24 Hours with G4

Nathan Smart writes "A writer for satire site The Game Rag watches 24 hours of G4TV and lives to tell about it." From the article: "'Cheat' had to evolve into a broader format, which coincidentally no longer involves actual cheating, and became a show about walkthroughs and tips. So right off the bat there's an immediate problem, and it ties back into that internet-thing I said earlier. There is nothing, seriously nothing, you can get from this show that you couldn't find with a simple trip to your local neighborhood Gamefaqs.com. Nothing. And Strike two is the disgustingly cheerful host, Kristin Holt. My assumption is that G4 wanted to hire some attractive women, as that falls under the category of 'things nerds like to look at', but Miss Holt, in my professional opinion, has NEVER SEEN A VIDEO GAME IN HER LIFE." He's already posted the second part of his outing, and G4 has a response to his project on their website.

Comments

Pics

[mobby_6kl]

Be careful when searching the net for pics, or you may end up with this on your monitor.

Re:Pics

[AKAImBatman]

Be careful when searching the net for pics, or you may end up with this on your monitor.

Oh my God. It's a normal looking woman. Run for the hills. The disgust is palpable. I can't believe that anyone would allow photos of real women on the Internet. They must all be super-models that are so skinny they only look right in the warping of a camera lense. Viva la myspace.

*rolls eyes*

What I get a kick out of, is that the "reviewer" (and I use the term loosely) chose to give Ms. Holt a poor score while letting Ms. Webb completely off the hook. Apparently, he has no problem sacrificing journalistic integrity in favor of broadcasting his fantasies about Ms. Webb in the slight hope that she might one day fullfill them. (Which is pretty pathetic when you think about it.)

The truth is that Ms. Webb and Mr. Sessler are painful to watch on the screen. All their jokes are delivered exactly as if they were reading from a script (which they are), they constantly look back and forth between each other and the camera (that's a very distracting movement, and should be minimized), they need to get their damn hands out of their pockets so that they don't look like pretzels, and they really need to loosen up and act more natural. Would it kill them to adlib a bit? Perhaps jump off into unscripted side conversations? Or does G4 believe them to be so void of any intelligence that they can't loosen the leash for even a second?

X-Play could be a decent show. Too bad it's hosts are strangling the life out of it.

Public access feel missing

[192939495969798999]

The G4 channel is missing the hardware/software hacking stuff big time. They need that public-access feel. Forget that hot girl, get some guy with an spf 3000 tan in front of a wall of machines with a hand scanner securty system in his basement. The opening shot where he says 'Not now mom, I'm on the air! So anyways, check this out...' lets you know you're about to see something incredible.

People still watch G4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got rid of that channel when they eliminated the rest of the old TechTV programming - I still fail to see the business model behind G4. I probably should've gotten rid of it earlier - it seems the only thing I can remember was how turned off I was on the entire channel. G4 wanted to buy the audience, rather than figure out why, perhaps, that their channel sucked so badly in the first place that it's got very few subscribers. Once the TechTV shows started being infected, well... I can't stand 10 minutes of that channel now, nevermind 24. I think CPAC (Canadian version of C-SPAN) would be more bearable to watch. And G4 Canada was considered the saner channel.

Programming about games done in a style that attracts teens and younger? Who these days use the 'net for the same content? At least TechTV inspired an older generation of people who still rely on "old media" (TV/radio/newspaper/magazines) just as much as "new media" (Internet - web/blogs/etc).

He's spot on

[falcon5768]

Seriously while to most of us its obvious apparently the suit at Comcast still havent realized that G4 is the biggest piece of shit they have ever tried to force down peoples throats.

For one thing, it kept none of the humor (ie it was witty and brainy) that made Tech TV great. Guys I know its hard to understand here but most gamers actually HAVE a brain. Hell most of us are over the age of 21.

Second the reruns SUCK. I flip it on and just about every show on there IS a rerun. At least Tech TV managed to make 12 hours of original content. G4 even after buying Tech TV still hasnt gone past 4 hours of new shows.

Third hot girls who dont have a clue about anything technical is NOT attractive. Likewise there are a whole legion of girl gamers out there too, start bringing them into to it too instead of thinking gaming = guys.

The list could go on, but I think the biggest killer is the fact that, quite frankly there wasnt enough content to keep the TV shows about games going in the 80's-90's why do you think that just because its a few years later there would be enough for a whole fucking channel! There isnt, not unless you get technical which you guys seem to be afraid to do.

In the end though I think the current turnaround for G4 is the most telling... more and more its becoming less about gaming and more about guys, and well we have a non-digital cable channel for all of that (Spike) so why the hell would we watch yours when Spike actually has some decent original shows once in a while.

Re:TechTV

[zentinal]

I too mourned the death of TechTV, but I no longer miss it.

I now watch DL.TV and TWIT.TV, which gives me about 80% of what I got from TechTV.

True, it was convenient to have everything gathered on one cable channel (if you ignored all of the useless repeats), but I'd argue that the natural environment for TechTV's content is the web. Plus, now, using a good RSS feed reader, you can roll your own TechTV. Can't you do that with TIVO and Freevo now?

Now, all we need is for Joshua "Yoshi" DeHerrera to start up a modding video podcast then all will truly be right with the world, with all TechTV goodness gathered on the web, in nicely downloadable / streamable gobbits.