Slashdot Mirror
Inside TechTV/G4
An anonymous reader writes "Former G4TechTV employee, Dan Huard, blows the whistle on G4. In the last half of his article, he states that TSS manufactured questions and used 'ringers' to ask their questions on the show."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
TechTV was aquired by Comcast's G4 Media and that's how the two networks got fused together to make G4TechTV.
It didn't go off the air.
Short version:
The Techtv properties and licences were bought
out by COMCAST to be merged with their G4 gaming
network. Both networks were to become one
digital cable channel after the merger.
Around the same time, the international broadcast rights expired for TechTV, and
for whatever reasons G4 did not renew them.
As G4TechTV emerged with a new game-oriented
focus, some cable affiliates either dropped the
network from thier lineup, or moved it into a
different category than previously held.
So, those are some reasons you may not be seeing
the channel in your local cable or sattelite
market.
TechTV started going downhill when they let go of Leo Laporte. I used to be a huge fan of The Screen Savers, and when he left it went down, then when Pat left, it went down more, then with the latest generation it's total crap. So I have cancelled my Comcast Digital Cable which is the only reason I had it... to watch The Screen Savers
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
Eventhough TSS is down the drain, G4 has degenerated into the Millie Vanilli of tech talk and Leo has long since departed; those of us in Los Angeles can catch Leo on KFI and avoid paying toll charges. It's one of the few redeeming characteristics of living in a cultural wasteland. You can check out Leo here (http://leoville.tv/radio/pmwiki.php)
I don't need no estinkin'
Jeepmeister
What next? Professional wrestling is scripted?
Pro wrestling is not generally scripted. The match finishes are set-up by "road agents," retired old wrestlers, on the basis that they are the hook which will keep the marks returning. Promos, the speeches wrestlers give, are sometimes scripted but this is avoided when possible as it usually comes off bad when performed live (wrestlers are not actors); usually the wrestlers are given bullet-points containing the essential issues the bookers (wrestling writers and planners) want advanced in that month's storyline.
For the most part, professional wrestling is improvised based on the structure of the match's finish as set up by road agents, and on the storyline points which are to be communicated. Within the framework established by the agents and bookers, the workers (wrestlers) are pretty much free to work spots (perform a sequence of moves) and create matches dynamically in accordance to the fluid reaction of the crowd. This is known in wrestling lingo as "psychology".
Professional wrestling has far more in common with olde improv comedy - or even, transcendentally, with pro-wrestling video games, than it does with a movie or any other modern 'scripted' analog.
PS - Most everything on TV is fraudulent to some degree, from the news to "reality" shows. Broadcast networks are run by Machiavellians. The bottom lines are ratings and brand-building; accuracy, honesty and integrity don't enter into it, except as they affect the bottom lines (i.e. PR).
"Fused" implied some aspects of TechTV survived.
I'd say a more accurate description of things would be:
Comcast was having trouble with their G4 network, which was not popular (especially not in their target market, where they were generally reviled) and was only available in a small number of areas due to a widespread lack of demand. So they bought TechTV-- which was available on far, far, far more cable networks than G4 due to the many years spent building up a reputation-- with the intent of simply replacing TechTV with G4 and thus getting all of TechTV's market penetration without having to work for it. So they bought TechTV, announced G4 and TechTV were "merging", gave TechTV's former screen personalities token jobs for a short period before firing them or driving them all off, and are currently settling into a situation where G4, in pretty much the exact form it was in before the merger, is now showing on those channels where TechTV was previously available.
G4's name does still have that vestigial "TechTV" appended to the end, but one recent G4 press release I saw referred to the network simply as "G4"; either this was a typo or that final superficial "TechTV" will be disappearing from the name before long.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
" TSS was steadily going downhill long before G4 got ahold of them. Once Leo Lapporte [leoville.com] it was all Patrick could do to stay afloat."
Leo left because his contract permitted him to do so. The others would have left, but theirs did not.
I'm fairly certain the comment was a self-deprecating one, and he was appreciative that she put up with him as he dealt with the huge learning curve that is Broadcast TV.
I like microcars
Every time I hear G4/TechTV I get depressed. They combined an awesome channel with a sucky one to get a semi-sucky one. They fired all the good people on TechTV (We miss Leo!), replaced them with G4 people that are obsessive Mac-hating gamers (the new guy on the Screen Savers dislike Macs and is an obsessive gamer. Nothing like Leo, who had some actual intelligence and gave GREAT tips), and completely ruined the shows. And they removed a lot of the good stuff (Call for Help for example) and rarely air some of the surviving good shows.
:'(
We miss Tech TV...
I agree! Invent This, XPlay, and Icons are the only shows i watch on G4 anymore. The first one is almost never shown if at all, and i rarely see an episode of Icons - much less a new one. Thanks GOD XPlay hasn't been changed. It's the only G4 show i watch on a regular basis.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
That's a dumb reason to think the article is bad. "Talent" is a standard term in TV to describe the person/people in front of the cameras. It is often used by the crew in an ironic way (though some talent are amazing - you try winging a 48 second pitch for something, have it make perfect sense, not be repetitive, and end at a logical place at exactly 47.5 seconds).
