G4 Cancels Videogame Programming

Bato

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Oct 18, 2009
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When seeing this I had to go look up one of the older shows that was my favorite.
Portal! [http://www.youtube.com/user/EnterPortal/videos?sort=dd&flow=grid&view=0&page=1]
For anyone new that might click it, yeah it's cheesy but that's the beauty of it I think.
 

MrBenSampson

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Oct 8, 2011
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X-Play used to be my favourite show. Back in '03 and '04, tuning in for X-Play was a part of my daily routine. I've been watching it infrequently over the last few years, mainly because Blair gets on my nerves, but I still consider myself a fan. I was dissapointed when I learned that Adam left, but this news is depressing.

Back in '04, I got a copy of the X-Play Insider's Guide to Gaming, which I still flip through when I want a glimpse of what the show used to be. It has funny interviews with the cast and crew, as well as plenty of reviews of the games that released around that time.
 

dyre

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Pariahwulfen said:
dyre said:
kajinking said:
Ok I have to ask, WTF is G4? I know they were a channel but all I ever heard about them was that they played all that ninja stuff, I never knew they did anything with videogames.
Beautiful End said:
This, please. I know G4 was a videogame related channel or something like that. But honestly, that's all I know. Where do they transmit it? Is it online only? Is it like HBO where you have to pay extra to get it?

I wouldn't mind checking it out at least for a while to either confirm how much it sucks or contradict people's opinions. I mean, all I have videogame related on my TV is...Spike TV. And it shouldn't even count!
When they were founded (early 2000s, I think), they were a channel dedicated completely to video games, and from my memory (perhaps somewhat nostalgia coated, dunno), a lot of the hosts of the various shows on that channel actually seemed genuinely interested in gaming. But after they merged with TechTV, they decided to become a "men's stuff" channel, which apparently meant cutting 90% of the video game related shows they had and replacing them with COPS, Cheaters, Ninja Warrior (not that I don't like Ninja Warrior), and random movies. They've since been dropped by a bunch of cable providers and no one really cares about them anymore. It's just sad to see the final nails in the coffin, I guess.
What little I saw before the hostile takeover of TechTV, made it seem that they were going after the MTV crowd, which turned me off to the channel almost entirely. It also saddened me greatly when they trashed TechTV, as that was my favorite channel at that point in time.
I may be getting the two mixed up. At the time I had just started playing video games (a bit late to the party, yes), so I didn't watch too much of it anyway.
 

BodomBeachChild

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Nov 12, 2009
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Watched so much G4 during summer in high school. Cinematech was my favorite. Sadly, they followed the industry they covered, and decided to go down the tubes. At least I'll get to watch you be buried.
 

Sylveria

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Nov 15, 2009
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After a long fight against mediocrity, G4 will succumb and die in December of 2012.

It really has been said to see G4 turn in to what it is. It had so much potential when it started.
 

Yostbeef

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I use to love the lineup back in the day when I was struggling through puberty.The same 4-5 shows looping 24/7,Judgment Day being my favorite.I never really watched AOTS or X-play,their attempts at comedy always annoyed me and was a big turnoff for me.I stopped watching it so many years ago but alas RIP G4,thanks for the memories.
 

lord.jeff

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Oct 27, 2010
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G4TV is what introduced me to the escapist due to Yahtzee's reviews being played on XPlay.
 

mixadj

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Oct 23, 2010
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Good riddance... I stopped watching that channel a few years ago when they dropped most of their good programming. Xplay was not enough to hold me over.


thebobmaster said:
Beautiful End said:
kajinking said:
Ok I have to ask, WTF is G4? I know they were a channel but all I ever heard about them was that they played all that ninja stuff, I never knew they did anything with videogames.
This, please. I know G4 was a videogame related channel or something like that. But honestly, that's all I know. Where do they transmit it? Is it online only? Is it like HBO where you have to pay extra to get it?

I wouldn't mind checking it out at least for a while to either confirm how much it sucks or contradict people's opinions. I mean, all I have videogame related on my TV is...Spike TV. And it shouldn't even count!
If you don't have Comcast or DirectTV, you don't get G4. It is one of the most unpopular channels, and every other station has removed it from their lineup. The only reason Comcast hasn't dropped it is because they have a controlling share of NBCUniversal, the company that owns G4.

Edit: Actually, DirectTV dropped G4 a couple of years ago, so Comcast is the only one that still has it.
Actually I think Dish network still has it, at least the last time I checked my channel listings.

