Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and it is in
Speaker 1: late August twenty about a year ago, I recorded an
Speaker 1: episode about well, a couple of episodes about tech TV
Speaker 1: and G four TV, a pair of cable television channels
Speaker 1: that merged in the United States, uh and then suffered
Speaker 1: a rather sad fate. And I did a full episode
Speaker 1: on each to kind of explain what happened with both
Speaker 1: of them, and I wanted to go back and revisit
Speaker 1: the G four TV episode. Now. The reason for this
Speaker 1: is because recent developments have changed things. There's been indication
Speaker 1: of life after cable death. But I'll explain that when
Speaker 1: we finished listening to this episode from last year, so
Speaker 1: that we understand where I'm coming from when I talk
Speaker 1: about the potential reboot of G four TV. First, let's
Speaker 1: listen to this classic episode. This is the second episode
Speaker 1: I'm devoting to a pair of tech related television channels
Speaker 1: that made an attempt to court a tech savvy, largely
Speaker 1: male audience on cable television Our last episode was about
Speaker 1: tech TV, which I talked about up to when that
Speaker 1: channel merged with another one. Today, I'm going to focus
Speaker 1: on that other channel that would end up getting merged
Speaker 1: with tech TV before spoiler alert, both would be ultimately
Speaker 1: shut down entirely. That tech channel was called G four TV,
Speaker 1: which was a television channel marketed towards gamers. For a
Speaker 1: bit longer than a decade, video game enthusiasts had their
Speaker 1: very own cable channel, well sort of, because the channel
Speaker 1: would change dramatically and would no longer really cater to
Speaker 1: video game people, and also G four's reach was hardly universal,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to all that. The story of G
Speaker 1: four really starts with its founder, Charles Hershorn, who already
Speaker 1: had a long career in media before he decided to
Speaker 1: create a channel specifically for gamers. Hershorn had attended Harvard
Speaker 1: and graduated in nineteen seventy nine. He probably would have
Speaker 1: graduated in nineteen seventy eight, but he took a year
Speaker 1: off after his sophomore year to cook in professional kitchens
Speaker 1: before deciding that was not quite the life he wanted
Speaker 1: for himself. He studied filmmaking at Harvard and was able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of some of the school's departments to
Speaker 1: get connections with various film studios and in show business.
Speaker 1: Who you know can be more important than what you know.
Speaker 1: He worked for a short while in Boston before relocating
Speaker 1: to California. He enrolled in film school at the University
Speaker 1: of Southern California, but was only there for a few
Speaker 1: months before he dropped out. See one of those connections
Speaker 1: he had made back at Harvard paid off big time.
Speaker 1: The connection was promoted to the position of president of
Speaker 1: production for Universal Pictures, and then this connection reached out
Speaker 1: to hire her Shorn as a junior executive. Now I'm
Speaker 1: going to spend a couple of seconds just here in
Speaker 1: the studio being green with envy as I think about
Speaker 1: a guy who went from recent college graduate to junior
Speaker 1: executive in a movie studio in no time flat. Feel
Speaker 1: free to join me in this moment of vulgar envy.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Okay, now I can move on, And I
Speaker 1: should add that I don't mean to comment on her
Speaker 1: Shorn's skill or knowledge. I cannot honestly say that he
Speaker 1: didn't deserve that position. He may very well have. I'm
Speaker 1: just being petty now. According to IMDb, which I should
Speaker 1: add as not the most reliable of sources. Her Shorn
Speaker 1: served as a production assistant on the John Hughes film
Speaker 1: Sixteen Candles in four and then as an associate producer
Speaker 1: for Bull Durham and an executive producer for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Speaker 1: I really enjoy that last film quite a bit. And
Speaker 1: her Shorn would stay with Movies for a while before
Speaker 1: moving over to the Fox Network. As in the television network,
Speaker 1: he came on board before the network had actually launched,
Speaker 1: and originally his role was to develop movie programming for
Speaker 1: the new television station. However, as the network got closer
Speaker 1: to launch, executive decide against having movie programming on the
Speaker 1: channel at all, and her Shorn would transition into a
Speaker 1: television executive role, something that was entirely new to him.
Speaker 1: Her Shorn would recruit Keenan Ivory Waynes, who successfully pitched
Speaker 1: a sketch comedy show called In Living Color, which in
Speaker 1: turn would launch the careers of folks like Jim Carey,
Speaker 1: Jamie Fox, and Jennifer Lopez as among others. Her Shorn
Speaker 1: stayed with Fox for just three years, from nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six to nineteen eighty nine, Bull Durham and Dirty Rotten
Speaker 1: Scoundrels would both come out in Night, but his involvement
Speaker 1: in those had been in the early stages of the films,
Speaker 1: and he still did some independent production work. He then
Speaker 1: moved over to the Mouse House. He joined the Walt
Speaker 1: Disney Company as the senior vice president of production for
Speaker 1: a brand new movie studio under Disney called Hollywood Pictures,
Speaker 1: which would make films like The Santa Claus, among others.
Speaker 1: In nineteen six, Disney named her Shorn the president of
Speaker 1: Walt Disney TV, while he would also serve as executive
Speaker 1: vice president of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group. He stayed
Speaker 1: on until nineteen when he either left or was you know,
Speaker 1: told to leave. While Disney TV and ABC began to
Speaker 1: streamline operations and get rid of redundancies, it was in
Speaker 1: two thousand, two years after tech TV then called z
Speaker 1: d TV had launched, that her Shorn began to put
Speaker 1: together his first ideas for what would become G four.
Speaker 1: He attended the trade show E three for the first time.
Speaker 1: That's the Big North American Video Games trade show, and
Speaker 1: according to later interviews, her Shorn originally thought about how
Speaker 1: video games have a lot of animation in them, and
Speaker 1: he had just spent a few years as president of
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Television, which produced several animated series, so maybe
Speaker 1: he thought you could do something with the animation and
Speaker 1: video games and turn it into a linear form of storytelling.
