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G4 Drops TechTV Name
MrM writes "According to the latest press release from G4techTV, G4 will drop the TechTV name in mid-February 2005. This comes as a major step to the old TechTV viewers, as the focused content has become gaming-oriented once more. G4 also released a copy of their "redesigned" logo, but quickly pulled it off the web after release." The article also includes details of "two new series, "Formula D" and "Girls Gone Wired." Formula D appears to be coverage of Drift Racing (because obviously gamers love that), and unfortunately Girls Gone Wired appears to be exactly what you'd expect: Guys ogling video game characters in a beauty pageant.
"Nothing for you to see here, move along."
How appropriate...
I miss tech tv :( G4 is the devil.
Obviously G4 didn't learn anything when they lost most of their fan base. G4 buying Tech TV was the worst thing to happen in ages.
Now they are going further away from the right thing. Getting rid of more shows, and adding lame ones.
It's still my hope that the old TechTV crew will start their own network, that would be awesome. G4 has ruined everything they ever made me believe in (TechTV that is).
Not that this really suprises me teh whole network has gotten terrible. I guess just a guarantee they will never get my viewership back
Anyone have a cached copy of the new (lamer) logo?
Damn I hate comcast.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Oh my friggin god, you weren't kidding. It's really about a virtual beauty pageant! I was under some asinine impression that it'd be about women who are into technology.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Girls Gone Wired appears to be exactly what you'd expect: Guys ogling video game characters in a beauty pageant.
Will they also have a post-midnight "blue" airing of Custer's Revenge?
geez just yesterdat we were all talking about steriotype
The dumbing down of G4 starts.
Soon you'll have "Trading CPUs" where neighbours trade machines for a day and soup them up and "What Not to Warez" where a couple of leet kids go through your hard disk and erase downloaded software.
Trolling is a art,
G4 has been pretty horrible with some of its gaming stuff. I watched some of it yesterday and the only good thing was Xplay. The shows where they show people playing tournaments are lame. I could download a replay of really good players before watching that garbage. Question: Is there no longer a screen savers or fresh gear!? At least fresh gears would do well on another network. People love electronics.
I'd just like to take this time to give a final goodbye to my formerly beloved TechTV/ZDNet.
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
"The network also presented TCA critics with "Girls Gone Wired," a digital beauty pageant featuring the hottest 2D and 3D women on the planet"
Thats just sad...
I have noticed a distinct lack of quality and origionality ever since G4 got involved with Tech TV.
Didn't Douglas Adams predict that American television would eventually devolve into an image of a toilet flushing accompanied by a riotous laugh track? Is this better or worse?
Who watches this lame channel anyway? Please help infect my test machine at: 139.147.8.100 (unpatched WinXP and IIS)
This was a ploy by Comcast to get on satellite and on charter and Time Warner cable systems.
I have noticed (although have to admit I watch the channel maybe 15 minutes a week now) that Comcast is advertising.
Charter Communications has a large hub in my area and from what the "higher ups" have told me - they are quite angry.
I haven't understood why the former employees and show hosts don't ban together for a class action lawsuit for wrongful termination.
I also don't understand why us geeks (who don't want mindless gaming shows 24/7 and miss the older content) can't ban together and find an attorney that will sue Comcast for collusion and misrepresentation.
It's obvious (especially with this move) that Comcast had NO INTENTION to keep TechTv or any of it's content.
It's a shame Leo Laporte moved to TechTV in Canada!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
At least they can't tarnish the name "TechTV" anymore with G4 gamer-style, non-geek, oriented crap.
G4 taking over techtv was the worst thing to happen in cable tv since the lifetime channel. When g4 and techtv were seperate networks, techtv always beat out G4 in content and entertainment. With the merge, half of techtv's programming died, now I expect the rest to die with the name. WTG comcast!
Much more in detail about WHY there dropping the techtv name too, evedently people where actually calling them saying things like "You killed techtv, so why dont you drop the name" so there PR department said they should....
Uh huh... I drop the network when they dropped the ZDTV format.
How about /.TV? 24 hour news and information for nerds? Fellas?
Start a happiness pandemic
When Patrick wore his utilikilt and the network actually taught people about computers.
* "I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer." *
They are obviously trying to steal "back" the viewership from Spike TV. That whole Video Game Awards thing means war!
1. Merge with well respected company with original content.
2. Destroy all original content and replace with mindless crap.
3. Disassociate yourself with merged company.
4. Profit??
I really miss the Tech TV of old. I was very suprised to see what G4 did to the Screensavers and all the other programming on the network.
So what exactly was the point with merging with Tech TV in the first place? Was it just to gut it from within?
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
I was at a friend's house 7 or 8 years ago and was flipping through the channels when I saw this station dedicated to computers and computing. I was instantly enthralled, especially with the Screensavers with Leo and what's-her-name, the first co-host. Ok, so here is this smart, hot chick that knows computers. Wow. So, I went home and bought a directTV system so I could watch TechTv.
G4? Bleh.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
I think my days of watching G4/TechTV or whatever they call themselves has come to an end. GAME OVER!
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
now there will be no past linked to TechTV so nobody wonders why it sucks so hard now.
Just before G4 took it over techTV was getting pretty cool and the ScreenSavers was one (only) good tech shows on TV. It was getting to the point where there was some good content on the show.
Now it is just more G4 game glam BS.
The ScreenSavers website used to be a great site now just full of dumb content and even more adds
Thanks G4!!!!
"Our audience interacts with digital girls as much as real girls and we're tapping into that fantasy," ...ah 'fantasy'. Could be true then ;)
They have fantasy 'real girls'!
Does anybody even watch this channel? After I saw that emo chick's tits watching the actual programming became pointless.
G4/(TechTV or not) has about as much to do with actual geeks or gamers as the Outdoor Life Network (you know, because we never go outside, uh huh huh).
Besides, if they were real gamers they'd be too busy playing WoW to make television shows.
Game... blouses.
I stopped watching that program almost as quickly as G4 took over. TechTV was a great show, to bad they have driven it into the dirt.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Drifting is to motor racing as figure skating is to hockey. Any Initial D fan that thinks drifting is the fastest way to corner has never driven a car in competition.
The other show sounds like the NOPI Lifestyle for geeks. Maybe next they'll add wings and big tachs to their computers.
This is almost heart breaking. TechTV was like the last bastion of smart, quirky technology reporting mixing older and younger opinions and experiences. Now the only smart parts have been evicerated and the only things that are left are the craptacularly poorly produced G4 game shows. What a shame. Terrible terrible shame.
Have a Happy.
...will some other station buy XPlay so I can stop watching G4 altogether?
I think the most disturbing TV image ever created by man is the Shadow Watermelon Carrier crafted to advertise the "G-Spot" (that term alone tells you where the minds of the stations owners lie).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think this is a incremental step toward me never watching the channel again.
If you open your mind too wide, people will throw trash in it.
The channel has gone down the drain. I don't like the hosts on ScreenSavers at all and none of the other shows on there is good enough to keep my interest in this "specialty channel". While I still enjoy seeing Leo on Call For Help (it's available here in Canada), it's not enough for me to continue paying the subscription for this channel.
Sorry, this channel sucks now as it's entirely aimed at the gaming community now.
My wife and I once watched TechTV all of the time. There were a lot of great shows about technology and innovation that were worth watching. We've stopped watching as the shows have been dumbed down.
It's one thing to have a show about Video Games on a technology channel, it's another thing to have a channel about Video Games that has a sprinkling of technology.
I was hoping that Comcast would use their leverage to add even more quality programming. Now it looks like all they've done is buy battle bots and XPlay and destroy the rest.
