picky the first free flyers.



Not negative about the new jumpers, in fact my job at WFFC is to jump with the newbies. I love the look on their face when they do something for the first time.

We're not negative, just realistic. BTW, I am one of those old timers. Believe me, the options we have now are much better then what we had before.

Again, why do you want to mainstream skydiving so badly?
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey

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Finally back to the subject. I think your points are very good. I think it would be great if skydivers had there own TV channel. There is defiantly a lot of video out there. Does anyone know if this has been tried? If darts can get on TV then skydiving can. Does anyone know there phone number?

:)



I think aiming for a skydiving TV network might be a little too ambitious, but I don't see any reason our competitions can't get 30 or 60 minute spots on ESPN 2 between the likes of the national darts championship and the junior figure skating semifinals. The key would be keeping overhead low. Hire a small company to shoot and edit the competitions, hire a couple of color commentators who know the sport, and give the finished products to the network. USPA should try to work out a deal with one of the sports networks for one competition. If it goes well, we can convince them to pick up more competitions for broadcast. Slamball was a completely new sport when it debuted on Spike TV in 2002. It met with a hugely favorable response from viewers. It wasn't popular because of the viewership of amateur Slamball players (there weren't any Slamball players outside the small televised league), and it wasn't popular because of millions of kids getting into Slamball (there was no way for anyone outside the league to get into the sport). It was popular because it was fun to watch. Even though nobody knew the rules at the beginning, the commentators easily explained them throughout each game, and everybody quickly caught on. Unfortunately, Slamball was canceled after two seasons because it was just too expensive for Spike TV to produce. The viewers were certainly there to support a show produced at average cost, but the cost of producing Slamball was just too over-the-top. And as I said before, cost efficiency would be the key for televised skydiving. If the USPA could provide quality, pre-edited competition video to a network at low cost, I think the plan could definitely work.
I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

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I don't know if we need to just show the competition side. Most of my video show the weird off the wall stuff. Ever see the Richmond video with the Prercher. That was entertaining and it cracked up all my non-skydiver friends. I think a format that mixes all aspects would be cool. Defiantly having some hard core competitive stuff but mix it with the hippy type skydiver talking trash would be awesome. With all the video people out there I think it would be dirt cheap. I'm know Meduse could come up with wacky stuff to no end.
B|
 
"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-J. K. Rowling
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I don't know if we need to just show the competition side. Most of my video show the weird off the wall stuff. Ever see the Richmond video with the Prercher. That was entertaining and it cracked up all my non-skydiver friends. I think a format that mixes all aspects would be cool. Defiantly having some hard core competitive stuff but mix it with the hippy type skydiver talking trash would be awesome. With all the video people out there I think it would be dirt cheap. I'm know Meduse could come up with wacky stuff to no end.
B|



If you divert from the sporting aspect then you are basically talking about a reality show. The general public isn't going to be interested in the wacky goings on at a DZ unless they have a basis to understand the wacky goings on at a DZ, and the only way to do that is to document the day-to-day activity at a DZ, hence a reality show. Personally, I'd be more interested in seeing skydiving covered as a sport. I'd rather keep the muggles out of all the subcultural aspects of our world.
I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

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There use to be a 25+ DZs in Florida. Ask any old time skydiver (in sport 20+ years) where there home DZ was and you would be surprised at most of there answers.



Since I am a student of the sport I know what most would say. Plus there are plenty of these old time skydivers you speak of at my dz that like to tell stories (including one with a three digit D number). But think about this - there were even less jumpers back then, how did they have so many DZs? Because they were small cesna DZs running off of grass strips and most likely a club (re: not a tandem mill cash cow).

These days you would need to have turbines to support the extra crowd. Imagine Deland or Zhills trying to run off of four or five cesnas.

Speaking of Deland...how much money do you think it makes for the town? It has a few companies there, and draws visitors from around the world. How is it that they still have problems dealing with the locals on things like the RVs. A bunch of jumpers with a few bucks in their pockets will not have any sway - that is what the USPA and our presence on Capital Hill is for.

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You guys seem very negative about new jumpers. I love jumping with someone once they get an A license!!! We need fresh skydivers to keep this sport fun.



Nope. Not negative at all about newbies. In fact I am part of a group that deals with all the new grads at my DZ. I love the newbies. Don't make assumptions.

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I can see almost all of you nit-picky the first free flyers.



Most of us were not around when the first free/freak flyers were out there. Freeflying started over 20 years ago....it was called freakflying back then.

How successful is skydiving in the countries where it is an excepted sport? How much has that helped further the sport? There are jumpers that earn their living from their gov't sponsoring them. I don't see that making a huge wave within the population.

Could the sport be made bigger and better? Sure, why not. I even have a few ideas on how to do it, and along with some strong managment methods put into place, you could do it (plus I have some media connections I could probably call in as well). But I don't see why we should.

