27 comments on “The Rise and Fall of G4 TV 4 Gamers”
Roy on said:
Great work, Cecil.
When it comes down to it, running a cable network that attracts a niche audience is a business that, to paraquote you, is meant to fail, and I don’t know if your suggestion would have helped since the brass behind the scenes looked like they didn’t understand video game culture.
It looks like they were trying to get a mainstream audience that wasn’t computer literate, let alone video game literate, via hotshot graphics and T&A through the years, With services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon nowadays, the idea of a specialized cable channel is slowly becoming dated. I do share your lament of a type of channel loses focus on a specific audience (cough Scifi=Syfy cough), but business is business. 🙁
Anyway, good mini-doc, hope you have a review of a Christmas-theme horror film (Silent Night, Deadly Night!!!) and remember…”Mama don’t like tattletales”.
I really wonder what the result would have been if they just stayed with their initial idea. They still could have bought TTV but instead of gutting them, use their shows to help fill in the blanks. They needed content desperately, but didn’t want the content that they paid for! What a mess.
Yep, I know VGHS well. I donated to the kickstarter season 1 and got a signed DVD.
Got some Christmas themed stuff up soon, don’t fret. 🙂
This video made me teary eyed for a few different reasons from love of all those wonderful things that it spawned because of the G4 Forums . Thanks DKC
Oh dear Mountain-Dew-flavored-Cheeto-loving Jesus. One of my pet peeves. How many cable/satellite TV networks over the years have strayed so far from their original purpose only to become a generic “entertainment-oriented” zombie that you can’t tell any different from other channels. It’s as if by the end of this decade the only remotely, and consistently, good cable TV channel left will be HBO.
Tech TV was one of the greatest things ever. And then the merger came. Not that I hated or disliked G4 in its original form. It did have quite a bit of charm with a unique, mellow feel and I loved some shows like G4TV.com and Icons. Not all the personalities on there were endearing. I never warmed up to Kevin Pereira or Olivia Munn, they and a few others always felt like all the other hacks of SoCal chasing down attention and fame wherever they find such. (Sure, there are far, far worse media hounds today, like everybody whose last name rhymes with Lardashian, but such cliche quests never fade.)
Sad deal.
But the internet and on-demand will, I think, finally bury all the terrible, useless TV channels in the dirt once original, and particularly live sports, content is legally available through a simple internet connection without any need for a subscription to a random menu of cable/satellite channels or even rabbit ears. This so-called “a la carte” model is purportedly what is coming in the next few years due to net neutrality, new technological capabilities, lower operating costs, greater profit potential i.e. Netflix, etc.
I’d be interested in seeing a list of cable networks that were successful when they started because they had one demo in mind, and then over the years tanked because they shifted so far out of what they initially were going for. I have a feeling that channels like TLC may be doing ok now because of their garbage reality shows but will that stuff really keep people around for years to come? How much longer before people are sick of it?
Kevin was actually really nice. I spoke to him on the phone twice way back when he was still a PA for G4TV.com. Very down to earth and friendly. I think he just kind of played it up a bit for AotS because that kind of fit the show.
TV needs to adapt or eventually it will go under. Well, maybe that is an eventuality? I mean, cars replaced horses so maybe internet tv will replace network. It may not happen for a while but I could see it within the next 20 years or so, mostly because the companies have so much damn money they can ride it out.
When xplay went to the new set and lost that “hanging out in someones re-modeled basement” feel is when I knew the network was done. It took a while, and I kept watching occasionally, hoping things would change, but that was it.
I stayed with them until they got rid of the comedy bits. It just felt like they tried to fit angry criticism into their reviews instead of mixing them up with silly moments, like Morgan dating Cervantes.
Since I’m not from the US, I have only rudimentary knowledge about G4, mostly from gaming news and pop references, but we did have our own (now long gone) cult gaming shows similar to the stuff aired on G4 during its glory days, so I totally get the love and the loss now that it’s shutting down, even if it did fell from grace (and quality) a long time ago. Always good to learn more about the way TV channels are run. This video was more informative than most news articles about the channel. I think the Internet and faster transfer speeds pretty much killed gaming shows on TV just as much as shitty management.
By the way. Two unrelated things…
1) You’re not going to put Radiodrome shows on your site anymore?