Speaker 1: His concept evolved into a channel that would be similar
Speaker 1: to something like MTV was back in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: only instead of focusing on music and the rock and
Speaker 1: roll lifestyle cue the song by Cake here, it would
Speaker 1: use video games as the central focus for the channel. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, he wanted to engineer a channel geared
Speaker 1: toward a younger audience, with a bit of a rebellious edge,
Speaker 1: you know, and a very corporate calculated way. Now, to
Speaker 1: be clear, there was a little bit of video game
Speaker 1: programming on television, but it was usually restricted to a
Speaker 1: segment on a longer show that was dedicated to technology
Speaker 1: in general. And there was an online audio and video
Speaker 1: network called Pseudo Entertainment that covered, among other things, video
Speaker 1: games and included video but this was in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's and most people lacked a good enough Internet
Speaker 1: connection to view streaming video in anything approaching decent resolution quality.
Speaker 1: More often than not, you had a thumbnail sized video
Speaker 1: running in a corner somewhere, and that's as good as
Speaker 1: you could watch. And if you try to expand it
Speaker 1: beyond that, your connection would just chug along and you'd
Speaker 1: be buffering the entire time. Pseudo would go out of
Speaker 1: business not long after the dot com bubble began to
Speaker 1: collapse in two thousand. Also, the story behind Pseudo is
Speaker 1: like super bonkers, so I have to do an episode
Speaker 1: about that at some point. Oh and one other interesting connection.
Speaker 1: David Boorman, a TV producer, stepped in to run Pseudo
Speaker 1: towards the end. He would also go on to produce
Speaker 1: the Tech Live block of programming I talked about for
Speaker 1: tech TV, and some of the folks from Pseudo would
Speaker 1: actually end up being part of G four. Anyway, there
Speaker 1: appeared to be at least some demand for more video
Speaker 1: game related content, and no one was meeting it just yet.
Speaker 1: So her short goes on and he founds a production
Speaker 1: company under Comcast, the cable provider. So this production company
Speaker 1: belonged to Comcast. It was called G four Media. He
Speaker 1: hired on a consultant named Scott Rubin to help develop
Speaker 1: the concept of a video Game Channel. Reuben would go
Speaker 1: on to become the vice president of Internet I T
Speaker 1: and program editorial, and would also serve as a host
Speaker 1: on several shows. The G four name was supposedly a
Speaker 1: reference to the four types of games that would be
Speaker 1: the focal point for the channel, video game, computer games,
Speaker 1: online games, and wireless games. And that seems a little
Speaker 1: bit confusing to me, since in two thousand two most
Speaker 1: games were pretty firmly either computer games or console games.
Speaker 1: Nearly all online games were a subset of computer games.
Speaker 1: There were very few console games that were online, and
Speaker 1: I'm guessing by wireless they really meant like handheld systems
Speaker 1: like game Boy and game Boy Advance, because cell phone
Speaker 1: games were almost not a thing. I mean, there was Snake,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't much else in two thousand two, But hey,
Speaker 1: who am I to criticize this logic. Also, much later,
Speaker 1: her Shorn would reveal in an interview with Kevin Pereira
Speaker 1: that he had asked his wife to secure a U
Speaker 1: r L for the new company before they had even
Speaker 1: figured out what the name was going to be, and
Speaker 1: he wanted video game to be in the name for
Speaker 1: the U r L, but his wife wasn't able to
Speaker 1: find an available U r L with video games in it,
Speaker 1: so he said, just grabbed something with the initial V
Speaker 1: or G or something, and she went down the list
Speaker 1: and said, G once taken G two's tip and G three,
Speaker 1: G four is available, and he said, just take that.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that G four got its name because
Speaker 1: literally that was the available U r L. In case
Speaker 1: you are curious, this was during what is generally called
Speaker 1: the sixth generation of video game systems, also known as
Speaker 1: the one eight bit era, this being you know, at
Speaker 1: the time when G four would launch. That is, Consoles
Speaker 1: belonging to this generation included the original Xbox, the PlayStation two,
Speaker 1: the Nintendo GameCube, and the Sega Dreamcast, though the Dreamcast
Speaker 1: was already starting to fade away by two thousand two,
Speaker 1: and that was the last year anyone made games for
Speaker 1: the Dreamcast outside of Japan. Uh Japan Dreamcast games would
Speaker 1: keep on going till about two thousand and seven. The
Speaker 1: executive crew for this company would include a lot of
Speaker 1: folks from the production side of entertainment, so her Shorn
Speaker 1: would serve as president and CEO. The Chief Operating Officer
Speaker 1: or c o O was Deborah Green, who had previously
Speaker 1: been a senior vice president over at E Networks in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. The head of affiliate and advertising sales,
Speaker 1: guy called Dale Hopkins, had also worked for E Networks.
Speaker 1: The head of programming was Vince Longobardo, who had been
Speaker 1: with MTV for nearly twenty years before joining G four.
Speaker 1: The company also recognized that might be a good idea
Speaker 1: to bring in some people who have insight into video
Speaker 1: games and video game culture, and so another founding leader
Speaker 1: of G four Media was Tom Russo, who had previously
Speaker 1: been the editor of a gaming magazine called Next Generation,
Speaker 1: and of course Scott Rubin was acting as a consultant
Speaker 1: as well. Comcast funded the development and the launch of
Speaker 1: this channel. They gave the company essentially a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars and the plan was to give G four
Speaker 1: three to five years in order to make enough money
Speaker 1: to pay off that initial investment. According to analysts, that
Speaker 1: would mean the channel would need to reach a down
Speaker 1: thirty to forty million households total, and the prime demographic,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, was eighteen to thirty four year
Speaker 1: old men. Now keep in mind this was back in
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's when video games were still considered
Speaker 1: a sort of niche hobby for nerds. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of negative stereotypes about gamers, mostly that they were
Speaker 1: a bunch of socially awkward losers. And I used this
Speaker 1: as the stereotype. I don't think people who are socially
Speaker 1: awkward are losers at all, but this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thought process people were in back then, that video
Speaker 1: game players were socially awkward losers who, according to most insults,
Speaker 1: lived in their parents basements and played video games, never
Speaker 1: stepped outside ever, didn't know how to talk to anybody else.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. That was very much a predominant
Speaker 1: stereotypical view of people who liked video games back in
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's, And it's quite possible that some
Speaker 1: of the folks at G four Media, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the people in charge, shared some of those perceptions
Speaker 1: about deo game fans. There was next to no acknowledgement
Speaker 1: that women can also play and enjoy video games too.