This is a sad day in the world of technology. The reason I originally bought TechTV was because of its name. I hadn't heard too much about it, but when I found out that there was a channel called TechTV, I knew I had to have it.
But G4? What is that, a PPC box? Its shows suck too -- the only two show I'm left watching on the whole God forsaken channel now are the Screen Savers, and Call for Help, both of which were imported from TechTV.
Thanks a lot, G4. You've killed quality.
I tried to like it, I really did. But then, no one likes to watch someone else play a game. Sure, a game review might be nice once in a while but I'm not going to watch a television show for about 30 minutes where it's just a bunch of guys playing a game and not really saying anything of worth such as, "Suck it, punk b*tch!" to each other. Why watch them play a game when you could turn on your own machine and play.
At least with TechTV, they had decent shows like the ScreenSavers.
... to get their crappy programming into millions of more homes by 'buying' TechTV's slot in most Cable Companies lineup. I mean really, no one would give them a whole freaking channel otherwise. Any clown can see their current (not original TechTV shows) shows are total shit. /rant
Formula D is obviously capitalizing off of popular anime Initial D. The manga version of which is sold at Radio Shack next to the RC cars. So there's plenty of geek interest there.
As for Girls Gone Wired... that's just another example of how patheticly detached from reality our culture has become. It'll be boring though.
(Side note: In terms of which anime is appropriate for kids to watch and which aren't, Initial D is #1 on my list for teens not too watch. That last thing you need is for them to display "imitiative behavior" and illegally race cars down treacherous mountain roads.)
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Considering the fact that they banished Leo to the frozen north...changed the Screen Savers into an every day gamer program. A more appropriate name for them would be gamer tv. Shame that the Linux/Mac crowd has officially been castrated. If you really want to learn anything about tech now you have no choice but to listen to the MS run media.
Oh where oh where has Leo Laport gone.
I long for the days of the ZD branding when it the station wasn't just a recurring list of video game FMVs and ho hum reviews.
No, I'm not a gamer. How could you tell?
http://www.watacrackaz.com
TechTV (formerly ZDTV) was a great channel. The daily live news shows were similar in scope to slashdot at times (most of their news came directly from slashdot). The station had a few other gems as well. Big Thinkers interviewed some of the more accomplished and unique (intelligent) people influencing the world today. Body Hits, while not different from your standard TLC or discovery documentary (before Monster House and Trading Spaces), provided a more current look at biology the way a researcher might. This is valuable to a younger audience. Eye drops was a showcase of amateur digital artwork that easily rivaled commercial artwork seen in motion pictures. The most valuable aspect of this channel, perhaps, was the opportunity for kids to not feel like they have to hide their nerdiness from others while also providing ignorant adults insight into the 'magic' behind technology. It is sad to see you go TechTV. Especially to this garbage.
If Fresh Gear still lives I cannot find it. I agree that Fresh Gear was a show that lots of stations could easily fit in, as it had pretty widespread appeal... and the hosts of the show generally seemed to know what they were talking about.
I think there are enough good ideas for technical shows to hold a whole channel together, but I don't know if we'll see that again anytime soon. I wonder if G4 is dropping TechTV from the name is the term open for others to use? Probably not, they'll just sit on it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My, your polygons are looking good today.
Sigh. G4 has done no justice to the Tech TV moniker over the years, so it's probably best to dump it. Really seems like the content's getting 'dumbed down' in order to pull a bigger audience in. Which is fine. They are a TV show, after all.
G4 buying Tech TV was the worst thing to happen in ages. :(
Damn... I wish I lived in that universe.
I feel a great disturbance as if millions of televisions screamed and suddenly turned the channel.
Well it sucks this happened, but it was worse when G4 bought tech-tv in the first place. It's pretty much sucked since then.
X-Play is staying on the air though right?
Oh what a life without Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb's hilarious, yet brutal reviews.
Perhaps someone will start a new Tech-TV and us geeks will have a new home on TV.
Any Takers?
---- How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. -Shakespeare
I used to enjoy some of the shows on TechTV. Since the Comcast acquisition and the change to G4 and the shift of programming to more gaming-oriented shows, it's lost all appeal to me at all. Looks like it's time to remove it from the Favorites programming on my cablebox.
And so yet another great station finally bites the dust.....Tech TV was awsome and now G4-TechTV is for a lack of better words absolute SHIT.
"She's not even real!"
"But she's hot..."
"But SHE'S NOT REAL!!!"
Wow, you must be over 14 dude. In other words, outside of G4's demographic. ;-)
The big problem with G4's management is I think they rely too much on ONLINE demographic data such as the average age of game related message forum users, etc. Teens have the most time to waste and are the most fanatical, which makes them APPEAR to be the core demographic, but they're not.
There is a very very slim chance that you may one day bang Angelina Jolie. But you will never ever bang Lara Croft.
Still a big difference between fantasy real girls and fantasy fake girls.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Face it. Noone watched TechTV. It was a dismal failure.
The content was too watered down for a geek, I just couldn't sit and watch ScreenSavers since most of the info they'd give was pretty much remedial to me. (Coming up next! We'll show you how to change the background color of your desktop!)
As far as non-geeks who don't really care about Tech, well, why would they watch TechTV?
The only thing they had going for them was the anime, but then Cartoon Network beat them at their own game with the Adult Swim and Miguzi programming blocks.
For the record, G4 is even worse. I can't believe anyone watches that shit.
I swear they just create these bullshit cable channels so they (the cable co) can justify yearly rate hikes.
Hooray, now I get the Golf channel, two Black channels (BET and ONE), two Womens channels (Lifetime and WET), G4, the Food network, CMT. I'm not black and don't want to watch Good Times reruns, I'm not a woman, I don't cook or listen to country music.
I can't wait for real digital delivery to happen, I predict schemes where I just pay some fee per channel I want (a couple of bucks a month).
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Anybody who didn't see this coming is...well....dumb enough to watch G4.
TechTV is dead. Long live TechTV.
I used to watch TechTV a lot... before the G4 disaster. Leo's Call For Help, and Leo/Patrick on the ScreenSavers were my favorites and I rarely missed any shows. Sure it was partly because it was Leo, but it was more than that. I've watched ScreenSavers a few time since and it's not the same.
Completely ceasing all TV watching was the best thing I ever did. Although I do like drift racing, I doubt that show will be very good.
You know, since there isn't any TV or radio for nerds like us, you think we would have made some already? I mean, just have people create video and audio content in an open source fashion. Collect it and place it in categories. Then by using a combination of RSS and BitTorrent, which is an idea everyone and their mother is implementing, voila nerd tv and radio. When someone doesn't make software we like, we make it ourselves. But when someone doesn't make television we like we whine and complain. Lets make it ourselves!
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
...unfortunately Girls Gone Wired appears to be exactly what you'd expect: Guys ogling video game characters in a beauty pageant
Well that's super lame.
I had actually expected it would be a show about the rising use of video games, and personal electronics among women. Hopefuly with an emphasis on software/hardware that would be more appealing to a female audience (sims, iPod minis, Pink iPods/GBAs, new cell phone features, web cams, etc).
My wife would have loved a show like that.
...really. I stopped watching that channel a long time ago. The history channel has a lot better technology coverage than G4 does.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
..TV made for kids like our friend Bobby:After you beat the death star level, there should be a snow level, then a small speederbike level. They should make a Matrix game in the theme of Star Wars. So then you take out your sword and run up to a guy and go, "Chiiing!" And after you saw though his head, you fly inside your X-wing.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
Maybe it's just me, but the novelty of TechTV quickly wore off and it felt like I had not left work.
I have not watched TechTV for a long, long time for that reason alone.
TechTV... R.I.P.