2) On one of the latest Dromes, heard your comment about Rose McGowan being too old to do a possible remake of Barbarella. Google “Rose McGowan” + “Flatt Magazine” or “Rose McGowan” + “Wild Rose” or “Rose McGowan” + “Flaunt Magazine”. You’re welcome and your apology for that silly comment is accepted. 🙂
The first 2 years of G4 were wonderful. They were fostering the community and building good relationships with the audience. The people involved had their hearts in the right place but the folks with the money just weren’t seeing the return on investment fast enough. New networks take a while to get off the ground, especially one that is trying to capture a market no other network has gone after. They should have kept the shows the inherited from the TTV merger. I’ll never understand why they thought it would be a good idea to bring in this larger audience and then cancel all the shows they were already watching!
I’ll always have a soft spot for the channel, as it was a big part of my life in the early 2000s and I made a lot of good friends because of it.
1 – I am, I’ve just been forgetful. I’m going to start posting the links again soon.
2 – Oh, I still think she is lovely I was just saying that for Hollywood, they will most likely go with someone in their 20s for the role. I’ve been a fan ever since Lewis & Clark & George.
X-Play – X3 Reunion (space combat sim) review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkKQcta_lNc
For the uninitiated, the main enemy in the game is the invading force of Kha’ak (the name of the enemy alien race, and yes, it’s pronounced exactly the way that first comes to mind, and yes, the reviewers did run with it whole nine yards).
Did I mention the game was made by the Germans? But even so, this can not be an accident.
I liked X-play but I was always a bigger fan of Judgment Day. Watching Tommy and Vic talk about a game was like listening to two old friends. (which they were)
Ok, last post on this topic, I promise. Did you happen to catch the Game Awards last night? When Roberta Williams and her husband showed up, that was a really cool moment. The whole show is up on youtube.
I just watched the highlights. Was glad to see Roberta and Ken, they really are some of the founders of great storytelling in games. Now they need to bring back Phantasmagoria!
I also saw iJustine and Boogie give the trending gamer to Total Biscuit. I’m glad, I’ve been listening to him ever since his WoW podcast days. While I don’t always agree with him, I appreciate his honesty. His speech was very much from the heart and good for him for being such a trooper through his cancer treatments.
Although I’m convinced if I had a British accent I’d probably be much further along. I had someone yesterday thumb down my G4 video because they didn’t like how I said “game”. lol
By the time my cable company got this channel, it basically was Spike TV (plus some video games, I guess) and the channel was pretty much exuding a guys only vibe. It was such a disappointment, as I had been hoping it’d pop up eventually when I heard of it in its’ early years. Be careful what I wish for, I guess. When I see the great stuff that used to be on the channel, it’s so crazy to me things went downhill so badly.
I thank you for presenting your G4 retrospective video, Cecil. I was 13 (going on 14) years old in spring 2002 when G4 initially set off on digital cable TV at my aunt’s house East Orange, New Jersey where I mainly lived at the time. Mind you, though I started watching it weeks after it launched, but that’s beside the point. The first pair of years of the channel’s run was, is, and always will be awesome ’cause a lot of the shows spoke to me as a video gamer. Nearly all of them had the content, common sense, intelligence, know-how, humor (though at times coming out as corny, dry, ill-bit stupid or all of the above), and spirit to flow upon the gaming culture. I don’t know how you felt toward G4’s 10-month marriage to Tech TV in 2004-2005, but I was cool with it since they brought video games and technology together. I stopped being an avid viewer of G4’s by 2007 when I was 18-19 years old. After 2005 was a wrap, the channel set off a tonal shift of content and orientation from video games to anything that was male-based which I quickly lost interest. Personally though, G4 should’ve ended in spring 2010 ’cause it was Spike TV 2.0 to me.
No problem, this was a big time labor of love for me. As silly as it seems, G4 was a big deal to me at the time and me and my friends got nostalgic for the first 2 years all the time. They really had something special.
After all the changes it was to the point where the only thing I watched was X-play and I even gave up on that. It just felt forced, like they didn’t even want to be doing it anymore.
