Thursday 29 April 2010

An idle question

My current project is painting up some Plains Wars US cavalry for a fellow gamer. Pics of the completed mounted troops can be found here, at A J's Wargames Table.

In between times, I was talking over TV and media with my wife, and got to wondering. With all the TV coverage of sports, hobbies and so on out there, why is there no dedicated TV wargaming channel? Surely with many thousands of gamers all over the country and beyond, there's room for such a channel. Thoughts? Opinions?

6 comments:

Capt Bill said...

What a great idea!!!

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

Well, very simply, and assuming such a channel existed, I'd rather be "doing" than "watching" with the little free time that's available.

Best Regards,

Stokes

justMike said...

Yep, I'm with Stokes. If there were a channel, I'd most certainly watch it, but there's almost no chance I'd get through a whole program before heading back to the painting table on on the computer to check out rules blogs. - Mike

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

I should have prefaced my earlier remark with a "sounds interesting, but. . .". It just seems like there is already enough competing for wargamers' limited time, attention, and fickle nature, plus a marked tendency to plan (i.e., purchase) more than can be realistically tackled in one lifetime, assuming reasonably balanced lives (significant other/family/work/competing interest). Throw in a TV channel devoted to the hobby, and even fewer of us would ever manage to paint even a small, balanced force for one period, much less get it into action on the gaming table. Just my additional two cents.

Best Regards,

Stokes

Die alte Aechzener said...

I'd far rather watch a good history channel report about a battle or campaign*, than watch other ppl wargame, which frankly can be pretty dull at times.

Besides, a wargames channel would be all GW all the time :)

*if I could ever find one that isnt written for bloodthirsty illiterates, anyway

A J said...

So, on the whole a thumbs down for the idea of a seperate wargames channel. The idea of wargames featuring on TV stems from the early Battleground series shown in the UK. Presented by Edward "Callan" Woodward, they used Peter Gilder's figures and terrain. Another attempt to show our hobby on TV came much later, in the 90's with a show whose title I forget. For some reason one of the advisors refused to let them film with proper figures and models. Instead, they used tacky plastic blocks to represent the units! Such a wasted opportunity. What was the guy thinking?

Would a TV program or a series now and then be nearer the mark? Or would it be better to air such things on YouTube, as more than one player and group have done?