I knew thee well, for Screensavers was a righteous show with actual substance. Farewell to all that had a great idea. Time to move on and stay with Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi channel, and Comedy.
But, alas, let's not for get Anime Unleashed!
TechTV was had some good stuff. I liked several of the shows. The Screen Savers was great, and I liked Inventions (or something like that) also. Once G4 took it over - it was all over. I no longer watch the channel. With any luck, Comcast will not include it in my lineup anymore either as I see no need to pay for it.
I was a hardcore TechTv fanatic. When G4 bought them, everything sucked. Even TSS started to suck. X-play got moved for hideously awful shows, and the hosts on half of these talk to the audience like they are moronic half-wits. Please, give us back our TechTv! Leo, Patrick, Adam, Morgan! We need more of these people!
The way I found out about TechTV was back when it was still ZDTV and this was from a 55 year old phone company tech. The guy was soon to be retired and just got a home-built PC from a coworker. In fiddling around with it he was told about ZDTV and soon became addicted to Screen Savers.
Now I've never really been to big into TechTV (I watch a little X-Play but when Morgan showed up... ugh) but the fact that it could reach a novice end user (one at an age where you "aren't supposed to be learning new things") impressed me. It keep him interested, made him excited about computers and technology, and informed him without either talking down nor over his head (something a lot of tech folks seem incapable of doing).
TV can be a strong informational medium: it can keep pretty current, it is pretty passive (unlike reading a book or trade mag), and provide multimedia interaction. That the one channel that was about exposing everybody to the latest ish has been replaced with juvenille porn is a shame. I'd almost prefer there to be a hardcore sex basic cable station. Then these other channels would have no reason to outscandalize each other for that 15-28 year old male demo. We might get something approaching substance.
Yeah: frogs, wings, bumps, asses a hoppin'.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Don't forget Dan Rather's new TV show on G4 after he leaves CBS. His first show is an expose on Bill Gates' monopolistic tendencies. He uses as evidence Microsoft Office 97 files which Gates filled out with incriminating information in 1977.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Is it just me, or is G4 not-so-secretly pretending to be Spike Network?
How about /.TV? 24 hour news and information for nerds? Fellas?
Imagine if there's a slashdot show with people calling in... we'll have people trolling "FIRST CALL!", "Props to the GNAA!", etc.
Thankfully, it's pretty hard to do a phone/audio rendition of the goatse.
Is this press release real? Sounds like some MBAs are trying to turn this channel into Nickelodeon for teenagers with ricer cars and a PS2 in the steering wheel instead of an airbag. I'm glad they at least are being straight about sucking, instead of pretending like they still have some TechTV life in them.
TechTV was an excellent product after the name change from ZDTV. The shows were great, albeit repeated often, but interesting.
Why can't someone try again with a similar format?
Though I'm convinced most of G4's acquisition of TechTV was for the sake of employing Morgan Webb's breasts to supply to the SpikeTV crowd - people were watching TechTV, finding it useful, and it appeared that they had no problems finding advertisers.
Leo LaPorte was great. Here's a guy who put up with any and every end user question, no matter how dumb - and he managed to help them understand without making fun of them. I know he was on two of the major shows and contributed largely to their success.
Further, the TechTV programming - though sometimes tacky, was never as lowbrow as the dreadful and boring G4 programming.
I'm surprised there's no DellTV or Microsoft WindowsVision (MSNBC excluded). I just don't understand why a format that's already worked well enough to be purchased couldn't be successful again.
comcast board meeting transcript (spring 2004):
TechTV guy: No, I think our game content is fine the way it is. Plus our rating have never been higher.
Comcast G4 guy: Fine, I didn't want to own your network anyway. I'll just go start my own network with my own shows, with black-jack, and hookers. Infact, forget the shows.
Bring Dvorak Back. Silicon Spin was AWESOME!
Time for a new "niche" network about Computers, Hardware, Software and live coverage from all conferences/expos.
Finally, an opportunity to get my knitting show aired. If anyone from G4 is reading this; it's a show about knitting... FOR GAMERS. The needles are sharp, and so is the humor. This is a match made in heaven. G4 CONTACT ME!!! I've got other shows too that'll be perfect for the gamers; including an English Lit project that... it's just a fit. I know it.
Guys ogling video game characters in a beauty page This has to be a joke.
A new release just indicated a new Reality show for G4, it actually sounds kind of interesting. It is based out of Redmond, Washington and follows a team of software engineers / managers around as they tackle the daunting task of operating system design. They say the title is based on a Robin Cook Novel. But for the life of me I can't figure out why they would base a tech show on , oh waitaminute....Virus, now I get it.
Just when i thought SpikeTV had gone as low as humanly possible when it comes to games, G4 is bringing out the backhoe to show us just how deep this pit really is.
Of course, if i happen to turn on G4 when "GGW" is on, i might watch it to see how bad it is.
*wink* *wink*
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
... the merger with Yahoo, creating G4Y! network.
/bev/null... need more beer
Geeks everywhere nod in agreement.
I was really hoping it would be Japanese college girls on spring break.
In the line-up of standard cable channels, real educational channels have been usurped by revenue-generating, reality tv. With the exception of the History channel, which to this day, still airs great material, every other channel has gone down this path.
TLC: WTF happened to that channel?
Discovery: Unless you have the extendend package, the only thing that airs anymore are these assinine motorcycle shows which have absolutely no relevance. In no way do these shows give any real insight into mechanics or building a motorcycle. Its all about the "reality" aspect.
TechTV is just another victim in the war for demographics. Like food companies, tv companies must find ways to make their shows appealing to the most people. The fact that our beloved channels have become little more than outlets for social drivel, product advertising, and limited information, shows only the state of the target demographic: mainstream viewers.
I never really cared for techtv, however, i thought the show was great for people that, although tech-oriented, did not have that great a footing in the area. It is a crying shame that the target demographic is so infantile and, well, stupid, that educational tv is being phased out to generate ad revenue.
I liked TechTV just like it was. These guys must be in cahoots with the people at FOX that cancelled Firefly, Futurama, and Family Guy. Farking Idiots. (I see an F pattern here)
What the crap did they get for thier purchase of TechTV? The title of a show (The Screensavers) and a bunch of alienated viewers. Big Whoop.
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
I watched tech tv in the early ZD days and it was ok, but I figured with the amount of people doing real technology IT stuff in the world there should be a channel on broadband with room for REAL serious tech stuff... Linux, *BSD, server load balancing, Cisco, VOIP.
I keep wondering if there's enough interest to fund programs like that in today's environment.
Would some IT tech companies sponsor a webcast site for independant reviews and coverage?
This ex-Vax geek turned Unix admin would love a real news show (kind of stuff from http://www.theregister.com, slashdot, http://www.theinquirer.net etc.
I used to watch TechTV for 6 hours at a time some days. They had high quality intelligent and unique programming. G4's shows are worse than some infomercials. I can barely sit through five minutes with out wondering if the hosts have lobotomies. Its should be obvious to everyone now that G4 was just gutting TechTV to get their wider distribution. The G4 management should be made to answer for their deceptive actions in a court of law.
In short, Damn G4 to hell! I'd rather watch the weather channel.
How about /.TV? 24 hour news and information for nerds?
... SLASHDOT TV.
.. but since when has prior art mattered?)
Coming soon
You heard it here first.
OK fine I'm lying. Don't sue me. If slashdot wants this idea they should pay me lots of money (and yeah I know it was the parent poster's idea
....was so bad I cant remember the name.
It was some guy and his magical computer where they do these weird REd vs. blue like skits with MMORPG avatars. It aired late night, and every joke fell flat. You almost felt sorry for the host.
It aired late at night when most kids have turned off the station. Didn't G4 originally have about 5 hours of original programming per day and just a ton of Pringles ads?
