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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.
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!!!!
THIS ACCOUNT IS OFFICIALLY RETIRED/RETARDED.
TechTV sucked.
The ScreenSavers sucked. Why? They spent too much time dwelling on OSX and powerbooks and other Apple stuff. Which, of course, is why slashdotters were so in love with it. The more I watched it, the more it became about Macs and Linux.
Which is fine for slashdotters, but lets face it, the show was focusing on about 0.00025% of the audience. The whole channel was the same way.
There's just wasn't enough there. Stuff was too dumbed down for a geek like me to watch, it seemed very "Sesame Street", with like 15 minute segments on what USB is and how to plug the cables in. And there was nothing to attract people with no interest in computers.
G4 sucks just as bad, but at least it has an audience with the 14-30 year old "X-TREME GAMER LAN PARTY DOOD" set.
The whole channel reminds me of a spoken word version of the old Nintendo Power magazine, every show they have is basically an infomercial to sell shitty games.
It's typical "gaming" journalism where they try to portray Army Men: Sarge's Hero's as some great achievement on par with Doom 3 or Half Life 2.
It's all just an excuse to make me pay more for "basic cable". I wish I could choose not to pay for G4, BET, ONE, Lifetime, CMT, Golf Channel, Food Network, Speed Channel, and that mexican channel I call "Channel Ocho" a la the Simpsons.
Hopefully with all the new digital delivery methods (phone, fiber, coax, satellite), the suits will get their heads out of their asses and realize that they'd make more money by charging a small flat rate per channel I want, rather than these crappy bundles.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.