Speaker 1: They were just not really considered part of the equation,
Speaker 1: or that there are video game fans out there who
Speaker 1: are also active, productive and successful members of society. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the guiding decisions for designing
Speaker 1: programming would be rooted in the same sort of toxic
Speaker 1: mindset that much of gamer Gate was based in. And also,
Speaker 1: while I don't want to suggest that gamer Gate was
Speaker 1: in any way a legitimate movement, I do think that
Speaker 1: G four's revenue practices would raise some eyebrows when it
Speaker 1: comes to journalistic integrity and unbiased reviews. I'll explain more
Speaker 1: about that in just a moment. Skeptics worried that the
Speaker 1: channel would be unable to muster a following. I mean,
Speaker 1: who the heck wants to watch someone else play video games? Now?
Speaker 1: I imagine if you were to take any of those
Speaker 1: skeptics from two thousand to PLoP them into present day
Speaker 1: and turn on twitch TV or YouTube, their brains would
Speaker 1: melt right out of their ears. Now we have an
Speaker 1: entire industry complete with superstars who go by handles like
Speaker 1: Ninja or Shroud, who have built brands on top of
Speaker 1: the concept of people watching them play video games. As
Speaker 1: for me, heck, I remember being a kid and watching
Speaker 1: really good players play arcade games. I didn't have any
Speaker 1: desire to jump in or challenge them. I just liked
Speaker 1: watching people who are really good at games kick some
Speaker 1: digital butt, so I'd like to think at least I
Speaker 1: would have felt that there was a market for this
Speaker 1: sort of thing if it were handled properly. The Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times reported in January two thowo that Comcast was
Speaker 1: going to launch a video game centric channel later that year.
Speaker 1: As far as I could tell, this was the earliest
Speaker 1: public acknowledgement of G four. Comcast said it would launch
Speaker 1: the channel to seven million subscribers of the company's basic
Speaker 1: cable package. That wouldn't quite be the case at launch.
Speaker 1: The hope was that comcasts support would give a fledgling
Speaker 1: channel enough of a head start to land some good
Speaker 1: advertising deals for its programming. An article in sf Gate
Speaker 1: that published one month after the channel actually went live,
Speaker 1: which was in April two two, had a slightly different
Speaker 1: set of figures. According to the article, G four was
Speaker 1: initially available in about three million households, with the goal
Speaker 1: of reaching five million by the end of two thousand
Speaker 1: two oh and like tech TV, it wasn't initially available
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, which, at least in the minds of
Speaker 1: the tech industry, is the center of the known universe.
Speaker 1: When the channel went live, it broadcasts something pretty unusual
Speaker 1: for its first week, a Pong marathon yep, the classic
Speaker 1: video game Pong. It was the thirtieth anniversary for Pong,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the footage included two players going head to
Speaker 1: head against each other. Sometimes it was a player versus
Speaker 1: a computer opponent, but it was just Pong. After the
Speaker 1: first week, we'd get a better idea of what G
Speaker 1: four was going to be all about, at least at first.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more in a second, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. After the Pong marathon stunt, there were
Speaker 1: about a dozen programs that ran in heavy rotation. By that,
Speaker 1: I mean reruns or replays of a show. Some of
Speaker 1: the shows were done live, but then would be shown
Speaker 1: again and again throughout the twenty four period. A lot
Speaker 1: of these were half hour shows, so they didn't fill
Speaker 1: up a full day's worth of programming. So shows included
Speaker 1: stuff like Cheat, a show that revealed cheat codes and
Speaker 1: strategies for games. There was a show called Blister, which
Speaker 1: was a series that focused on action and adventure games.
Speaker 1: That show, by the way, was the first G four
Speaker 1: program to air after the week long Pong marathon concluded.
Speaker 1: There was Sweat. It was similar to Blister, except it
Speaker 1: was a show that really focused on sports video games,
Speaker 1: of course. There was a video game review show called
Speaker 1: Judgment Day that had originally started out as a segment
Speaker 1: on a show called The Electric Playground that had previously
Speaker 1: found airtime in Canada. Pulse was a news show about
Speaker 1: video games. There were shows that would do profiles on
Speaker 1: celebrities who liked to play video games. That one was
Speaker 1: called Players. There was another show that looked at people
Speaker 1: in the industry, people who were game designers or artists
Speaker 1: or musicians that worked on games. That one was called
Speaker 1: game Makers. I actually really liked that show. There was
Speaker 1: an interactive talk show called g four tv dot com.
Speaker 1: That one was my favorite show. It was hosted by
Speaker 1: Laura Foy, Tina Wood, and Scott Rubin as the original group,
Speaker 1: and they would look at news and rumors in the
Speaker 1: video game world. They would answer questions. People would write
Speaker 1: in and ask questions about video games that they would
Speaker 1: try to answer and it was legit a great show
Speaker 1: that I remember watching it all the time Back in
Speaker 1: those days. Cinema Tech was a bit of an odd
Speaker 1: program m. It was a thirty minute block of programming
Speaker 1: that was really just video game play footage and video
Speaker 1: game cut scenes with no hosts or really really any commentary.
Speaker 1: Then they had a couple of game show like shows.
