My thoughts…on stuff

You remember last year when I posted about the dumbing down of G4? Remember when I said it had better get its act together or it would have one less viewer? Well, it does now, because they didn’t listen to me. And even if they didn’t hear my small voice, they must’ve heard the voices of thousands of fans shouting in protest (or should I say former fans). I know this because when I typed “G4 sucks” into Google, I got 578,000 results. When I typed “G4 rules,” I got a measly 620. That’s a lot of pissed off fanboys! My on/off affair with G4 finally ended last week Friday, when they had dual coverage of both CES and AEE simultaneously. “Two days of gadgets and girls,” they hyped it as. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they were advertising some crap show called “The Block,” which is basically The Real World with snow. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. G4 had moved too far from its technology roots for me to bear, and it was permanently off the favourite channels list on my programmable remote.

I still miss Tech TV. I miss all the technical knowledge I accumulated over all those years. I swear, I could assemble a computer from scratch back then. Now I can barely manage HTML.The descent of G4 came slowly, then suddenly. Non-tech shows like The Man Show and The Whip Set began creeping into its lineup. “It’s ok,” I thought. “A little variety never hurt anybody.” Then another one snuck in. And another. And another. Then before I realized it, over half of G4’s shows were non-tech (15 out of 27 last count), most of the gaming shows like Arena and Judgment Day were scrapped, and other shows were revamped to appeal to “a wider demographic” or incorporated non-tech elements, like “In Your Pants” on AOTS. Unbeknownst to me, this was a sinister plot by the execs at Comcast, G4’s parent company, who wanted to “go after young men more than just going after gaming” and that “gaming has been demonstrated to be too narrow.” I guess that’s partly true. Though we gamers are passionate, we spend far too much time at our consoles and PCs to really watch the boob tube. I think that’s why Kevin Rose jumped ship to work on Digg: he saw it coming. The rest of the staff were sacked, quit, or had to put with the whims of the big wigs.

The result? A television lineup that looks like it was tailored for frat boys, with porn jokes galore, gorgeous but ultimately vapid TV hosts, and a grab bag of programs with absolutely no relation to each other whatsoever. G4 now looks a lot like Spike TV, car chases, Star Trek and all. But guess what? Spike doesn’t suck! And they boast about being “the fastest growing network in America.” Yeah, if CNN sold out and showed all-women’s beach volleyball it’d grow fast too! And did I mention the reruns? Oh, the reruns! You can miss a week of G4 and return with nothing unchanged. Fact is G4, you’ve lost touch with your core audience while targeting another, losing your identity in the process. And a network without a core audience cannot stand. No amount of fancy intros and elaborate sets can change that fact. Now that G4’s dead to me, what’s next? Well, I may stick around for a bit of X-Play, though Morgan Webb isn’t as attractive to me as she once was, Adam’s devolved into a complete man-child, and the skits are no longer funny. I may also stick around for Star Trek TNG 2.0, as they’ve got some interesting Trek facts. I don’t give a damn about the stock market or the cyberbabble. Otherwise, I’m through. I’m hearing that they’re gonna kill G4, rename it and show 80’s shows like Knight Rider and Transformers. Good. Put it out of my misery. I’d rather see G4 killed than see it limp on in the pathetic state it’s in.