Like Mary said - we are realistic. Increase the size of the membership and everything about this sport will scale - both the good and the bad.
_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

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Planes? The Skyvan fleet will be gone within ten years, if not sooner due to mandatory cost of maintenance. IIRC the Casa and the TO will follow that a few years later. Newer planes will be needed and most DZs cannot afford to purchase a used TO or KA, let alone a PAC.



I keep hearing rumors that Shorts is just going to issue a major bulletin that will effectiivlly put an end date on the Skyvan. As it stands currently the cost of replacement parts are skyhigh. Eloy owns about 4 Van's now, might want to talk to them about how many will be in the air vs how many will be turned into parts planes.

Twin Otters are 60's birds almost all the way. They have a SB out that requires a major wing part replacement at like 15,000 hours. Only a few shops in the US are certified to do this work and the cost keeps getting higher. Hot section on a PT-6 is up to 100k. Landing legs have a life time and those part suppliers are charging a very pretty penny. Life on the fleet is probally 15-20 years. Cost for a used one in jump comfig is still about 900k-1 Mil.

King Air's are expensive since they have 2 PT6's. The airframe itself can be had for not much compared to other planes. Its when you add in the cost of the 2 turbines the price goes upwards of 600-750k. Life time on the KA fleet is probally 15-30 years. Insurance is going up since they are retractible gear and so many land gear up.

Casa's are about the newest thing in the skydiving fleet and they are still 20-25 years old. Parts have to be imported from Spain for the most part. Garret engines are cheaper, but I understand the maintence is higher then a P&W. Cost is 1.1 mil and up. It takes 2 pilots to fly one. Fleet life could probally reach another 30-50 years but its going to be a costly life time.

You've got your Cessna's. Can be had for under 100k, but limited passenger size is your limiter here.

Porters are on the way out here in the US. I know a few that are for sale currently since the cost to operate is too much to make money on. Taildragger, turbine, commercial licence needed jacks the insurance rate way too high for most DZ's to look at. Life on the fleet is probally 20 years max, but most will have left service before then.

About the only new thing availble to DZ's is the PAC750XL but its so new a lot of people don't want to be the guinea pigs for it.its got probally 60 years on its fleet life.


Airports are EXTREMELY limited. If you don't believe me try and approach an airport about opening a DZ. Most require stupid things that are literally impossible to get like a 1 Million dollar insurance policy that no one will write. A lot of DZ's are operating out of grass strips because there is not a paved airport that will let them fly and drop there. Some will let them take off, but they have to drop miles from the airport. Lots of DZ's have folded due to air accesss issues. SDC was about the only airport to open up recently that was designed for skydivers and is a jumper friendly paved runway, but that whole thing was more then a million to make.
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

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Honestly, the best thing out there that is set up the EXACT way you talked about is SWOOP!. But even as a swooper I was loosing attention at about the 1/2 way mark. Some of those guys I knew personally so I even was involved in the story and it still was loosing my attention. Getting people to show up at the WFFC to see the swoop comp put on in the evenings was like pulling teeth at a few points. The crowd of jumpers watching was less then 30, and half of them had their own cameras and were looking for carnage video.

The documentry on the building of Airspeed was interesting from a Team building and team dynmaics standpoint. They could have dropped the jump footage and it would have been near the same reaction.

You know why I watch poker on TV? Because I can see myself siting there and playing it. When they do the rounds they take away all the players cards and odds off the screen I get annoyed. I like knowing more then the people playing and seeing them either fail or succeed.
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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Honestly, the best thing out there that is set up the EXACT way you talked about is SWOOP!. But even as a swooper I was loosing attention at about the 1/2 way mark. Some of those guys I knew personally so I even was involved in the story and it still was loosing my attention. Getting people to show up at the WFFC to see the swoop comp put on in the evenings was like pulling teeth at a few points. The crowd of jumpers watching was less then 30, and half of them had their own cameras and were looking for carnage video.



I think you missed the point of my post. I'm saying that we don't need live spectators for skydiving to work as a spectator sport because the real future is in televised competitions. Like most of the competitions on ESPN 2, skydiving competitions wouldn't be aired live. Ideally, they'd be narrowed down to the exciting rounds, spiced up with color commentary, and edited into broadcasts just long enough to grab the attention of television viewers without boring them.


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The documentry on the building of Airspeed was interesting from a Team building and team dynmaics standpoint. They could have dropped the jump footage and it would have been near the same reaction.



As I said in an earlier post, I really don't think a reality TV approach is the best approach to take.

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You know why I watch poker on TV? Because I can see myself siting there and playing it. When they do the rounds they take away all the players cards and odds off the screen I get annoyed. I like knowing more then the people playing and seeing them either fail or succeed.



Sometimes people like to imagine themselves as the competitors in a sporting event, just as people like to imagine themselves as the characters in a movie, but that doesn't mean they have to actually aspire to compete in the event they're watching. And not everybody views every sport they watch with this attitude. My sister likes to watch football. She's 5' 4" tall and weighs 115 lbs. I don't think she's envisioning herself as a running back; she just enjoys good competition.
I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

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