Come to think of it, I think Pringles was their only major sponsor.
I've been watching G4 since about when it started and TechTV from about that time too (it was around the time I got digital cable so I recieved all the pretty channels). G4 has gone from a mix of horrible shows and some pretty good shows, to a channel that tried to reinvent itself as "gangstah" but really just screwed up some more, and finally they acquired TechTV and lost almost all the good shows and turned the network into an MTV with a few videogames. The latest GPhoria awards are evidence: a bunch of photogenic, cheering fans who obviously have never touched a game console and a bunch of celebrity emcees who have played Madden and GTA and that's about it. The awards were more or less legitimate since it was the fans who voted on who won, but the whole presentation was a little heavy on the popular music and a little light on anything good. At all. I've stuck with G4 through thick and thin, but I think it's time to stop watching. I don't need a show about drifting when I don't own a single racing game or "Girls Gone Wired" when I have the internet. G4 doesn't want the true gamers as viewers; it wants the "Walks into Wal-Mart and buys a Madden game or something that looks cool when they get a paycheck" gamers. They're the majority, sure, but are they the ones who are going to spend their time watching a whole channel devoted to games? They have SpikeTV for their needs. I want to go to G4 for informed people talking about stuff that I want to hear, not rap music and drift racing and scantily clad polygons.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
My 4-year-old enjoys watching Monster Garage, and I must say that it's encouraged her to look at things in different ways. She gets to see other people tearing cars apart and building new "things" out of the pieces - so daddy's not so strange after all (daddy races with SCCA.)
While it's pandering to the "great unwashed masses," it's still better than Disney's "All Product Marketing, All The Time" Channel.
What this coffin needs is more nails.
Wow. There were about 4 channels that used to make me wish I had cable or some other TV service (yes, some of us still use an antenna...) so, make that three.
Can't say I've seen it, but according to the website, they might as well create a show called "reasons we suck" consisting, of course, of watching people play games. Maybe they could have one of the top five sexy 2D girls slide across the bottom of the screen... and if the 1986 version of princess peach isn't up there, I don't know what sort of crap gamers they took a vote from. =P
This sig left blank for page turns.
So now they've gone back to where they started. They were G4 before the merger, now they're G4 after the merger. The only difference (besides a couple of cast members they got from techtv) is that they are on DirecTv now. I wonder if that was what this was about all along. Maybe they simply wanted to get into TechTv's markets.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I understand why G4 bought techTV (expanded viewship), but why on earth are they replacing techTV's good shows? I can't imagine the crap they have on there now gets more viewers then Fresh Gear or the original Screen Savers.
If the girls in 'Girls Gone Wired' were intelligent, gave technical advice as well as being scantily clothed that would explain this.
Kanga: That's not a fish, that's a bird.
Pooh: Yes, but is it a starling or a mackeral?
Oh well, it's not like G4 was ever any good to begin with and TechTV should have had a "For Dummies" logo attched to it somewhere... Let's move on.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I used to watch Judgment Day for my video game reviews (beats forking money over to gamespot...) until I realized how boring and biased it can be. X-Play makes the whole "self-effacing sarcastic gamer culture game reviews" gimmick work without being as stupid as the other shows on G4 where the cast and writers clearly don't understand games.
What I'm wondering now is: When G4 folds and dies (which WILL happen, and this announcement only speeds the process) will X-Play be able to pack up and move to another channel, like Spike? Or are they directly funded by the channel rather than simply a company contracted to produce a show?
TechTv is dead. Long live TechTv.
But may G4 die the horrible death it deserves.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I see two main things.. a loss of it's #1 competitor and the name and shows. The name is now gone, the TechTV people are gone, and while some of the shows remain the content is mostly different. But at least with G4 I now know how many ways you can frag someone.
Some have implied that Tech Tv was just for geeks and most of the viewing public couldnt find it interesting. Well, I am one of those few who owe Tech TV quite a lot. I was completely computer impaired, but thanks to all those people on Call for Help and TSS, I was able to build my own computer. I could not have developed the interest without those shows. In the three years since I started watching Tech TV I not only built that first computer, but have hacked Xboxes, PS2s, built a dozen PCs, learned Windows, got an A+, Network+, set up a wireless hotspot in my neighborhood, and bult simple FTP and Web sites. I am now a regular at my local LUG "Linux users group" and will be continuing my education. I miss my Tech TV...
Are there even enough viewers to support this channel?
A graphic that is said to be the redesigned logo is on this thread in G4's "The Screen Savers" forum. I can understand why they'd pull that... it looks like a really bad 60's era logo/test pattern, right down to the blur.
does anyone know what this will mean for the Canadian version of the channel? as I recall a while ago they tried to appeal to have anime added to their programming and couldn't because they had applied as a news channel. I don't think the CRTC would allow them to continue on canadian cable as a all gaming channel since they are supposed to be a news channel.
Query Eye for the Oracle guy
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
To save this worthless POS channel. At least they droped the illusion of having anything to do with technology.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
this is sad. techtv used to be the sht with lots of knowledge. i am a hardcore gamer but to watch digital pagents is sick. g4tv is the stupidest channel of this year.
Are you watching the same show? Back when Adam did just 'Extended Play' it was a great game review show. But then they had to go add the hip morgan and change the name to 'x-play' and it got freaking stupid. My spending money went way up because I quit watching the lame ass version. Extended Play sold quite a few Nintendo and PC games I'd never have looked at without. It almost sold an x-box with that Mech game but lucky me it was sold out when I had the urge, and then the urge passed
I quit watching it well before the G4 debacle destroyed it.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Now they are going further away from the right thing. Getting rid of more shows, and adding lame ones.
/. article Inside TechTV all G4 wanted was to get their channel aired on more cable networks. They bought TechTV for the market penetration it had spent years acquiring it and for nothing else.
G4 never intended to carry the TechTV shows. As an astute commenter correctly predicted in response to the
If g4 is for gamers, why is it so lame? I understand techTV is dead and phased out and it is all about games, but the shows are still incredibly bad.
I haven't cought them all since I don't watch tv too often and I can only stomach G4 for so long at a time. But the review show is terrable. There is one guy who actually makes sense on it, but he keeps getting talked over by his annoying co-host who yells out things like "YEEE HAWWWWWW". I am sure he's told to act like a jack ass, but I want to hear about the game they are reviewing, not all the guys stupid comments and bad jokes.
Why don't they give gamers what they want? We don't want to watch some no names play video games against each other. They showed some people playing Call of Duty and SOCOM against each other. I don't know the games, so all I see are random people killing eachother at unknown points in an unknown map.
But they can fix this so easily. First off, go talk to the major "pro leagues" for gaming, go to the cpl, go over to korea, whatever, get the people actually out there winning money to play games, who you know are really good. Now, film them playing.
Except, for the big final games, give me the whole experience. I don't want a 30 second recap of watching someone die. I want to see the whole match, how he set up, where he moved. I want an announcer to point out to me the clever things he did to get where he is, and how he set that guy up for the kill. How close was he to dieing. So show me the whole game, not a meaningless string of people shooting each other.
So this pro show is great, because you can probably cover a match in 30 minutes, and there are lots of pros in lots of important matches in a variety of games. Call it "Pro MatchX" (X for extreeM!!!)
Next they need a show about teaching you to play games better. Take a multiplayer game, they hang around longer then singleplayer ones, so the show can get out while people are still playing the game. Then, get to showing me how to win pub servers. I didn't get what was going on in call of duty. So, pick a map, show me where I spawn in on a map, show me where to go for choke points. You can go one of these three routs to the other guys flags. When you run this rout, bad guys start appearing at these sections. The stairs here are a choke point. Show me these things, from start to finish. Show me where people camp. Show me great places to plant mines to trick people.
