Since I’ve decided to splurge, I now have cable television for the first time in two years. One of the stations on said cable channel is G4TV, the video game channel. G4TV has since merged with the financial troubled TechTV to become the oh-so-clevel name of G4TechTV, which not only offers MiXeD CapPZ goodness, but a whole boatload of mediocre programming.
For example: has anyone watched the show G4TV.com? The premise starts out promising – it’s a talk show, based off of the G4TV message boards. The hosts see what they’re doing and they look to the boards for discussion topics. They talk about it, everything should be hunky dory. Right?
Wrong.
First off, check out the message boards. n00bs! n00bs everywhere! This is what the hosts are the dealing with. Who are the hosts?
- Scot: The main host, head writer from the show, and VP of something or other, according to my research. Has one t in his name to emphasizes his hipness. Also, explicitly male to counter the two (TWO!) female hosts…
- Tina: Attactive chick with Jennifer Anniston flip hair. Presumably cast because of her venerable knowledge of violent first person shooters, without having to read off any type of cue card.
- Laura: Attactive chick #2. Her hair is dyed blond and she makes devil horns with her hands, therefore she is ZANY!!! Presumably cast because she knows about a game other than Tetris, although she likes screaming the word HALO a lot. This is presumably so all the heterosexual 12 year old boys can get woodies at the fact that a zany woman younger than their moms knows about Halo, besides “that videogame that their sons play too much.”
A typical conversation on the show, I shit you not, goes like this.
Scot: So, it looks like we’ve got a caller on the line.
Tina: Caller, who is this?
Caller: This is Bri – I mean, MaDpRoPzZ69
Laura: WHOOOOOO!! PROPZZ!! GIVIN YOU DA MADPROPZZZZZZZ! *devil horns*
MaDpRoPzZ69: I was wonderiing – SHUT UP MOM I’M ON THE PHONE – uhm, I was wondering if you could tell me anything about E3
Laura: DUUUUDE, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HALO 2 MAAAAN! HAAAALO, ITS GONNA BE SOOO TIGHT!! WHOOOOOO
Tina: Shut up, it’s all about the Counter Strike! COUNTERRR STRIIIKE!
Laura: NO WAAAY! HAALO!!
Tina: COUNTER STRIIIKE!
Laura: HAAAALO!!
Tina and Laura then proceed to play-wrestle, then sit down to a mediocre first person shooter on the air, while the loser of the battle gets dunked in a vat of jello or chocolate pudding or something mildly humiliating. Outisde, I hear the sound of doors slamming while thousands of prepubscent teenage boys lock themselves in their rooms, masturbating wildly.
MaDpRoPzZ69: My original question was about Final Fantasy, but can you two take your bras off?
Ernie: Oh my GOD, why am I watching this?
My name is Ernie. I am a gamer. Please G4, make a show for my demographic.
Word.
Someone’s got ot say it, might as well be me: X-Play.
given that you willingly bought the Britney Spear’s dancing game, your demographic is probably a bit more complicated than just “gamer,” I could make a pun, but I won’t… cuz you already know it… *snicker*
“n00bs! n00bs everywhere!”
lol
I was very disapointed in G4TV. But then I started to thinking of what kind of shows you could create for an all gaming network and I really couldn’t come up with more than like 2.
What? You want two guys wrestling?
Heh.
You think with the money that games make, and the demographic continuing to age, they’d figure it out. I’d watch a half-hour show featuring news on the industry, interviews with designers, and information about upcoming hardware.
I liked it better when it was just Tech TV. I’m not that much into the games.
I feel so very, very old.
Holy shit. I’m out of the demographic already!
Oh wait. I already was. I’m a girl.
There’s a few TechTV programs I love, but they also showed a lot of junk, and then repeated it endlessly. I didn’t think it could possibly get any worse, but it has. A pox on G4!
Ah, folks of like minds. I really liked TechTV, the host have been intelligent and can play well informed interviewer. The production quality was very good and I could watch and be geekily entertained while eating dinner and occasionally learn something.
G4 is just miserable. Know nothings and poor production quality make unwatchable garbage. G4 should have moved production to SF. I fear for the garbage that will spill forth from the formerly just TechTV shows that moved to LA. If I see Mark Hamill again talking about comix and gaming I will puke, four times is enough.
TechTVs X-Play makes me want the game. G4 makes me wonder why they have shows about gaming on some obscure cable channel.
i never got that channel. Cablevision just provided our area with Cartoon Network. i feel like a kid again.
I don’t like it, since they supposedly fired most of the people that worked at TechTV. Seems like G4 is trying to be too “hip” to me.
Gaymer.
You should probably just ask them to replace the XtR3Me grrlz with Patrick Norton.
And then get him to take his shirt off and wrestle.
____________
I go now.
sometimes i think i’m the only person on the internet who prefers real life.
Yah i think X-Play is your only hope. The guy has a trendy, mod, hip, whatever haircut but thats about it. X-Play focuses on games. =)
Time to get TechTV again
I was a Tech-TV fan. Even the fairly lame shows weren’t all that bad and there was plenty of stuff that interested me (despite my not fitting the demographic). THe message boards were, of course, occasionally fun and usually annoying. Feh. I’m old, I deal.
G4 has gutted a good thing and put maggots in it. I am resentful.
Hey kids, here’s a fun trivia fact.
The zany host of X-Play with the kinda weird haircut is Adam Sessler.
I went to High School with him, when he was a senior and I was a freshman. As a matter of fact, we were in the same school play together! I’m dead serious.
That’s all.
I haven’t seen any good content come from the G4 side of the merge. Arena is a good idea, in theory, but the execution is so god awful that it makes me want to gouge out eyeballs. For fuck’s sake the give points for having the most points!
Adam Sessler used to annoy the crap out of me, but I think I’ve mellowed to him. And as far as adolescent geeks spanking it, TechTV has got Morgan Webb and that Cat girl. I’d say that wins the fapability contest for TechTV, but what do i know?
There’s got to be something cool they could do. Like bring in Phil Moore from Nic Arcade. What’s he doing these days? He’s a pretty funny guy.
Fiction has to be believable, but in reality, anything can happen.