As to what G4 used to be this is what I remember it as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G4techTV (it has their lineup). One of my favorites was Icons, nothing like a video game documentary.


Course I started watching it right before techtv merged never heard of G4.
 

Stillgard

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Jun 6, 2011
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Well, it was a nice ride while it lasted. But yeah think it's time to abandon G4TV till they grow some of there balls back. But then this is what I have the escapist for.
 

Cormyre

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Jun 11, 2010
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Stopped caring after Adam left Xplay frankly... Adam needs to get with Kevin Rose and Leo LaPorte and launch a new network that was more akin to what a combo of G4 and TechTV SHOULD have been instead of the travesty it turned into.
 

quantumsoul

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Jun 10, 2010
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Having a tech and gaming cable tv channel is pointless since those people are mostly on the net anyways. Cable is a thing of the past. I'll just continue to enjoy internet tv shows.

Maybe those shows will move to the net where they belong.
 

General Vagueness

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Feb 24, 2009
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kajinking said:
Ok I have to ask, WTF is G4? I know they were a channel but all I ever heard about them was that they played all that ninja stuff, I never knew they did anything with videogames.
G4 was originally supposed to focus on a few things, gaming being one of them, but by design or as a response, gaming was pretty much the only focus. I'm not sure if G4 was always owned by Viacom or if that happened later or maybe even after the merger, but it's owned them for some time now-- this is relevant partly because they also own Spike and Comedy Central. I hardly watched it before the big merger so I know this stuff from reading Wikipedia and chatting with people who did watch it back then.
TechTV started as ZDTV at the end of the 90s with a broad technology focus and was passed around between owners and companies and networks, keeping that broad focus. They had all kinds of shows that were good or at least interesting, if I get into what they were I might be here all day. X-Play started on ZDTV as Gamespot TV, with Adam Sessler and someone else hosting, and after (I think) two seasons it cut its ties to Gamespot and was renamed Extended Play. The other guy left around that time, and after that Adam hosted the show by himself. At some point Kate Botello was brought on as a co-host, and then around 2001 she left (this is about when I started watching). It was renamed X-Play in 2003, and around then they brought on Morgan Webb, who had been doing odd jobs on The Screen Savers.
In the mid-2000s, G4 bought TechTV and within a few months the two channels became one, G4TechTV. They slowly dropped shows that had come from G4 and TechTV, and TechTV wound up giving up more shows than G4, but after a while it didn't matter, because G4TechTV was renamed G4, and then almost all of the rest of the shows from the original channels were cancelled, with a few showing reruns for years afterward. Around that time, The Screen Savers (with host Kevin Rose) was renamed Attack of the Show, and started getting remodeled. As they pared down the content further they started replacing it with things like Ninja Warrior and Cheaters and COPS, and they showed Lost and Heroes for a minute there, and they started showing movies, going from cheap geeky ones to cheap old ones to less-cheap old ones to cheap new ones. They did try their hand at original programming, and a little bit of it was even pretty good, if irrelevant to what the channel used to be, but none of it was that successful.
By the late 2000s, all that was left of either of the old channels were an AotS that had been remodeled beyond recognition and X-Play.
I didn't mean for that to be that long, but there you go.
 

Browncoat86

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Mar 27, 2008
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I was a little disappointed when the news broke yesterday, I didn't get in on the ground floor like a lot of people, (I believe I started watching G4 regularly in '08). I enjoyed Xplay, which in turn led me to The Escapist thanks to Adam Sessler showing the clips of Yahtzee reviews, at the time, I was blown away by Morgan Webb, as it was the first time I had encountered a good looking woman that seemed to be generally interested in gaming, my viewing became less frequent when they reformatted and the reviews became less frequent, I stopped watching completely when Sessler left, not that I mind Blair, I actually think he's a pretty funny guy.

As far as AOTS goes, I am a big fan of Kevin's, I never believed Munn actually gave two shits about the things she was talking about though. I gave Candace Bailey the benefit of the doubt for the first couple of months, but it became readily apparent that it was "just another gig" for her... ... and Sara Underwood. When Kevin left, I think I watched on a consistent basis the two times that Chris Hardwick was the guest host, then I lost interest. Now, as I noted on twitter yesterday, I won't even bother checking the channel come January.
 

RN7

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Oct 27, 2009
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I remember nearly a decade ago when G4 was actually a channel about videogames. They had everything, news, reviews, entertainment,and even an arcade-related gameshow in the forms of Blister, Portal, Filter and Starcade. When that core element changed after the TechTv merged, G4 died. This is just the corpse rotting even further.