So there are two shows I'd watch. Ones that tell me how to get better at a multiplayer game, and run through some maps. Another showing me the worlds best playing games, with real coverage of the game and not just some joe schmoe at the point of the kill message. Create some suspence for the kills at liest and do it half a second before it happens.
I don't think these shows would be any more difficult to create then what they already have, and would make a lot better gamer television.
I got a new song idea for you.
I want my,
I want my,
I want my TechTV.
Or maybe he can save the channel with the help of Michael Richards.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
Honestly, at this point, dropping TechTV from the name of the network is the only humane thing to do at this point. G4/Comcast have utterly gutted the TechTV programming and talent and made only lame/half-hearted attempts to retain TechTV viewership. Gone are quality shows like "Big Thinkers," "Call for Help," and "Tech Live." But the network sticks with brain-dead fare like "Robot Wars," "Cheat," "Sweat," and "Filter." "The Screen Savers" is now a joke and the name of that show should be changed as well out of common decency and respect.
Since TechTV was the ONLY reason I got digital cable I dropped it after the G4 buy out. Now I have more time for my wife and kids and I'm saving a few bucks on my cable bill. Thank you G4! (not really).
The smartest man in the whole, wide world really don't know that much. - Mose Allison
I started watching TechTV a few years ago (somewhere in 2000-2002). I enjoyed the Screen Savers, which was the anchor serious tech show for me. I enjoyed Xplay and its previous incarnation (who was the red haired girl that used to be co-host, before it was Xplay?). Call For Help was a nice 'lite' show, marked by the occasional accidental posting of topless sidekick photos to the TechTV web site. I think I preferred Martin Sergeant when he was a segment on the Screen Savers.
What I was disappointed to see was the gradual replacement over the years of what felt like actual characters with more and more generic people I felt were there to be telegenic rather than knowledgeable. The gradual move from an eclectic bunch of geeks to G4's pablum has been a sad, sad thing to see happen.
I watched 4 or 5 shows on TechTV on a regular basis. When it became G4TechTV, I would flip by that channel when bored, then maybe stop for one show if it was a TechTV show. Refuse to watch the evil that is G4. I think now i'll have to actively avoid the channel all together.
Shame to see them go.
Man, Tech TV gas gone to Hell quick. i'm almost embarassed that i used to watch TSS, now that it's basicly been lobotomised...
and guys oogling videogame character chicks? that's just friggin retarded, they could always pull their heads out of their asses over there at G4 and give that wasted time slot to a show hosted by the old TSS hosts, you know, the ones who knew what they were talking about, those who could answer user calls without having them staged.
This makes a good companion pair to my dropping my viewing of that channel after the slaughter, I mean merger.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
If you no longer like something that used to appeal to you.. chances are you are either south of market or have left the target demographic. Get used to it my 20somethings for it will happen again in ways you can't even begin to imagine.
Speak truth to power.
Next on the hit list will be the last of the old ZDNet/TechTV shows.
Screensavers - a shadow of what it once was will disappear entirely. The only thing keeping X-Play on the air is the female member of the cast, if I read G4's tastes right. That leaves what? Nothing, I think (sorry if I missed a show).
This is a golden opportunity to start a *NEW* ZDNet TV network. First step is to get The Chris Pirillo Show on the network and work forward from there.
Maybe I haven't been looking very hard, but I wonder where the G4 enthusiasts are. I know a lot of former TechTV enthusiasts, but haven't heard anyone say "thank God G4 straightened the Screen Savers out." Or something to that effect.
Comcast has released a new channel line-up for 2005 which included a channel dedicated to technology related news and programming. Sources have released the name of the proposed new channel "TechTV"
Oh how much I agree. I'm not really a console gamer, but the casual entertaining way that he presented what was largely console games made for a very enjoyable watch, and when nothing better was on (most always) my wife and I would watch it. We can't stomach the new, hipper version.
A week or so back I commented on how much the show has gone downhill, and in return was scored -1 Flamebait for it -- apparently I offended the sensibilities of the sort of sad little nerd that thinks any "untouchable" girl is "H0t!". That Morgan is, and this is obviously subjective personal opinion, a paper-bagger, and she certainly wouldn't get attention in any food court across the land. Make her inaccessible, and thus a convenient substitute for real female companionship, and suddenly she's the hottest thing around to dungeon nerds across the land. Screensavers a couple of years back had a host who was entirely plain - she wasn't ugly but at a bar she'd be the cute girl's ugly friend - and she commented several times about how people need to stop sending proposals. Give me a break...
Having TechTV in the name was like having someone on life support, The network was brain dead. I am sad that it is gone but happy that it can now rest in peace.
Maybe the rumors are true and there will be a rebirth of the network or something like it.
Every time something good is bought or taken over and then turned into complete garbage it got 'g4'd' . I've been saying that ever since TSS moved to LA.
One thing that seems consistent, down to the new logo - they're not just going after gamers, but specifically console gamers. After all, Halo 2 made more than a Hollywood blockbuster, so there's tons of people just waiting to watch console game stuff, right? That's my bet - they'll keep dumbing it down (which is sad - Call4Help and TSS were, depending, already fairly dumbed down) further, so the 15-year-olds with a PS2 can be happy. That's where the money is.
I wonder if I can call Charter and ask that they drop G4 and put on something else instead?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Gee imagine that... now the channel will still suck.
Corporate Exec 1: "We're doing horrible! This other network is doing well."
Corporate Exec 2: "Lets buy them and then get rid of all of their programs."
Corporate Exec 1: "Then continue to use our same format."
Both: " Brilliant! "
That same girl co-hosted Extended Play for a while too...(or was it still Gamespot TV back then? Wow...)
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
If you want technology, look no further than the University of Washington TV, available via Satellite and Streaming Video on their website. It features lectures and presentations from actual classrooms at UW. I've been watching this channel for a couple of months now, and it's so much better than TechTV, or G4.
I got digital cable just for BBC America, MTV2 and TechTV. However, everything on BBCA eventually ends up on DVD, MTV2 is getting as bad as MTV - what happened to the slogan "It's where the music's at" - by becoming the wasteland for MTV's reruns, and TechTV became G4TechTV and dropped all of it's good programming.
The Screen Savers was a great show when it had Leo, Patrick, and Alex A. Now it has craptacular Kevin Pierra(?) and Chi-Lan "love you longtime" Li. Neither know what a computer is or for that matter what show they are on. TSS now has the feel of Home Shopping Network.
Oh well Comcast loses my extra $19/month. If only my apartment complex had a place for me to mount a dish...
Kate Botello
Took me a while to remember.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
After hearing stories of how G4 treats their staff, both on air and off I really don't want to give them any of my money. Wasn't the reason they bought TechTV because they wanted a bigger audience? And now they are returning to their previous format? Does this make sense to anyone? Sounds like poor decision making somewhere in the chain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_racing
Yeah, forget the tsunami: Several of my favorite shows have been cancelled or changed!
Funny (maybe), but not insightful: I think it's implied that the original poster was using 'worst thing that happened in ages' in a limited domain. It's not like just because something really bad happens, we immediately stop considering other, lesser bad things that might be happening - although many governments would like you to (I'm thinking War on Terror vs civil liberties here.)
I want to state publicly, that this is FAR, FAR BELOW my lowest expectations. And I thought they were low already. Now I can appear in a public nerd forum and state "I've never watched TechTV or G4 TechTV" without losing my geek license.