Speaker 1: There was one called Game On where they would grab
Speaker 1: people to compete against each other in arcade games and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and then there was a team based
Speaker 1: show called Arena and Arena would originally feature actor Will
Speaker 1: Wheaton as one of the two hosts for the show,
Speaker 1: the other being Travis Oates. Wheaton was the only host
Speaker 1: in the G four lineup that the mainstream media really
Speaker 1: recognized as being something of a celebrity. Everyone else who
Speaker 1: was attached to G four, at least as far as
Speaker 1: the mainstream coverage was concerned, was an unknown, though several
Speaker 1: had been working in video games and video game journalism
Speaker 1: for years, and many of them would go on to
Speaker 1: have notable careers in production, the video game industry, in entertainment,
Speaker 1: and more. For example, Judgment, the video game review show
Speaker 1: would occasionally review gaming hardware. When they do that, they
Speaker 1: had a young woman who would showcase the hardware. She
Speaker 1: was sort of a show model showing off the stuff.
Speaker 1: That young woman happened to be Evangeline Lily, who would
Speaker 1: go on to be a big star in the j
Speaker 1: J Abrams series lost. One thing that G four paid
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to early on was its online presence.
Speaker 1: The channel had a dedicated website which hosted forums in
Speaker 1: which members could post about various topics. Show hosts and
Speaker 1: producers were known to pop into those forums on occasion
Speaker 1: and contribute to the conversation, building a strong sense of community.
Speaker 1: I was actually on those forums back in the day.
Speaker 1: This was stuff that I didn't remember while I was
Speaker 1: researching the show. I couldn't even remember that I used
Speaker 1: to be on the forums all the time, But I did.
Speaker 1: I popped on. I remember occasionally chatting with some of
Speaker 1: the hosts, which was kind of cool. Sometimes the host
Speaker 1: would even set up gaming sessions and which viewers could
Speaker 1: play in online games with some their favorite on air personalities.
Speaker 1: Some of the people in charge of monitoring the forums
Speaker 1: had come from other online communities, such as the Pseudo
Speaker 1: Entertainment forums. Now. According to an article in Variety, her
Speaker 1: Shorn had said that the channel had done quote better
Speaker 1: than expected in the quote in getting advertisement support for
Speaker 1: the channel. And this is probably a good time to
Speaker 1: talk about the advertising strategy in those early days because
Speaker 1: some of the decisions that they made were fairly controversial
Speaker 1: and again would help feed into the general complaints about
Speaker 1: journalistic integrity and video game coverage. Further down the line,
Speaker 1: I would argue that G four's advertising strategy really sowed
Speaker 1: the seeds for the complaints that were at the heart
Speaker 1: of gamer Gate. Keeping in mind the rest of gamer
Speaker 1: Gate quickly blossomed well outside of video game journalism ethics,
Speaker 1: so firstly, the better than expected comment might have been
Speaker 1: a bit us ingenuous. Early on, the channel found it
Speaker 1: difficult to fill up all the ad slots with you know,
Speaker 1: actual ads. To flesh it all out, the channel would
Speaker 1: include bumpers, station identification messages, often with celebrities who had
Speaker 1: no idea what they were identifying, and video game footage
Speaker 1: of players going for world records. That kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Her Schorn's innovative solution was to offer the opportunity to
Speaker 1: video game developers and publishers to purchase air time dedicated
Speaker 1: to their video game titles. Essentially, the deal was to
Speaker 1: run and add as if it were actual content within
Speaker 1: a show, so there'd be a section of a show
Speaker 1: dedicated to really focusing on a specific title and to
Speaker 1: a viewer of the show, it would seem like this
Speaker 1: was part of the show's programming as opposed to a
Speaker 1: paid for advertisement. The video game would get a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes of dedicated coverage. Shows like Pulse, which was
Speaker 1: the news show, and G four TV dot com would
Speaker 1: end up being the hosting mechanisms for these segments. It
Speaker 1: wasn't always clear to the viewer that the stuff they
Speaker 1: were seeing was paid for content. Now, as a content
Speaker 1: creator myself, I've always felt that transparency is incredibly important,
Speaker 1: as it shows you understand your audience and you aren't
Speaker 1: going to insult their intelligence because most of us are
Speaker 1: smart enough to recognize when someone is selling stuff to us. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair to her Shorn and the G for
Speaker 1: channel in general, landing deals with advertisers in two thousand
Speaker 1: two was super hard for many reasons, some of which
Speaker 1: I touched on in the tech TV episode that came
Speaker 1: out before this one. One of those reasons was that
Speaker 1: the economic impact of both the dot com bubble bursting
Speaker 1: and then the terrorist attack in the United States on
Speaker 1: September eleven, two thousand one, meant that a lot of
Speaker 1: companies were cutting way back on advertising and marketing budgets.
Speaker 1: So there just wasn't much money to go around. Complicating
Speaker 1: matters is that there were a ton of cable channels
Speaker 1: out there. Some of them, like G four, we're pretty
Speaker 1: niche in their focus, a very narrow focus on a
Speaker 1: on a demographic. Others were a little bit more broad,
Speaker 1: and everyone was after that ad revenue because that was
Speaker 1: the main source of money for most of these cable channels,
Speaker 1: at least the ones that were not based on a
Speaker 1: subscription model. So let's say you are running an ad
Speaker 1: agency and you've got a big client that wants you
Speaker 1: to run ads on television. So you're looking at your options,
Speaker 1: and it's a buyer's market because there are so many
Speaker 1: channels out there. They all have inventory, they all have
Speaker 1: these ad slot spaces they want to fill up, so
Speaker 1: there's a lot of potential space out there. So do
Speaker 1: you go with a niche channel geared towards a very
Speaker 1: specific hobby and it's a channel that doesn't even reach
Speaker 1: that many households in the grand scheme of things, or
Speaker 1: do go with a channel that has a more broad
Speaker 1: appeal and reaches more homes and it's probably for a
Speaker 1: pretty similar price, because no one can ask for very
Speaker 1: high prices on their advertising at this point, well, it
Speaker 1: will surprise no one that many ad agencies would take
Speaker 1: option number two. It just made more business sense. But
Speaker 1: it meant that G four was really having to hustle
Speaker 1: to get ads on its channel, which intern meant that
Speaker 1: the channel was hustling a lot to meet revenue goals.
