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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.)
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
Did you read the link in the blurb? Oh yeah this is /. The link says that Leo wanted to leave, not that he was getting dumped.
However his blog doesn't say anything about this as far as I saw in my short viewing so I don't even know if the link in the blurb has it right.
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.
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...
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.
Leo is still hosting, he hosted today
This is his farewell tour as host of TSS. He'll host tonight, and four episodes next week. (Friday has been a scheduded rerun day for a while now.)
This actually is of Leo's own doing. He actually doesn't want to host TSS anymore, he'd rather be hosting Call For Help. His new work schedule, which starts the week after next, calls for him to only be at the studio two days a week, during which he'll record five episodes of Call For Help and contribute some segments to TSS. On the remaining three weekdays, he'll work from home preparing research for both his TechTV duties and also for his KFI radio show which he does live based out of a barn-turned-radio-studio on his own property.
So, this really is the end of a overbooked 7-day-workweek schedule he's been on for about the last six months. He's basically going into a semi-retirement, while also assuring that he'll still be employed even if he's no longer with TechTV.
G4 FAQ: Programming http://g4tv.com/techtvmerger/