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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."
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It was so blatantly obvious that this was going on, that I don't see how anyone who has seen the show recently could have thought otherwise.
MTV has no music and now G4/TTV has no tech. G4 is dropping the TTV half of the name and going solely to a "lifestyle" and gaming network. What a crying shame.
To the geeks here I say, "Boycott G4 and their sponsers. Write letters to the sponsers. Boycott their lame message boards. Spread the word far and wide."
The Screensavers message board is being ruled by mods who only recently became mods. I suspect that they're G4 fans and/or employees. They immediately lock any thread that criticizes the show and they'll ban you in a hearbeat if you persist. Don't even bother posting there.
The show looks like it's being run by some old fart who used to be in radio.
So I happened to turn on G4TechTVwhatever the other day, and I was appauled. "The Screen Savers" is little more than the old name on a new, much campier, much less useful show. I mean, I never liked everyone on TSS, but those idiots on the air now seem to be up on tech less than most Best Buy employees (no offense to any Best Buy employees on here, just needed a good, recognizable generalization of people who know little about tech but because they work for a tech giant fool the general public into buying whatever the advertisers want).
I think that's the most disappointing thing (see the parenthetical comment above): Leo and Patrick used to tell people not to buy this or that, seemed to be big fans of open source, security, etc. (of course in Leo's case it was a Mac-addiction, but that's ok), and even though they knew most of their audience was PC-based and had to cover them the most, tried to spread things out, give everyone a taste of everything, and if something sucked, would let everyone know about it. I remember them even going against IE before it was popular, and Paul Allen was their boss then. Now we just hear about the campy mainstream this thing is cool marketing drivel.
Ah, but those were the days. Let's hope this isn't a precedent. What's next, Slashdot brought to you by Dell...*shutters*
If there is no longer a channel that appeals to geeks, why not create one? I'm see a huge market potential for it. There'd be millions watching it. Probably all the real geeks from TechTV would fly over, giving the channel some talent.
Slashdot Channel anyone?
I really have a problem with how G4 claimes to have merged Techtv with G4 to make G4techTV.
I didn't have G4 here (Adelphia didn't carry it) But I had TechTV. In fact I remember when ZDNet owned it and it was called ZDTV. Frankly when it bacame TechTV it changed a little for the worst, but thats a different story.
Anyhow, A friend of mine, lived in OH and had Time Warner, Which had G4. Him and his roommate which were both avid gamers couldn't stand G4 but I decided to at least see what was on it and agreed with them in 3 hours that basicially all they would show was...
1) games running in demos against techno music
2) rehashed gaming related shows (GameproTV, Some old Arcade game show I cant remember the name of, ETC)
3) Other original shows that were either boring, stupid or both.
I'll admit. I wasn't a big fan of TechTV. I didn't like or watch The Screen Savers, Call for help seemed like I was watching my Job on TV, ETC, but generally I knew what was on it and I knew that what they were broadcasting was much better than anything on G4 and was helpful to the people that would watch their shows.
When G4 took it over, it almost immediatly went into the crapper. I never once considered it a Merger between TechTV and G4, more like G4 lost it's broadcast license and aquired TechTV's to stay on the air. Basicially TechTV became G4 almost overnight. All of it's garbage programming took the place of the decent TechTV lineup. The shows that TechTV did keep so that it didn't look like a complete takeover of G4 were butchered to the point that they were practially a G4 show, or cancelled to put on CinemaTech or some other Brain Dead Show of the day G4 could come up with.
Basicially, G4TechTV is a lesson in how to make a quasi-hostile takeover look like a merger.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!