Speaker 1: The company was trying to keep costs down and the
Speaker 1: shows were fairly low budget to produce, but it was
Speaker 1: still a struggle. By two thousand three, a year into
Speaker 1: the channel's existence, G four had made its way onto
Speaker 1: the basic cable package of eleven million households in the
Speaker 1: United States. That was a big improvement, and in fact
Speaker 1: it was a bit ahead of schedule, but still far
Speaker 1: shy of that thirty to forty million households. It would
Speaker 1: need to make it look attractive enough to many big
Speaker 1: advertisers to jump on board, So the channel was caught
Speaker 1: in kind of a catch twenty two. It wasn't going
Speaker 1: to land those ad deals without getting onto more basic
Speaker 1: cable packages. But because it was almost entirely dependent upon
Speaker 1: Comcast as a cable care earrier, and because Comcast itself
Speaker 1: had a limited number of subscribers, it wasn't likely to
Speaker 1: reach that goal, but it still the channel just kept
Speaker 1: plugging along, and besides, the channel still had a few
Speaker 1: years to go before it had to break even on
Speaker 1: that one fifty million dollars that Comcast had floated at launch.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, I'm talking about households that could
Speaker 1: potentially watch this channel. I'm not even talking about viewers here.
Speaker 1: I'm saying forty million households that would have G four
Speaker 1: as a viable option on their cable subscription, not even
Speaker 1: whether or not they ever watched it. Well, all of
Speaker 1: this stuff was going on behind the scenes, but in
Speaker 1: front of the cameras things were also getting very rocky.
Speaker 1: The channels sent hosts to cover the E three event,
Speaker 1: which actually went pretty well, but towards the end of
Speaker 1: two thousand two, Travis Oates and Will Wheaton, the hosts
Speaker 1: of the show Arena, quit their jobs right in the
Speaker 1: middle of the season or towards the end of it.
Speaker 1: Wheaton posted an explanation from his point of view about
Speaker 1: what had happened that led up to his departure, and
Speaker 1: he included allegations that a producer on the show had
Speaker 1: seriously mishandled pretty much everything A friend of mine who
Speaker 1: was a moderator for G four's online forums, wrote a
Speaker 1: blog post that said, there was more to the story
Speaker 1: than what Wheaton had shared, but sounds to me like,
Speaker 1: however you shake it out. The arena situation was particularly ugly.
Speaker 1: G four replaced the original hosts with Lee Rareman and
Speaker 1: Michael Loudon. Loudon would later get replaced by a guy
Speaker 1: named Kevin Pereira. Kevin Pereira had been an active member
Speaker 1: of the G four forums and then he landed a
Speaker 1: gig as a production assistant for G four tv dot
Speaker 1: com and gradually worked his way up so that he
Speaker 1: could be considered for this host role. So that's how
Speaker 1: Mr Pereira got his start in front of the cameras.
Speaker 1: He would end up playing an increasingly important role over
Speaker 1: at G four as a personality. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: G four held its first award show, which acknowledged video
Speaker 1: game developers for stuff like best Online Game, which was
Speaker 1: Battlefield ninety two and it won that in two thousand three.
Speaker 1: In that first award ceremony, they also had categories like
Speaker 1: Best Story. Kingdom Hearts won that one. I tried to
Speaker 1: understand what Kingdom hearts this story was, but even the
Speaker 1: brilliant Brian David Gilbert couldn't get me up to speed
Speaker 1: on that one, and I tried. The show also had
Speaker 1: awards for some more tongue in cheek categories, such as
Speaker 1: character You'd most like to be ended up being Dante
Speaker 1: from Devil May Cry two or hottest character Tina Armstrong
Speaker 1: in Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball. I think those
Speaker 1: categories were a clear indicator that the channel was really
Speaker 1: taking aim at that eighteen to thirty four male demographic.
Speaker 1: Also feel badly for anyone who loved video games but
Speaker 1: who did not fall into this particular stereotype that the
Speaker 1: channel was catering to. I read a few posts written
Speaker 1: by women during this time who were watching programs like
Speaker 1: G four TV dot com because they love video games,
Speaker 1: but they were starting to feel purposefully ignored or alienated
Speaker 1: with just about everything else the G four channel was doing.
Speaker 1: The channel canceled a few shows like Game On that
Speaker 1: just weren't doing very well, but ultimately the limiting factor
Speaker 1: for the channel was its reach. Comcast was able to
Speaker 1: carry G four to about fifteen million households by two four,
Speaker 1: but that's where things were capped. Comcast didn't couldn't reach
Speaker 1: more households by itself, and there was no single flagship
Speaker 1: show on the channel that was generating enough buzz to
Speaker 1: convince other cable providers and satellite companies to include G
Speaker 1: four in their lineups. So there didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: any way to organically grow the channels reach. They would
Speaker 1: have to buy it. I'll explain more in just a second.
