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Comcast Signs Deal To Acquire TechTV
FPCat writes "Comcast has purchased TechTV. They plan to merge the station with G4. Maybe they'll stop showing Robot Wars and put some decent shows on instead. In either case, with Leo Laporte no longer hosting The Screen Savers, I expect big changes on the station..." (Of course, at this point they've only agreed to buy.)
Leo is still hosting, he hosted today
keanmarine.com
G4 has posted a FAQ on the merger.
is that Comcast HATES HATES HATES DirecTV. G4 has never been on DirecTV because of that. Philadelphia Phillies games are never shown on DirecTV (at least not ones with Phillies coverage) because of their hatred of satellite.
I really hope that it doesn't cause TechTV to disappear off DirecTV. I have about 6 shows with Season passes on my TiVo from TechTV. I'll be seriously pissed.
In fact, I'm already pissed. I like TechTV just the way it is.
Joe Siegler
Webmaster - 3D Realms & Black Sabbath Online
TechTV was started by Paul Allen...remember him...the Microsoft guy...so you Comcast/Microsoft conspiricy is flawed(dollar short/day late). TechTV despite Paul Allen consistently bashes Microsft products.
I don't even have cable, and I've seen TechTV a lot (by watching other people's DirectTV).
It's pretty good. The Screen Savers is a general technology talk show, and Yoshi makes a bunch of sweet cases (especially Mini-ITX). Call for Help is a good guide if you use something other than Windows and you get bombarded by requests to fix computers because "you're smart with computers". X-Play is a decent game review show. Robot Wars can be very fun (robot carnage is awesome - just watch an episode or two). Future Fighting Machines is good if you're a military nut. They've got all sorts of shows on the making of or the meaning of movies and shows - they recently had a big one on LOTR to coincide with the release of ROTK. They also have some other good shows, but most (including Robot Wars and FFM) are simply rebroadcasts of BBC shows.
My $0.02. TechTV is pretty decent, with "screensavers" possibly being the closest Slashdot will ever get to being on television. You can grab most of the highlights and show abstracts of the website and save yourself some cash. G4 ("the gamer's network" i guess) on the other hand is tolerable in doses, and are obviously still in the progress of building the brand up. They only run during the core hours of the day (infomercials latenights and early mornings), and re-run content in short intervals (less than a week in some cases) with no remorse. To their credit, they're pioneering a tv genre, so I have hopes that it'll get better in a few years. Merging the two seems unlikely, but combined they may wind up with enough quality programming to fill a whole day of scheduling.
Comcast Sports Net (the Baltimore-Washington-NoVa version, not the Philly version) is available on DirecTV. The crappy excuse for a channel called CN8 is not available on DirecTV, though.
Small cable cos are in no danger, as they generally don't share markets with Comcast.
Dish is in the dangerous position. DirecTV is harder to cut off, because if Comcast tries to cut DirecTV out, News Corp. will cut Comcast out of Fox News, Fox Sports Net, and network-owned affiliates. If Comcast in northern New Jersey, Connecticut, and Eastern Massachusetts loses Fox coverage of the Red Sox and Yankees in the ALCS while DirecTV buys ads in the various local newspapers saying, "You can't see the Red Sox square off against the Yankees on Comcast. Here are bars that subscribe to DirecTV that can show the games. Subscribers to Charter Cable, RCN, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and other television providers are not affected." Comcast would lose a million homes easily from this. Playing hardball with Rupert Murdoch has not, historically, been a winning proposition.
Dish, however, has no content portfolio to use against its competition as a bargaining chip. Conversely, there are content providers who have no distribution portfolio. This is why I'd expect to see, assuming the Disney deal goes through, GE (NBC) and Viacom (CBS) to buy Cox and Dish.
Two nights ago, I came home from work to find that my TechTV was no longer included in my programming. I called Comcast to see what was going on and they informed me that the 'Buisness Network' channels were now $5 more a month. This included TechTV, Bloomberg, and a few others. Of course, I told them to go ahead and charge me the $5. I was curious about the sudden billing change, but now I understand. A lot of money was probably spent on this, and I'm sure they wanted to see how many users jumped at the chance to have TechTV back before they annouced the buy.
No. TechTV has long-term deals with DirecTV, Dish Network, and nearly every cable operator (other than Comccast, interestingly) that would be mighty expensive to break. Any serious changes to TechTV will have to be signed-off by these players or there'd be the risk of a breach of contract lawsuit forming.
That, and to buy TechTV, and then take it away from its existing distribution structure would be like buying a $300 million dollar toy, playing with it for a day, and then throwing it in the trash. There's not much value in taking TechTV and then making it as weak as G4 is today...
Wrong. It was started by Ziff Davis. I actually had DirecTV and watched the launch. It was called ZDTV at the time. It was sold to Paul Allen and renamed TechTV
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
The shows I catch are:
The Screen Savers - some call in help, but mostly coverage of new computer technologies, product reviews, tips and advice on photoshop, cool tricks (liquid nitrogen ice cream). I have bits of a few of these recorded on the DVR, like the advice on which color printers produce works that don't fade after two years, or the bits on the fastest gaming laptops on the market.
X Play - Game reviews, done in a pretty good way. If you can catch it, watch the episode (on earlier this week) where they review some of the worst games they've played. (The episode called: "'LifeLine,' Shaquille O'Neal, and Games You Should Never Buy", which will reair this weekend.) I had to watch it twice, because their review of Big Rigs was SOOO funny. I hope they don't touch this show when they merge with the other gaming network.
Unscrewed - This one is a little stranger. They talk about the dark side of internet culture - discussion of porn sites, hacking tips, guys who speak Klingon, etc. Plus they show random video clips they find on the web. (This is where I first saw the badgerbadgerbadger clip before it was overused.) This content is NOT child safe.
Anime Unleashed - After midnight central, for an hour, they show dubbed japanese anime. Boogie Pop Phantom, the series they've shown for the last two weeks, is absolutely horrible. The one they showed before that was pretty good, though. It's been a good way to sample anime when I can't get to sleep.
Unfortunately, X Play is on at the same time as The Daily Show. Usually when John Stewart finishes his monologue and moves to the interview, I switch to TechTV and watch it until 1:00 when I go to bed.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
It's available free in the U.S. on Dish Network (channel 9400), many cable networks or direct from Ku-band satellite on Galaxy 10R (11.805GHz, Horizontal, 4580ksym/sec).
Straight from the lab to your living room.
I think ALL of slashdot is the 'short bus' version.