What G4 TechTV did was very bad marketing. Their ratings were poor, they were a constant mockery amongst the tech-savvy, and all they did was waste money. TechTV on the other hand was doing quite well. What G4 should of done was keep TechTV the same, and gradually reduce their own programming to one or two shows that seem to have good ratings, add that to TechTV, and THEN eliminate their own channel. But no, they just sat down and said "You know, they really have the viewership that we always wanted, so now our programs can be heard..."
Ah, marketing departments, is there anything you don't think you can do?
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
From the release: ...programming that covers every aspect of the video game culture - games, gear, gadgets and girls
A little sexist, I think.
Sexist Baby Clothes: http://www.diaperdevil.com/
here is the logo
http://mrmiscellanious.no-ip.org:82/newg4logo.jpg
I used to watch TechTV now and then. Not a lot, since it wasn't very balanced as far as OSes go, but once in a while.
I never really watched G4, just once or twice to see what it ws about. Yawn.
When G4 bought them, I watched a little to see what would happen.
I now no longer watch G4 at all.
Rest in Peace, TechTV. It was a great concept, and hopefully someday, somebody will see clear to ressurect it or create their own computer tech channel.
"Phoenix-Tech" anyone ?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
MTV was successful in working its way into homes with a campaign to get people to call in and demand it be added to the cable roster. G4 weaseled its way in by buying a superior channel out, gutting it, then returning itself to the same form that neither the cable companies OR the viewers wanted/asked for. So is it possible to pull a reverse MTV? What if we started a campaign here to call in to our cable companies and demand en masse that they remove this crap channel nobody wanted?
Well, it is official.
What was once a pretty cool cable channel aimed towards entertaining some geeks, myself included, is about to be dead.
I had a feeling Comcast/G4's purchase of TechTV was for nothing more than to get G4 into more homes, and that they didn't give a (Frank) about the TechTV brand, or anything they had done. And, it looks like Comcast got what they wanted and I was right.
I can't stand all the gaming content they show now. I don't want to watch people play video games, I want to play video games. I can handle watching clips and news shows about the games and such because that has some sort of interesting and informational value to it, but most of the shows on the network are just plain bad.
Oh, but now they are coming up with sure-fire winning show ideas such as centering a show around racing and guys drooling over women-in-video-games.
Ugh, forget them...
I think I'll just block them off my TV like I've done with MTV, Fox News and a few other channels...
You forgot the late-night tech infomercials:
"Unemployed? Living in your parents basement? Find out how I made my first million rating digital beauties online..."
I was going to tell Comcast to drop dead, but clearly they're trying to commit commercial suicide and don't need my encouragement.
We must all understand that this is a great move on G4's behalf. Death will come sooner for this piece of cow dung of a channel now as it moves farther away. Drop any mention of what made it a good channel and move even closer to something than only 12 year old boys with an allowance and xbox watch, lame game reviews and mainstream anime. Trust me, I'll never watch that channel again...even though TechTV was a mixed bag, I could at least learn something I didn't know before sometimes. This only opens the door for a new channel with programming for our audience to come along (please). Bad business ideas, especially when they ruin good ones, should be punished with failure. I hope somebody starts a movement to ban or cancel G4 from their providers and disuade advertisers. Count me in! Is there a website yet?...www.g4sucks.com, www.g4boycott.com, etc. with a list of execs and advertisers?
I am clueless on sports, and when I watch ESPN I feel even more clueless. The deluge of statistics, rules, various sports overwhelms me. Yet, how many ESPN channels are there? Like 20, each more categorically detailed than its parent channel? ESPN is unarguably difficult to "get" into. If you don't know sports, ESPN is a morass of numbers and names and terms you know nothing about.
Kind of like video games and computing. Video games and computing on TV have more in common with TV sports than any other form of entertainment. There is something of a learning curve for video games and computing, and like sports they have generally appealed to a specific demographic. But what G4 is doing is the exact opposite of ESPN. They're trying to be more mainstream, instead of appealing to the niche like ESPN does. The fact is that ESPN makes the niche look so cool, and they do it so well, that the niche becomes mainstream. G4 is trying to be mainstream without appealing to the specific demographic of people who love - really love - video games and technology.
I guess one could ask why the hell they're parading "the best of 2D and 3D girls" if they're trying to go mainstream. But it's like the kid in high school wearing the Walmart Wranglers jeans and knockoff brand jacket trying to fit into the cool clique. It's obvious that G4 is trying too hard. X-Play is the only thing they have going for them. Adam and Morgan* appeal to the niche, but at the same time they do it so well that it becomes cool. Friends who have no love of video games love to watch X-Play.
G4 should be modeling ESPN, not Fox. The channel should cater to the people who love video games and technology, not shun them by canceling their favorite shows.
* Ok, plus, Morgan is hot. But what she is not is a "2D or 3D girl." How lame.
"Our audience interacts with digital girls as much as real girls" Not playing with a full deck would be my guess
So they paid 300 million dallors to acquire TechTV just so they could drop the name and the shows? This makes no sense. Sounds like the work of a corporate suit with some fancy schmancy Point Point sales/ratings projects in his arsenal.
The main story said there was a new logo posted, but then it was taken down. Anyone save a copy of it?
Joe Siegler
Webmaster - 3D Realms & Black Sabbath Online
Yet another great decision from G4. Of course we probably shouldn't be surprised since their original business plan could be summarized as "TV for people who don't watch TV".
Doorknobs.
Read my blog.
commented Laura Civiello, Vice President of Acquisitions and Development for G4. "'Girls Gone Wired' is the first pageant of its kind on television with contestants competing for titles like "Hottest Newcomer," "Sexiest Voice" and "Most Likely to Kick Enemy Ass."
Perhaps the saddest PR I've ever read. Laura realy has a kickass job, hope it pays well.
I wonder how long it takes Apple to sue G4?
Why do they keep switching hosts every week? I think the only one left that was there 2 months ago is Sarah (rrowl!)
G4 is rapidly going down the toilet. At least that will give me one less reason to pay for digital cable.
I still like XPlay though.
Step 1: "merge" with competing technology channel that has more viewers than you
Step 2: Slowly shift the programming towards your original content
Step 3: Take their name off of yours
Step 4: Laugh maniacally as you splash puddles onto the original TechTV staff with your Lamboghini, blowing your nose into a thousand-dollar bill.
68.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
C'mon, what country do you think this is?? You think the good 'ole U.S of A. was going to just sit back and allow useful television programming to fill the airwaves?? Oh no!!
It seems today's motto in network television is "the more ass the better", so why waste time with the stupid tech theme? I say G4 should just dump shows like The Screen Savers and create a new reality show called "Who Wants To Marry a Database Developer". And whatever you do, make sure some talentless, silicon infested, hot blonde is typing on the keyboard. This helps to keep the ratings up.
So how long do you think Kevin and Sarah have before they are fired?
Live web cams
G4 and Comcast are such bastages First they screw over TechTV and it's fans by dropping good shows, then screw up the formats of the shows they do keep, then just before Thanksgiving of Nov. 2004 they fire a ton of people mostly from what is left over from the original TechTV crew which also kills off more TechTV shows. Now they are screwing over Martin Sargent and Unscrewed by stealing the idea and name of "Girls Gone Wired". Originally "Girls Gone Wired" (for those that didn't watch the show) was showing pics of hot girls that have their own web sites. Even if the pics showed nudity, in the TechTV days they would just blur out the good bits. Plus they would link to the sites, but if they were adult they would put up their own warning page. After G4 got their dirty mitts onto the controls, not only could they not show the pics that just needed the blur but they also couldn't link to any of the sites. I don't think they were too thrilled with the Search Sperts with the cam girls taking off their clothes. Joey "The Intern" once wrote on his block that MS is rumored to buy back TechTV and restore it to it's original glory. But seeing how things are going, and being a pessimist that I am, I'm not going to hold my breath that it'll happen, let along that it'll work out very well.