Speaker 1: This is where we come up to what was pretty
Speaker 1: much the end of the previous episode, the acquisition of
Speaker 1: tech TV. Now, the real purpose of that acquisition was
Speaker 1: to get G four into more homes. Tech TV had
Speaker 1: about four times the reach of G four, and the
Speaker 1: two didn't overlap that much. G four's reach and tech
Speaker 1: TVs reach were in different areas because Comcast had been
Speaker 1: dropping tech TV from its cable lineups in different markets,
Speaker 1: and G four wasn't being carried on the various carriers
Speaker 1: that were providing tech TV. So the thought was this
Speaker 1: way they could buy that enormous amount of reach, and
Speaker 1: it would be a shortcut to get enough households to
Speaker 1: potentially attract bigger advertisers. They would no longer be limited,
Speaker 1: they would get that thirty to forty million households they
Speaker 1: needed to have as a bargaining chip. The messaging around
Speaker 1: the acquisition was that the two channels were going to
Speaker 1: join forces and there would be programs from both channels
Speaker 1: featured on the new unified channel, but that's not what
Speaker 1: was really happening in the background. In reality, pretty much
Speaker 1: everyone at tech TV was fired, and they were told
Speaker 1: that they might be able to land a job with
Speaker 1: the new channel, but that it wasn't a guarantee. Tech
Speaker 1: TV's base of operations was located in San Francisco, but
Speaker 1: G four was down in Los Angeles, so it would
Speaker 1: mean that a lot of people would have to relocate
Speaker 1: for a job they weren't sure they would actually have
Speaker 1: for very long. Ultimately, just three shows from tech TV
Speaker 1: would join the G four lineup. They were the Screen
Speaker 1: Savers without host Leo Laporte, who couldn't come to an
Speaker 1: agreement with the new channel, x Play, a video game
Speaker 1: review show that had the best fit with the rest
Speaker 1: of G four's line up, and an anime show called
Speaker 1: Anime Unleashed. All the other shows on tech TV in
Speaker 1: the United States got the ax. G four relaunched on
Speaker 1: May two, thousand four as G four tech t e V,
Speaker 1: and while tech TV had been gutted in the process,
Speaker 1: G four also canceled several of its original programs as
Speaker 1: well over the following year, including shows like Players, Pulse, Blister,
Speaker 1: Arena Portal, and eventually Judgment Day, since the executives figured
Speaker 1: there'd be no reason to run to video game review
Speaker 1: shows on the same channel, and they also canceled reruns
Speaker 1: of an old game show called Starcade that had been
Speaker 1: playing on G four. The Screen Savers, which initially did
Speaker 1: survive the transfer over to G four, would also change dramatically.
Speaker 1: While it was originally a show dedicated to technology in
Speaker 1: general and computers in particular, and had segments about hardware
Speaker 1: ways to fix computer problems, they took live calls from
Speaker 1: users to help them with whatever issues they were having,
Speaker 1: it would slowly drift more toward a pop culture oriented show,
Speaker 1: so while it existed in name, the show itself changed
Speaker 1: enough to no longer really be the Screen Savers. At
Speaker 1: the top levels of leadership, there was also a change
Speaker 1: of bruin early in two thousand five, it became clear
Speaker 1: that there was a push to move G four away
Speaker 1: from being quite so video games centric, as it had
Speaker 1: been at launch. One show that the channel picked up
Speaker 1: in early two thousand five was Formula D, a television
Speaker 1: show dedicated to drift racing. I remember when that came
Speaker 1: out and I thought, what. And the effort to cater
Speaker 1: to a male audience became even more apparent with the
Speaker 1: launch of a show called Girls Gone Wired, which was
Speaker 1: about I think you can guess, but yeah, if you
Speaker 1: really wanted to ogul video game characters, I guess that
Speaker 1: was the show for you. The channel also began to
Speaker 1: invest more in syndicated runs of shows that also aimed
Speaker 1: at the eighteen to thirty four male audience. For example,
Speaker 1: in late two thousand five, G four would pay seven
Speaker 1: point eight million dollars to license the reruns of The
Speaker 1: Man Show from Comedy Central. It's a comedy show created
Speaker 1: by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla that reveled in all
Speaker 1: things stereotypically identified as being manly, mostly ogling women. By
Speaker 1: February two thousand five, the pretense that G four and
Speaker 1: Tech TV where a partnership, was completely dropped and the
Speaker 1: channel became just G four. Not that this game as
Speaker 1: a surprise to anyone What might have come as a
Speaker 1: surprise to her Shorn was that by September of two
Speaker 1: thousand five, he would be on the outs. There's not
Speaker 1: a lot that was actually written about his departure at
Speaker 1: that time, apart from the fact that Comcast quote unquote
Speaker 1: dismissed him. But whatever the circumstances were, he was replaced
Speaker 1: by a former Direct TV executive named Neil Tiles. Tiles
Speaker 1: would push even harder to move G four away from
Speaker 1: its focus on video games, with the goal of turning
Speaker 1: it more into a lifestyle channel aimed at men, not
Speaker 1: too different from what Spiked t V was doing. Spike TV,
Speaker 1: by the way, had started off as the Nashville Network,
Speaker 1: which was all about country music and that lifestyle, then
Speaker 1: got rebranded into the National Network in two thousand and
Speaker 1: then became Spike TV in two thousand three. Uh in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, that channel also got rebranded and today
Speaker 1: that channel is called the Paramount Network, so it's changed again.
Speaker 1: G four canceled G four tv dot Com, which was
Speaker 1: a big blow to me as I had loved the show.
Speaker 1: I felt the hosts were genuine, entertaining and informative. Kevin
Speaker 1: Pereira had moved over as a host of The Screen Savers,
Speaker 1: but that show was heading for a total rebranding. In fact,
Speaker 1: you might even argue that The Screensavers was effectively totally
Speaker 1: scrapped and a brand new show came into its place.
Speaker 1: This new show, which would become a flagship program on
Speaker 1: G four was Attack of the Show. Pereira would stay on,
Speaker 1: but the other hosts of The Screen Savers all left
Speaker 1: to pursue other opportunities. One thing Attack of the Show
Speaker 1: did was launched a huge search for a new co host.
Speaker 1: The original goal was to hire a new male co
Speaker 1: host for the show, and at that time I was
Speaker 1: working in a consulting firm in Atlanta and wasn't terribly happy.
Speaker 1: I had a background in theater, done some radio work,
Speaker 1: but that was about it. Despite the overwhelming odds, I
Speaker 1: chose to travel to one of the three cities where
Speaker 1: they held initial auditions. I remember San Francisco was one,
Speaker 1: another was Los Angeles, and I believe the third was
Speaker 1: New York. And boy, wouldn't this be a cool story
Speaker 1: if I had landed that gig. I didn't. In fact,
Speaker 1: nobody did. Attack of the Show would have a few
Speaker 1: finalists of that audition process that would host a segment
Speaker 1: or two on the show is sort of a trial,
Speaker 1: but ultimately G four didn't hire any of them. Instead,
Speaker 1: a bit later they hired another host, who they quickly
Speaker 1: replaced with the actress Olivia m who would go on
Speaker 1: to become one of the biggest stars to really first
Speaker 1: make her name at G four. Oh and and this
Speaker 1: is no shade on ms Munn, who I readily admit
Speaker 1: was a much better choice for what they wanted than
Speaker 1: than I would have been. A dumpy, bald dude from Georgia.