Very interesting video Cecil. I really had no idea about the history of Tech Tv & G4…I really only watched X-Play. Adam & Morgan were always such a great team on that show. I lost interest in it when Adam left, and never really went back to the channel. I don’t think the channel(s) would have survived regardless of any changes made. Consumers are fickle, and trends change seemingly overnight…so the only format that can truly keep up with these kinds of changes are web video series, where the format can change with the shifts in popularity. TV networks are far too static and locked into a format with their programming, and changes are always made too late to appeal to the shifting paradigm of pop culture. They’re always a day late and a dollar short. As an example, I remember watching the program ‘Sk8 TV’ hosted by Matthew Lillard and Skatemaster Tate on Nickelodeon in the early 90’s. The show was very much stuck in the mid-80’s ‘dude/bro-Animal Chin’ format, that skate culture had already abandoned and moved on from. It was painful to watch…especially Matthew Lillard trying to be a ‘Chris Spicoli’ for skateboarding. At any rate, it was unsuccessful because it couldn’t keep up with the times and all the skaters I knew found it insulting. I think G4 suffered this same fate ultimately. It alienated it’s target audience by not presenting programs that appealed to it’s target audience. RIP G4…you could have been great, instead of just mediocre and forgettable.
Thanks! Back when they first started they were on to something. Technology was starting to take a bigger role and they could have capitalized on this so much but they didn’t. They then made so many stupid decisions.
Ah, the days before Sessler was a stark-raving lunatic with a Twitter handle. How funny, that right around the time G4 was pulled from the air, the gaming world went to absolute shit. Really odd coincidence. I enjoyed Judgement Day and ATOS, but X-Play was always very hit and miss, but when it hit, it hit hard.
I loved TechTV, before G4. I’d stay up late to watch episodes of Unscrewed with Martin Sargent back to back with Anime Unleashed. That was my freshman year of high school and was something that I needed back then.
I had to unfollow Sessler after a number of his rants. Really bummed me out.
I never had TTV, most first intro to it was when G4 brought it in and then killed it. A shame, I liked it for those few months. The shows were refreshing and a welcome addition. Sad it all went down like it did.
follow:
Great work, Cecil.
When it comes down to it, running a cable network that attracts a niche audience is a business that, to paraquote you, is meant to fail, and I don’t know if your suggestion would have helped since the brass behind the scenes looked like they didn’t understand video game culture.
It looks like they were trying to get a mainstream audience that wasn’t computer literate, let alone video game literate, via hotshot graphics and T&A through the years, With services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon nowadays, the idea of a specialized cable channel is slowly becoming dated. I do share your lament of a type of channel loses focus on a specific audience (cough Scifi=Syfy cough), but business is business. 🙁
BTW, have you seen the web series Video Game High School? If you haven’t, why haven’t you?!
http://www.rocketjump.com/category/vghs
Anyway, good mini-doc, hope you have a review of a Christmas-theme horror film (Silent Night, Deadly Night!!!) and remember…”Mama don’t like tattletales”.
Thanks!
I really wonder what the result would have been if they just stayed with their initial idea. They still could have bought TTV but instead of gutting them, use their shows to help fill in the blanks. They needed content desperately, but didn’t want the content that they paid for! What a mess.
Yep, I know VGHS well. I donated to the kickstarter season 1 and got a signed DVD.
Got some Christmas themed stuff up soon, don’t fret. 🙂
This video made me teary eyed for a few different reasons from love of all those wonderful things that it spawned because of the G4 Forums . Thanks DKC
Don’t go drinking any health wine! 🙂
Oh dear Mountain-Dew-flavored-Cheeto-loving Jesus. One of my pet peeves. How many cable/satellite TV networks over the years have strayed so far from their original purpose only to become a generic “entertainment-oriented” zombie that you can’t tell any different from other channels. It’s as if by the end of this decade the only remotely, and consistently, good cable TV channel left will be HBO.
Tech TV was one of the greatest things ever. And then the merger came. Not that I hated or disliked G4 in its original form. It did have quite a bit of charm with a unique, mellow feel and I loved some shows like G4TV.com and Icons. Not all the personalities on there were endearing. I never warmed up to Kevin Pereira or Olivia Munn, they and a few others always felt like all the other hacks of SoCal chasing down attention and fame wherever they find such. (Sure, there are far, far worse media hounds today, like everybody whose last name rhymes with Lardashian, but such cliche quests never fade.)
Sad deal.
