Travel Channel was aquired by Discovery a while ago. http://travel.discovery.com/ Since then the programing has been much less travel oriented. Discovery TV is owned by Cable TV companies like Cox, and Liberty Media. They do not wish to buy shows, they prefer to recycle their library of shows. It is all about money. The less they spend the more they keep. Tonight's primetime line up has a show about garages followed by two shows about vacation homes. These are very cheap to produce and are not time sensitive so can be aired for years to come, and will be.

As to the Poker angle. Poker is the fastest growing TV spectator sport in the world. You pay zero for the actors, zero for the sets, and sell lots of ad time.

I say turn off your TV and surf the web for travel info.

David