Speaker 1: Olivium On was hands down the best choice. G four
Speaker 1: made the right call on that one. By two thousand six,
Speaker 1: the only original G four show still on the air
Speaker 1: was Cinema Tech. Everything else by that point had been canceled.
Speaker 1: Every original G four show was no longer on the network,
Speaker 1: and Cinema Tech pretty much featured gameplay and cut scenes
Speaker 1: from games, so you can't get much more low budget
Speaker 1: than that when it comes to production costs. I mean,
Speaker 1: I imagine there were probably some licensing fees that had
Speaker 1: to be paid, but that's about it. Cinema Tech, however,
Speaker 1: would finally get canceled in two thousand seven, and then
Speaker 1: none of the original G four shows would be still
Speaker 1: with the network. In two thousand seven, the channel didn't
Speaker 1: look anything like it's a incarnation. Pereira and Munn continued
Speaker 1: to host Attack of the show, and Pereira was really
Speaker 1: the only link back to the old crew, and even
Speaker 1: then you have to remember that he had started on
Speaker 1: camera as a co host on Arena. G four continued
Speaker 1: to strike deals to run reruns of other shows on
Speaker 1: the channel, and this is when G four kind of
Speaker 1: turned into the Cops and Ninja Warrior channel, which you
Speaker 1: gotta be honest, I love Ninja Warrior that I still
Speaker 1: love American Ninja Warrior. Those men and women are incredible.
Speaker 1: But G four also began showing reruns of the series Cheaters,
Speaker 1: and the audience that had been there for the launch
Speaker 1: of the channel was pretty much completely alienated. Don't even
Speaker 1: think about how the Tech TV audience felt they had
Speaker 1: seen their programming get obliterated in the process. The only
Speaker 1: show that remained from the Tech TV days that had
Speaker 1: not really been tampered with that much was Explay, and
Speaker 1: even that one got a little wackier over time. The
Speaker 1: little bit of lips service G four paid to video
Speaker 1: games at that point was disastrous, Like they couldn't do
Speaker 1: that right. The channel sent crews to E three to
Speaker 1: cover press conferences, but because G four had to run
Speaker 1: commercials and because these were live events, those two things
Speaker 1: didn't go together. That great ads would interrupt highly anticipated
Speaker 1: presentations such as the reveal of Mass Effect or the
Speaker 1: Halo three trailer, and the message was clear, video games
Speaker 1: just weren't important to G four anymore. The channel did
Speaker 1: try to create a few animated series like Happy Tree,
Speaker 1: Friends and Code Monkeys, which featured the Fantastic Song by
Speaker 1: Jonathan Colton as the theme. These didn't get enough of
Speaker 1: a following to last more than a season or two,
Speaker 1: and rather than risk launching more failures, G four continued
Speaker 1: to pour money into licensing deals so that the channel
Speaker 1: could run reruns of other shows like Heroes and Lost.
Speaker 1: Those licensing fees cost a lot of money, but the
Speaker 1: thinking was, these shows have already a proven track record.
Speaker 1: But here was the problem. People had already seen those
Speaker 1: shows because you know, they had already aired on broadcast television.
Speaker 1: You didn't even need a cable subscription to watch them.
Speaker 1: The two shows that were really doing well were Attack
Speaker 1: of the show and explay, So you could argue that
Speaker 1: the programs that actually were performing well in the channel
Speaker 1: were the ones that catered to its original intended audience,
Speaker 1: although that's a stretch for Attack of the Show since
Speaker 1: it really didn't resemble the screen savers at all at
Speaker 1: that point. Also, bother of those shows came out of
Speaker 1: or grew out of the Tech TV programming, not the
Speaker 1: G four programming. Things were not going great. The best
Speaker 1: performing shows at their peak. We're bringing in a hundred
Speaker 1: thirty thousand viewers around this time, and that's nothing in
Speaker 1: TV land. Cable carriers began to drop G four from
Speaker 1: their lineups in order to replace it with something that
Speaker 1: might attract more viewers. In November, Direct TV dumped G four.
Speaker 1: The was an enormous setback, and it pretty much erased
Speaker 1: the effect G four had of acquiring tech TV back
Speaker 1: in two thousand four. Remember, the real reason for that
Speaker 1: acquisition was to get the channel on more cable and
Speaker 1: satellite carriers. Olivia Munn announced she was leaving G four
Speaker 1: and Attack of the Show in two She had landed
Speaker 1: a role on an NBC show called Perfect Couples UH
Speaker 1: that would launch in early eleven and that show would
Speaker 1: end up getting canceled a few months later, but Man
Speaker 1: dedicated her attention and time to pursuing her acting career.
Speaker 1: She landed gigs and films and TV series. Her departure
Speaker 1: was a big blow to G four, as her onscreen
Speaker 1: chemistry with Pereira was one of the big reasons attack
Speaker 1: of the show was doing so well. Actress Candice Bailey
Speaker 1: would step in to become the new co host of
Speaker 1: the show. While things were super rocky, they wouldn't end
Speaker 1: just yet. The channel was able to hold on for
Speaker 1: a couple more years. Back in two thousand nine, Comcast
Speaker 1: announced its intent to merge with NBC Universal, which was
Speaker 1: a process that was completed in twleven. In early Neil
Speaker 1: Tynes would step down as president of the channel and
Speaker 1: Adam Stotsky, who had previously been the president of NBC's
Speaker 1: entertainment division, would take on the leadership role. But one
Speaker 1: thing Stotsky did not have, notably was experience in actual
Speaker 1: television programming. He did have experience with branding, however, and
Speaker 1: Stotsky worked to try and land a deal in which
Speaker 1: G four would undergo an entire transformation. It would undergo
Speaker 1: a full rebranding into the Esquire Network, but that deal
Speaker 1: ultimately fell through and instead the Style Network would get
Speaker 1: that rebranding instead. Turns out it wouldn't have mattered. The
Speaker 1: Esquire Network ceased to be in twenty seventeen anyway. In
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, ex Play host Adam Sessler began hearing
Speaker 1: rumors that his days were numbered as a host on
Speaker 1: the channel. In April of that year, he was officially
Speaker 1: fired for reasons I've never been able to determine, apart
Speaker 1: from perhaps the channel just wanted to cut costs and Sessler,
Speaker 1: as a longtime veteran, might have had a pretty high
Speaker 1: salary comparatively speaking. He would end up with Revision three
Speaker 1: for a while, so for a short time we were
Speaker 1: technically co workers. The following month, Kevin Pereira announced he
Speaker 1: was leaving G four and Attack of the show after
Speaker 1: the E three trade show in June of that year.