Step 1) Pick up the old TSS staff for peanuts
Step 2) Go back to the old formula: Interesting news, honest reviews, no shameless plugs
Step 3) Profit.
the Screen Savers were the only show on TV that would come close to taking about technology
Apparently nobody's turned you onto PBS, The History Channel, the Learning Channel, the Technology Channel, CNN Tech, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, even the Canadians have a tech channel now, and they don't even have electricity.
Here's a hint: The Daily Show had both more frequent and more in-depth coverage of actual technology news than TechTV or G4 had put together. Quake 6's phong shaded goraud mip-mapped quincunx staggered light/reflection mapping isn't tech news. (I write video games for a living, so kindly stuff the upcoming suggestion that I either dislike games or don't follow game developments with a trained eye.)
Sciencey things your science channel has missed in the last two years: Cloning animals, finalizing the human codon search, new fundamental particles, new states of matter, the stem cell debate, half a dozen governmental-level beliefs about what's going on with our environment, two near-misses from asteroids large enough to threaten the ecosphere, three potential global plagues, the closure of one of the clay institute math problems, two major developments in number theory, a polynomial time algorithm for determining primality, the development of silicon on insulator chip doping, a refactoring of the mechanisms believed to underlie gravity and the suggestion that gravity may be blocked by not one, not two, but three seperate mechanisms in three seperate sets of reproducible studies, the first application of an antiviral agent to humanity as developed by large-scale simulation, various public policy issues regarding monitoring especially but not solely after 9/11, the food shortage on the international space station, the development of transparent transistors, OLED, a solid year of functional transmissions from two seperate self-powered agents on Mars, the experimental suggestion of subatomic-scale selection mechanisms, a robot lab entering the orbit of one of the moons of saturn, rollable solar cells, the commercial development of space, the ESA's support for a space elevator, the first grown and functioning human heart, the Jetson promise of home utility robots, stem-cell based reversal of paralyzing spinal injury, the drop of the home machine fabricator beneath not just the $50k but also beneath the $10k mark, the introduction of the first three major space powers since the 1970s, and the first time Bush has ever come through on one of his grandiose research promises.
Sciencey things your science channel has covered: Zelda, the Segway, and just barely enough CPU theory to make the marketers sound honest.
I once loved watching the show but now I can't. The new hosts are all about gaming, gaming, gaming.
Five minutes of science spread out over three hours of rambling pseudo-news about games does not a science show make; if it did, then the first science channel you ever watched was probably either Nickelodeon (Mr. Wizard,) the Disney channel (half a dozen shows) or NBC (Beakman's World.)
Oh, it doesn't seem kosher to pull saturday morning kid's science shows? Then explain to me how those, which actually make the effort to teach physics, biology and chemistry, are less science show than a channel whose greatest vision of the cutting edge in research is attempting to predict whether the new XBox will use Rambus products.
Hint: the evening local news regularly has more science in one half-hour episode in every single city I've ever lived than G4 has all day.
Aw, don't like a channel about gaming? I'd mock you for whatever G4 stands for, since one of those words is gaming, except that they so coyly chose a name to confuse customers that I can't find anyone explaining what the hell it means between all the talk of cpus, fax specifications and complaints about how badly the channel sucks.
"I hate history, the people on the history channel don't talk about anything but history." Change the channel, dimwit.
+2, Interesting? Mod parent down.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Well remember people, Leo Laporte is NOT gone. He's up in canada. And I suggest you all get your bit torrent clients read and start downloading episodes which are located at http://derekrodgers.uni.cc/callforhelp/ server is having a little trouble lately tho but check us out in chat, maybe someone has the .torrents ...its really the only thing left of the old tech tv.
Just so it's clear, this is never something I would have countenanced when I was managing editor of The Screen Savers. And I know that my successor, Patrick Norton, would have brained anyone who suggested such a thing.
We did sometimes pre-book calls - and I do it now on the Canadian version of Call for Help - for production reasons. But I always hated even doing that. I never do it on my radio show. But far worse is using "actors" to ask canned questions. That's just plain lying.
Unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me.
Leo Laporte - Chief TWiT, TWiT.tv
I know there are a lot of people interested in what some of the former TechTV employees are doing now. Most of them have webpages but Patrick Norton does not. For those wondering Patrick is currently doing freelance writing. Recent articles have appeared on ExtremeTech, CNet and PC-World amongst others.
Again, Patrick does NOT have a website or blog but I do try to post links to articles he's writen on my blog as I run across them and as time allows.
And, in case you/some-other-reader didn't know (Maybe there was a slashdot article about it on the weekend and you skipped it?), archive.org has mpegs of all the episodes.
I haven't watched much G4 since the switch but the only show I liked and miss is Unscrewed with Martin Sargent (and co-host Laura Swisher [hi Laura! allow me to introduce myself...I'm #22537, and the only reason I'm on posting on slashdot at ten pm on a saturday night is cause I just got home after two days up in LA. no, really!]).