But the internet and on-demand will, I think, finally bury all the terrible, useless TV channels in the dirt once original, and particularly live sports, content is legally available through a simple internet connection without any need for a subscription to a random menu of cable/satellite channels or even rabbit ears. This so-called “a la carte” model is purportedly what is coming in the next few years due to net neutrality, new technological capabilities, lower operating costs, greater profit potential i.e. Netflix, etc.
I’d be interested in seeing a list of cable networks that were successful when they started because they had one demo in mind, and then over the years tanked because they shifted so far out of what they initially were going for. I have a feeling that channels like TLC may be doing ok now because of their garbage reality shows but will that stuff really keep people around for years to come? How much longer before people are sick of it?
Kevin was actually really nice. I spoke to him on the phone twice way back when he was still a PA for G4TV.com. Very down to earth and friendly. I think he just kind of played it up a bit for AotS because that kind of fit the show.
TV needs to adapt or eventually it will go under. Well, maybe that is an eventuality? I mean, cars replaced horses so maybe internet tv will replace network. It may not happen for a while but I could see it within the next 20 years or so, mostly because the companies have so much damn money they can ride it out.
Great, great, video Cecil!!!
When xplay went to the new set and lost that “hanging out in someones re-modeled basement” feel is when I knew the network was done. It took a while, and I kept watching occasionally, hoping things would change, but that was it.
Thanks!
I stayed with them until they got rid of the comedy bits. It just felt like they tried to fit angry criticism into their reviews instead of mixing them up with silly moments, like Morgan dating Cervantes.
Wonderful video, Cecil 🙂
Thanks Brig. 🙂
Since I’m not from the US, I have only rudimentary knowledge about G4, mostly from gaming news and pop references, but we did have our own (now long gone) cult gaming shows similar to the stuff aired on G4 during its glory days, so I totally get the love and the loss now that it’s shutting down, even if it did fell from grace (and quality) a long time ago. Always good to learn more about the way TV channels are run. This video was more informative than most news articles about the channel. I think the Internet and faster transfer speeds pretty much killed gaming shows on TV just as much as shitty management.
By the way. Two unrelated things…
1) You’re not going to put Radiodrome shows on your site anymore?
2) On one of the latest Dromes, heard your comment about Rose McGowan being too old to do a possible remake of Barbarella. Google “Rose McGowan” + “Flatt Magazine” or “Rose McGowan” + “Wild Rose” or “Rose McGowan” + “Flaunt Magazine”. You’re welcome and your apology for that silly comment is accepted. 🙂
The first 2 years of G4 were wonderful. They were fostering the community and building good relationships with the audience. The people involved had their hearts in the right place but the folks with the money just weren’t seeing the return on investment fast enough. New networks take a while to get off the ground, especially one that is trying to capture a market no other network has gone after. They should have kept the shows the inherited from the TTV merger. I’ll never understand why they thought it would be a good idea to bring in this larger audience and then cancel all the shows they were already watching!
I’ll always have a soft spot for the channel, as it was a big part of my life in the early 2000s and I made a lot of good friends because of it.
1 – I am, I’ve just been forgetful. I’m going to start posting the links again soon.
2 – Oh, I still think she is lovely I was just saying that for Hollywood, they will most likely go with someone in their 20s for the role. I’ve been a fan ever since Lewis & Clark & George.
By the way, THE GREATEST G4 GAME REVIEW E-V-E-R!
X-Play – X3 Reunion (space combat sim) review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkKQcta_lNc
For the uninitiated, the main enemy in the game is the invading force of Kha’ak (the name of the enemy alien race, and yes, it’s pronounced exactly the way that first comes to mind, and yes, the reviewers did run with it whole nine yards).
Did I mention the game was made by the Germans? But even so, this can not be an accident.
I liked X-play but I was always a bigger fan of Judgment Day. Watching Tommy and Vic talk about a game was like listening to two old friends. (which they were)
My favorite is mark from Classic game room
Glad he is still doing well.
Ok, last post on this topic, I promise. Did you happen to catch the Game Awards last night? When Roberta Williams and her husband showed up, that was a really cool moment. The whole show is up on youtube.
I just watched the highlights. Was glad to see Roberta and Ken, they really are some of the founders of great storytelling in games. Now they need to bring back Phantasmagoria!
