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What Actually Happened to TechTV?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the seeking-insider-knowledge dept.

thelancer asks: "Early last year, Australian cable got TechTV. But not for long. It turned out the fix was already in, and TechTV left Australian screens at the end of 2006 when G4 pulled the plug on international distribution. As someone who only got a taste, but desperately wanted more (of what I saw in the first two months, not nearer the end), I've done the rounds and read some stories on the buy out, but nothing has given me the who, when, and the all important why? And they all assume you know the history. Can the Slashdot crowd put together a more complete picture on what really happened at TechTV?"

4 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. What do you expect? by Bin_jammin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Business happens. You've never seen two businesses team up in order to lose money before? I guess you don't have AOL down under either...

  2. Re:G4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is why I don't even have cable nor satellite anymore. Hundreds of channels of junk. It's all the same anymore. You mainly have so called 'reality' shows, Television for women should read 'Television where all men are created evil'. TNN had country music, then it became a country themed television network. After that it became 'The National Network, the new TNN. Now it's spike TV, just like all of the other TV networks. CMT is near where TNN was before it went over to SpikeTV. None of the so called 'Music video' channels have music videos anymore, but reality shows for teens. ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, ETC, all have mainly reality shows. NBC is the worst with "Deal or no deal". Whatever happened to true Game shows, there is no game in Deal or no Deal. Next thing I know National Geographic will start airing Reality crap as well.

    So really, why have a television anymore? Most entertainment can be found on the Internet anymore. IN2TV if you must have that TV fix, archive.org for any multimedia that is under public domain.

  3. Re:My Perspective by FSWKU · · Score: 4, Insightful
    But now G4 has ST:TNG
    Except that they can't even get that right. They air things completely out of order (something from season 2 yesterday....then some season 5 or 6 stuff today...wtf) and I've seen more repeats in the last month than I care to count. Spike, despite having some really horrible shows (Raising The Roofs, The Dudesons, etc), at least does 2 DS9 episodes and 2 TNG episodes per day, and they're IN ORDER!

    Ok, I've shown myself to be a geek, obviously. Mod accordingly...
    --
    "So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
  4. Re:It worked like this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Last year, I used DISH Network. One of my favorite channels was dropped, and I called DISH to ask why. The customer service rep I got actually had a statement to read about it:

    "The channel in question was a channel owned and distributed by Comcast. When our previous contract to show the channel ended, Comcast wanted to triple the rates for said channel. In order for us to have continued to show it, we would have had to raise your rates $10/month for that single channel alone; we chose to simply drop the channel. If you have any further questions, we suggest contacting Comcast at xxx".

    Comcast ruins everything they touch; I should know, I'm now stuck using their shit service. The only thing decent they have is their cable internet, and in our market, it costs twice as much as everywhere else in the country, along with their $80 a month cable. But hey, they have a monopoly which our city agreed to.

    So, in response, of course they ruined TechTV. They had no other option.