The whole G4 thing reminds me of the simpsons episode where the comic book guy said "worst episode ever!" (which was also the title of the Simpsons episode)
How about a show where at the end of each episode you are given a binary number (0 or 1). After months of watching you collect the numbers to form an ASCII string. The first caller to call in with the string receives a free pass to change the channel because the network sucks!!
Whats the big news? Wasn't it already all G4? Its just a name change to show the true intentions of Comcast. I'm glad they're not going to drag TechTv's name through the mud anymore with "What Games Celebrities Play" and "New Games Coming In 1998". TechTv forever!
mount
Should of went with the name....It is too painful to watch something syndicated by idiots...seriously how many times is the dood going to keep hitting on the robotic voice that play ever crack for him and his joystick....
Watching Judgement Day is like watching the 2 Stooges screaming at each other. "HAY THIS RPG HAS TOO MUCH TEXT I HATE TEXT!! LOL NINTENDO IS FOR KIDDIES BUY XBOX LOL OLLOLOL" or "THIS GAEM HAS LOTS OF BREASTS AND I LIEK IT A LOT!! 8.7 OUT OF 10!!!! BUY IT!!"
I mean, c'mon .. Get those bozos off the air already.
When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.
Fuck you comcast! i hope you get cancer and die!
For a moment there I had hopes that "Girls Gone Wired" was actually just "Girls Gone Wild", except filmed in some asian country.
(if this quip made you chuckle, visit engrish.com)
I'd rather play a good game of UT2004 or Halo2.
And I'm so glad to hear it.
Apologies if I've offended you, but the honest truth is that while the number of female gamers/geeks is climbing at an alarming rate, this growth is not happening in the "male domintated" areas.
I fully support anyone, of any gender, playing the video games, or pursuing the career of their choice. However, I more support a simple increase in the number of women who use technology on a day to day basis - for whatever reason at all. The more women that are using technology, the more it will feel comfortable to them, and the more that it will be considered acceptable as a career option for their daughters, and themselves.
And the more girls that get into technology today, for whatever reason, the more women there will be in this field in the future.
What is motivating the market today are the types of things that I mentioned in my earlier post. Pink iPods, pink game boys, Barbies Seaside Adventure (and other such GBA games), the Sims, cell phones (again, sadly the pink ones), digital cameras, PDAs, home decorating software, scraobooking software, entry level computers so that people can stay connected with their loved ones.
Five years ago, none of this stuff was around, and most of the females that I encountered thought that electronics, games and computers were stupid boy things.
That has changed SO much through the advent of 'girly' technology. While I would love it if the number of ladies purchasing Doom 3, and Halflife 2 was similar to the number of guys. But its not a reality. So instead of trying to push ladies into playing games that they do not enjoy, I'd sooner welcome them into a world where technology is viewed as welcome change, and an integral part of their lives.
I had always wondered why G4 bought TechTV and started putting game shows all over the place. We have Call For Help in Canada but that is the only show worth watching. We do not get most of the regular G4 content as it conflicts with established Canadian channels. Outside of Call For Help there are 5 other programs that are played in a loop 24/7.
G4 made TV programs about videogames. However, we all knew well that they'd pull whatever relevant video-gaming aspects they could from techtv, and assess whether they made sense from their programming standpoint. Why wouldn't they? They were looking primarily for cable and satellite distribution, which we had, but sure as rain they were also hard up for creative (shows and website ideas).
This new drifting show is a perfect example of that, since Tech Live did a few stories on the phenomenon and it quickly became clear that this whole culture around the "sport" might be worthy of following more closely. The other 2D/3D beauty pageant is obvious eye candy that TechTV even latched on to, back in the day. Anyone remember Unscrewed? If you ever visited the show's website, you would've see the hugely popular "Girls Gone Wired" section (gee, I wonder where they got the name for the show?) - basically models and porn stars who built their own websites.
Anyway, every time I see a post on /. that's nostalgic for the old days of TechTV makes me laugh. Get over it people, the network is gone, and isn't coming back. Tech on TV never really worked. Yeah, we were getting more and more viewers and visitors to our website, but come on. An entire network dedicated to it was really a dream, or perhaps ahead of its time. Paul Allen may not have been the best dad for us, but he was no dummy either. He got rid of it for all the right reasons.
Yeah, it's too bad for the fans and employees who poured their hearts into watching the shows and creating them. But, y'all will move on. Anyway, one thing technology and the tech industry should teach everyone, is that there's always a next big thing (and the grass is often greener elsewhere).
Icons.
Fine, G4 has bought TechTV, gutted it for the valuable parts, and now has thrown the carcass to the curb. We are now missing a computer/technology channel.
I suggest Slashdot TV or some other new channel! Slashdot offers a wide variety of computing and technology content. All that needs to be done now is just start a channel! I know it wouldn't be easy or cheap but damnit, we need this!
Slashdot TV: We don't cast Coms here.
- Danny
I'm stunned...knock me down with a feather :|
(Next year it will be all used car salesmen TV)
I'm in the UK, so I have never seen TechTV. However, it seems we have lost a record of computing culture. There are dozens of sites dedicated to the preservation of computing magazines, but no one has considered the importance of TV coverage. What happens to these TV series after they are taken off the air? Unless it is speculated in the original contract, they are never reshown and sit in a TV archive gathering dust. I wish production companies would make older shows available on the web. The cost of streaming/downloading 100Mb+ videos and legal implications make it a risky proposition, but I believe there is a market. As a fan of retro nut I would gladly pay for DVDs containing old episodes of Micro Live, Gamesmaster, Bad Influence, Bits or any of the other shows shown in the UK. Tutorials, such as those shown on TechTV, have a wider use for people trying to learn a new application. It may even create a demand for the show to resurrected a few years later.
In the absence of official support I would hope fans would make an effort. P2P networks are a possible option, but most people seem to prefer the latest episode of Enterprise to a Photoshop tutorial.
You have a very good point there. I had not thought of it that way, but you are right - the G4 people seem not to have enough talent to have made it.
Perhaps it's really a coded message for help from a former TechTV staffer still working there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First I hear that 99.1 HFS in Washington D.C. changed over to a Mexican Radio station today. And now officialy Tech TV is dead. The world is coming to an end, haha. But seriously this really sucks. Screen Savers died when they got those two new hosts that suck and just talk about games all the time now. Now they are getting a show called Formual D (rip off of Initial D). Don't even get me started on this. I am a huge auto sport fan, and race my cars myself (not drag strips, real races). I respect what japanese drivers do drifting down mountain sides like in initial d, its not the fastest way to drive, but takes a lot of skill. And here in America they not only turned initial d into a horrible Fast and the Furious show with the edited/cut Dubbed (english language) version. But also in real life all americans do is drift around in circles on a big open concrete parking lot. Its like all americans do is drive fast in a straight line (fast and the furious) or go in circles (nascar). America is just sad when it comes to autosports.
It's a shame that this popular niche television programming has been put through the wringer like it has. With the core TechTV shows nearly gone, the channel has nothing left to offer. After all, the staple of G4 is their gaming shows, and they are of the lowest possible quality. There is stuff on Lifetime that is more interesting than the highest quality G4 gaming show.
_Kevin
_Desmond
the TechTV people never knew what was going on. I've been watching them a while. I think Yoshi is the only guy who can do anything decent. At least they got rid of that annoying little dork dude that was on there a few years back.
I welcome G4. They have some decent shows about games. Drop that lame shit like the screen savers. Tech Live was utter crap. Who cares about random stupid ass gadgets for assholes who want to waste their money and an addiction to fads. This isn't Japan we're supposed to be smarter than that (yea right).
