In just a few days, “Poker After Dark,” which previously featured a sponsorship from the now-defunct Full Tilt Poker, will return to the NBC Sports Network. As reported by Wicked Chops, episodes of “Poker After Dark” will begin airing nightly on Monday, March 5th. There has been conflicting information as to whether the first episodes will be unaired ones originally filmed in 2010 or traditional reruns.

As we said, the first episode is slated for Monday and according to Comcast cable, “Top professional players compete weekly in Las Vegas for a $120,000 first prize.” Mori Eskandani of “Poker After Dark’s” parent company, Poker PROductions, told PokerNews that the first week will likely be a $100,000 buy-in sit and go that featured John Juanda, Erick Lindgren, Phil Galfond, Huck Seed, Tom Dwan, and Phil Ivey. Priess indicated that unaired episodes would kick off coverage on the NBC Sports Network.

Eskandani added that the series would be void of poker sponsors: “The show is coming back without the sponsors, that’s one requirement they had. All we want to do is put our shows back on TV and I think it’s good for the industry, for sure.”

No logos will appear on the felt itself and when asked whether player patches would be blurred out, Eskandani explained, “No one sponsors the players except the players, so they’re pretty much standalones. If we talk about the show itself, any signage is gone.”

PocketFives caught up with Steve “Chops” Priess, who told us that if the initial run of shows performs well in the ratings, more episodes could be ordered: “If these shows perform well and get good ratings, it’s something that could happen again.” Who the sponsor of a new run of “Poker After Dark” episodes would be remains to be seen. Priess posted on Wicked Chops that previous episodes of “Poker After Dark,” which aired late night on NBC, typically posted ratings between 0.4 and 0.7.

Following Black Friday in the United States, shows like NBC’s “Poker After Dark” and GSN’s “High Stakes Poker” received the axe. Now, poker-related programming could cautiously be making its way back to the small screen. “NBC Sports probably needs programming to fill the hours,” Priess guessed. “This is a quick fix and they’ve been airing the NBC Heads-Up from last year, which is probably getting good ratings. I don’t think guys like Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson appear much in these because they weren’t involved as much as the show progressed.”

Priess added that NBC’s family of networks has historically been friendly to poker. Its flagship station aired the National Heads-Up Poker Championship each year until 2012, when the event was scrapped, while Versus showed programming that included one season of the Joe Sebok-led “Poker2Nite.” Priess observed, “Versus has already liked poker programming, so this is maybe a way to feature themselves as a go-to source for poker programming if the law changes.”

In other programming news reported by PokerNews, Eskandani estimated that there was a “90% chance” that the National Heads-Up Poker Championship returns next year: “All these shows are coming back. It’s just that things got murky out there and like I said, all of a sudden there were dark clouds up there. I know it’s still there and all of us are hoping it’ll go away. I’m confident, I have a lot of faith in our justice system, and I think things will get worked out.”

On the return of one poker franchise to television, a poster on TwoPlusTwo weighed in, “I would guess that there are a lot of folks who have not seen a lot of these episodes, besides the few unaired ones, so it’s a good deal for them for sure. For me, it would be kind of creepy knowing what was going to happen on Black Friday and how the images of some of these guys have changed. All in all a good thing, and maybe something new will be added eventually if stuff gets better in the USA.”

Stay tuned to PocketFives for the latest poker television news.