G4 recently changed what their name stood for. It originally meant the four generations of video games that we have been through (text, sprites, polygons and textures), now it means Games, Gear, Gadgets and Gigabytes. This change expresses a primordial problem with the network, it's demographic is too limited. I don't want to be watching people playing video games, I want to play video games. I watch professional football because I can't just decide to play professional football one night. I can however turn on my PS3... and I do. So what do you do then? Well, turns out they had it right the first time around, when they merged with TechTV and became G4TechTV. I would watch The Screensavers all the time. I love that they had Call for Help helping with people's questions live on the air, I found it so interesting and so educational that even though I'd rather be doing something else, I would sit down and tune to it, or I would just have it in the background... More than ESPN even. After the the dust settled. G4TechTV dropped the TechTV from their name, and went to a video game only format. Everybody that left went on to do great things on the online space. Kevin Rose, while now better known for DIGG, has quite a following through Twitter and his weekly podcast Diggnation. His co-host in Diggnation, Alex Albrecht, has a plethora of different podcasts on the Revision3 network. From The Screensavers, Leo Laporte has This Week In Tech and Patrick Norton has Veronica Belmont co-host with him in Tekzilla. Hell, even Sarah Lane got a show, Pop Siren. You know what's sad? I watch all of these shows in a consistent basis. These are the shows that you have to watch if you want to be in the 'geekeratti'. I also listen to 1UpYours on Fridays, a weekly audio podcast from the editors of 1Up.com that give me as much as I need to know about video games. This is what the new G4 TechTV should have been, this is what it should be. Geeks talking to geeks about geeky things. Sure, eyecandy is great and most models can read at a 6th grade level but I'd rather take Veronica Belmont talking about Rockband any day of the week. The newly updated format includes a section called 'G4 Rewind' that basically plays old episodes of their programs in a 'Pop-Up Video' format. Which is ok but really not enough. Here is what I would do: 1. Get into some kind of partnership with Revision3, republish some episodes on TV or get some original content from Rev3 on the network on a regular basis. 2. Give whoever wants their show back... their show back. I think Leo Laporte might be a bit too comfortable now days with the TWiT army, but hopefully a revitalized Screensavers might peak his interest. 3. Whatever you do, DO NOT take X-Play off the air. It's one of the only shows that is good on the network. 4. Make Attack of the Show a prime time show, make day shows be a show like Call for Help and another like The Screensavers, this will balance out the programming. 5. Get rid of all the car shows and automotive competition shows. If necessary, make them about technology in cars or cars of the future. I really never understood why a channel about video games or technology always has drifting on... If dropping automotive racing is not possible, get the WRC back on American TV. PLEASE. 6. Get Can't Get A Date from Logo. They ruined that show making it only about homosexual relationships, this can be more balanced with people who have problems through all ages/races/orientations and G4 would benefit from this. My whole idea here is that if you have the geeks watching, the less tech-savvy people will notice and will also watch for all their tech questions. Then again, what do I know. I dont watch G4 anymore.
TechTV is dead; Long live TechTV
· 5 min read