Bring on the games, bring on the stories, bring on the interactivity. Screw the rest.
I noticed as soon as G4 bought TechTV, suddenly I saw at least one show or segment about drift racing EVERY DAY.
Now drift racing is getting its own show.
And I never hear a word about drift racing on any other TV channel, ever.
I wonder how much of this might be the whim of some trust-fund kid who's got a garage full of riced-out Hondas and some influential position in the network.
when the buyout of TechTV happened. Pity, though - TechTV, like its predecessor ZDTV, was one of the few channels where a technophile like me could feel at home.
Admittedly, the quality of the content was heading downhill as the different personalities left over time (Jim Louderback, John Dvorak, Kate Botello, and Sumi Das all spring immediately to mind). Some of the newer offerings did nothing for me (Unscrewed, Battlebots (or whatever it's called), Body Hits, etc.). The channel was definitely losing steam even before the G4 buyout.
Still, what has been announced today was exactly what folks predicted when the buyout was announced. The smaller network has bought the bigger one, junked the content of the bigger network, run off their talent pool, and we're left with the same old junk that G4 ran - just more folks are able to be subjected to it.
The thing that G4's management has not (apparently) figured out is that TechTV was bigger for a reason - their content was better than G4's!
Personally, I'd like the above listed schedule; just move Alton Brown to a more prominent spot than 11AM.
Hey, what dont we just produce our own show and stream it over the internet? (This is not intended to be a joke. For a couple thousand bucks It would be possible for anyone to start their own little call-in show online. Unfortunatly there is the problem of having enough bandwidth for thousands of viewers (wich can be handled with a peer-to-peer video streaming solution) Getting lots of viewers (slashdot announcement) and getting money to pay for it (OK this im at a loss for. Someone else will need to figure out this step before profit, but if theres someone whos willing to donate for this, or a lot who are willing to donate a little it should be feasable))
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
MOD UP!!!!
The cancer statement is awesome!
These people that they have on the shows don't even know anything about games let alone tech. All they do is pimp games that are movie or tv tie-ins.
Well maybe if they have drifting i'll have to watch it. Other then that g4 really has only 1 or 2 good shows. I watch x-play and arena once and a while.
Listen to Leo Laporte's CES podcast. Leo and Kevin announce a Grand Alliance of former TechTV cast and friends to make genuine OldSchool TechTV-type content. http://www.leoville.com/blog/ LONG LIVE THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Correction, it was at the MacWorld conf..
It was great when G4 showed it when they were a standalone channel. Will G4 ever play it again? They can add it somewhere within the Cheat, Judgement Day, Cinematech, ad nauseum rotation.
G4 had to keep the techtv name and half of the original TechTV lineup to prevent cable providers from dropping their existing contracts with TechTV. Now that G4 has renegotiated their distribution contracts with cable providers they can drop the techtv name and all of it's programming. Mission accomplished.
There is a Cnet interview with G4's CEO from before the merger where Cnet asks Hirshhorn why they would launch a technology related channel when ZDTV/TechTV has struggled so much over the years and Hirshhorns response is that G4 had nothing to do with technology and that Technology was more of a science and business based subject and G4 would never be like that. Well about a year and a half after that interview G4 purchased TechTV and killed off the network. It's so freaking sad. I wish they could have sucked the life out of some other channel that I did not watch. If they wanted to kill another channel to get more distribution for G4 why couldn't they have killed Women's Entertainment or some crap channel that I don't ever watch?
As a former TechTV employee, I'm glad they are removing the name. It really brought down what I remembered about TTV. As others have noted, the purchase of TTV was all about the distribution rights. G4 wasn't that serious about the web content. At first they only wanted the last few months. We had to convince them to take it all. I still get stories from TTV-ers on the inside about how terrible it is there. Plus the Wil Wheaton expose...
And if any former TTV employees want to start it all up again, I'm still unemployed...and I still have the CVS repository on my computer.
They should change their name to PoserTV.
vomit
cuz it's done. i sat through a few hours of g4 programming yesterday. it sucks.
Serenity now, insanity later.
Maybe they'll go out of business or something. I can always hope. Their programming is filled with poorly executed, uniformative drivel most of the time. TechTV, on the other hand, while still suffering from growing pains, actually contained information that I gave a crap about.
The last nail in the coffin, it seems.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
G4 buying techtv was just bad - they trashed that station - I took it off of my tv station list - It is just crap - It was kind of neat having a tech tv - I looked forward to seeing leo and patrick every night when I could - but now it is nothing but gaming - it sucks, it sucks, it sucks, it sucks. yes gaming should of been part of the station but not ALL of it. what the hell is g4 thinking - I am in the age group they are trying to get and I don't want any part of their crap. I barely have time for my personal life much less fricken gaming why the hell do I want to watch a station about pc gaming. g4 - please sell techtv and let it go back to what it was - a informative useful station. not the crap you are showing.
Logo:
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Yes, Extended Play with just Adam was a much better show than XPlay; it got more reviews done in the same half hour because it wasn't wasting time on stupid banter.
HOWEVER even the dumbed down XPlay was superior to any of the garbage that originated on G4, with a few honorable exceptions like Icons, which was a series of documentaries on the history of video games that gave the distinct impression that it was produced by literate adults and not juvenile amateurs, which is the distinct reek one gets a whiff of when watching most of the other G4 produced content - moronic lowest common denominator crap.
Have a live show where paople join a public (private, whatever) multiplayer server and have a play by play of the shots. IE. a halo2 server where people join up, and then have live coverage of the gibbing. Talk about completely interactive TV. =)
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Along with Discovery Channel and TLC; wtf happened to the Travel Channel? All Vegas, All The Time? And what's with the poker shows? I never thought anything could be more boring than watching golf on tv but, damn!, I was wrong.
PBS still draws me back, over and over. Too bad it runs commercials now.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
g4 is full of the biggest tryhard hacks on tv... using forced lingo and cheesy production
The whole name should be changed. I agree that TechTV should be dropped because the shows that are left from that channel has nothing to do with technology now. Leo and Patrick would keep us informed on the latest virus, on what to look for, and updates on the newest of everything out there. They were there for the new people like me and the ones who have been "around the block" too! We have lost Call for Help; the next to best show. (By the way, what happened to the call-ins on the Screen Saver?) G4 hasn't only hit rock bottom, they are still digging further. Come on!!! Girls Gone Wired! Instead of G4TV, they should change the name to C4TV...Crap 4 television!
this channel is garbage! does it appeal 2 any gamers? all the hardcore gamers i know DON'T watch this! i dropped it from my channel favorites after they f*cked up the screensavers. kevin rose needs 2 bail off the sinking ship that is G4! hope his contract is up soon!
-asciilogic
From their own press release:
G4 is the only 24/7 television network dedicated to videogames. It features all original programming that covers every aspect of the video game culture - games, gear, gadgets and girls - with live shows, insider information and breaking news. The network is available in 50 million cable and satellite homes nationwide.
That about says it all. Tech is dead at G4. I give the network a year (at most) before it dies, too.
Well this is the third name change I've seen it used to be ZDtv known as techtv anyway the show sucks now because it's not like in the old days when leo and kate were running it they were great everything got covered. I hate when networks try to remake a show and mess everything up with fake plastic advertising with no substance to it what so ever just want your money type plastic show is what it is now , when they gave the game guy his own segment all he did was act like an idiot and invite girls on the show so he could oggel them, it was a mess, it looked like howard stern on crack ! I say give us a damn show about the computer world thats only interested in the technology behind the computer wizardry we still want to see the man behind the curtan , not the curtan it's self
That would be great. The show sux now that comcast ownz it. No information anymore, could be someone, somewhere thought too much info was being distributed. Yes long live the good old days!!