I also saw iJustine and Boogie give the trending gamer to Total Biscuit. I’m glad, I’ve been listening to him ever since his WoW podcast days. While I don’t always agree with him, I appreciate his honesty. His speech was very much from the heart and good for him for being such a trooper through his cancer treatments.
Although I’m convinced if I had a British accent I’d probably be much further along. I had someone yesterday thumb down my G4 video because they didn’t like how I said “game”. lol
By the time my cable company got this channel, it basically was Spike TV (plus some video games, I guess) and the channel was pretty much exuding a guys only vibe. It was such a disappointment, as I had been hoping it’d pop up eventually when I heard of it in its’ early years. Be careful what I wish for, I guess. When I see the great stuff that used to be on the channel, it’s so crazy to me things went downhill so badly.
I thank you for presenting your G4 retrospective video, Cecil. I was 13 (going on 14) years old in spring 2002 when G4 initially set off on digital cable TV at my aunt’s house East Orange, New Jersey where I mainly lived at the time. Mind you, though I started watching it weeks after it launched, but that’s beside the point. The first pair of years of the channel’s run was, is, and always will be awesome ’cause a lot of the shows spoke to me as a video gamer. Nearly all of them had the content, common sense, intelligence, know-how, humor (though at times coming out as corny, dry, ill-bit stupid or all of the above), and spirit to flow upon the gaming culture. I don’t know how you felt toward G4’s 10-month marriage to Tech TV in 2004-2005, but I was cool with it since they brought video games and technology together. I stopped being an avid viewer of G4’s by 2007 when I was 18-19 years old. After 2005 was a wrap, the channel set off a tonal shift of content and orientation from video games to anything that was male-based which I quickly lost interest. Personally though, G4 should’ve ended in spring 2010 ’cause it was Spike TV 2.0 to me.
No problem, this was a big time labor of love for me. As silly as it seems, G4 was a big deal to me at the time and me and my friends got nostalgic for the first 2 years all the time. They really had something special.
After all the changes it was to the point where the only thing I watched was X-play and I even gave up on that. It just felt forced, like they didn’t even want to be doing it anymore.
My favorite was g4 icons
Very interesting video Cecil. I really had no idea about the history of Tech Tv & G4…I really only watched X-Play. Adam & Morgan were always such a great team on that show. I lost interest in it when Adam left, and never really went back to the channel. I don’t think the channel(s) would have survived regardless of any changes made. Consumers are fickle, and trends change seemingly overnight…so the only format that can truly keep up with these kinds of changes are web video series, where the format can change with the shifts in popularity. TV networks are far too static and locked into a format with their programming, and changes are always made too late to appeal to the shifting paradigm of pop culture. They’re always a day late and a dollar short. As an example, I remember watching the program ‘Sk8 TV’ hosted by Matthew Lillard and Skatemaster Tate on Nickelodeon in the early 90’s. The show was very much stuck in the mid-80’s ‘dude/bro-Animal Chin’ format, that skate culture had already abandoned and moved on from. It was painful to watch…especially Matthew Lillard trying to be a ‘Chris Spicoli’ for skateboarding. At any rate, it was unsuccessful because it couldn’t keep up with the times and all the skaters I knew found it insulting. I think G4 suffered this same fate ultimately. It alienated it’s target audience by not presenting programs that appealed to it’s target audience. RIP G4…you could have been great, instead of just mediocre and forgettable.
Thanks! Back when they first started they were on to something. Technology was starting to take a bigger role and they could have capitalized on this so much but they didn’t. They then made so many stupid decisions.
Ah, the days before Sessler was a stark-raving lunatic with a Twitter handle. How funny, that right around the time G4 was pulled from the air, the gaming world went to absolute shit. Really odd coincidence. I enjoyed Judgement Day and ATOS, but X-Play was always very hit and miss, but when it hit, it hit hard.
I loved TechTV, before G4. I’d stay up late to watch episodes of Unscrewed with Martin Sargent back to back with Anime Unleashed. That was my freshman year of high school and was something that I needed back then.
I had to unfollow Sessler after a number of his rants. Really bummed me out.
I never had TTV, most first intro to it was when G4 brought it in and then killed it. A shame, I liked it for those few months. The shows were refreshing and a welcome addition. Sad it all went down like it did.
God, I loved this show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_aQAVyqF9Y&spfreload=10