Speaker 1: His departure was pretty much the death blow two Attack
Speaker 1: of the show, though it would limp along for the
Speaker 1: rest of two thousand twelve, shooting the final episode in
Speaker 1: December two thousand twelve that would not air until January
Speaker 1: two thirteen, so technically most people say. The show lasted
Speaker 1: till X Play also aired its final show at that
Speaker 1: same time. G four would continue to run reruns, but
Speaker 1: slowly those licensing deals were expiring. By November, there just
Speaker 1: wasn't enough there there, and NBC announced that the channel
Speaker 1: would go off the air. It was done. The Canadian
Speaker 1: version of G four, which I haven't really talked about
Speaker 1: here and which would carry much more of the old
Speaker 1: tech TV programming for much longer, would last until two
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen, so it outlived the American version of
Speaker 1: G four and the American version of tech TV. In fact,
Speaker 1: it outlived the Esquire Network, the channel that that G
Speaker 1: four was supposed to turn into. Now there's a lot
Speaker 1: more that can be said about this story, and like
Speaker 1: I've indicated a few times, the big story here is
Speaker 1: not unique to G four. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: channels that started out catering to a specific core audience.
Speaker 1: But the demands of the industry typically say, it's not
Speaker 1: good enough for you to do well. It's not good
Speaker 1: enough for you to get good ratings. You need to
Speaker 1: grow year over year. Those ratings need to get better
Speaker 1: each year, and eventually to grow you have to expand
Speaker 1: beyond your core audience. You can't just keep appealing to
Speaker 1: the same people to watch more stuff. Now, I perly
Speaker 1: think growth on its own is not the best measure
Speaker 1: for success, and it can lead to catastrophic failures and
Speaker 1: bad decisions like it did with G four. But what
Speaker 1: the heck do I know. I'm just a tech podcaster.
Speaker 1: But it was interesting going back and looking at the
Speaker 1: history of these two channels. They had a huge influence
Speaker 1: on me. In fact, I think I can honestly say
Speaker 1: that without tech TV, without G four, and also without
Speaker 1: the influence of c nets buzz out Loud podcast, there
Speaker 1: never would have been a tech stuff I never would
Speaker 1: have even thought to do a technology podcast without those predecessors.
Speaker 1: And while I cannot attest to being nearly as informative
Speaker 1: or entertaining as those shows could be and those channels
Speaker 1: could be, I do my humble best. So G four TV,
Speaker 1: you know, it came, and it went, and it's I
Speaker 1: thought it was just gone forever. And then in late
Speaker 1: July tw the G four TV Twitter account, which people
Speaker 1: were shocked to find out was still uh, you know, accessible,
Speaker 1: tweeted out a teaser that showed a game upon playing
Speaker 1: in the message saying we never stopped playing and giving
Speaker 1: the year of twenty one, thus indicating that G four
Speaker 1: TV is returning in the channel that we all thought
Speaker 1: was gone forever. A little bit later, Blair Herder, who
Speaker 1: has a long history with G four TV, suggested and
Speaker 1: ask me anything or a m a on Reddit and
Speaker 1: began to answer some questions. Uh clearly couldn't answer everything,
Speaker 1: but gave us a little bit more information about what
Speaker 1: this return actually is going to look like. Part of
Speaker 1: it looks like it's going to be a web series.
Speaker 1: It also looks like they're going to attempt to get
Speaker 1: hold of episodes of asked G four TV programming, stuff
Speaker 1: that hasn't been seen in years. Mr Herder said, um
Speaker 1: about that quote. While I technically have access to G
Speaker 1: four's archive of old shows, they're locked in a musty
Speaker 1: burbank tape vault in a secret company basement that we
Speaker 1: literally can't access right now because of COVID No joke,
Speaker 1: but stay tuned. I'll be pulling out the old VHS
Speaker 1: machine as soon as the pandemic lets me. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: please let us know what shows you'd like to see.
Speaker 1: End quote. So it looks like there's at least the
Speaker 1: possibility for older programming to be seen yet again, and
Speaker 1: then what about new programming. Well, the general consensus is
Speaker 1: that Attack of the Show and Explay will both return
Speaker 1: in some form, though no telling who will be hosting it. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's no real indication of which hosts might be returning.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of them expressed utter surprise and
Speaker 1: shock when G four TVs Twitter account even posted that
Speaker 1: was coming back. The whole endeavor is part of Comcast
Speaker 1: and NBC Universal, so it's got a big company behind it,
Speaker 1: but we just don't really know too much about what's
Speaker 1: going to manifest from this. One thing that I can
Speaker 1: say is that G four TV has opened up casting
Speaker 1: for whatever programming they have in mind. Even though we
Speaker 1: don't know very much about it, we do know they're
Speaker 1: looking for talent and uh. In fact, there is an
Speaker 1: email address you can send information to casting at g
Speaker 1: four tv dot com, and I would recommend looking into
Speaker 1: that if you're interested. But I would also recommend you know,
Speaker 1: looking over any agreements if you actually do get into
Speaker 1: the whole process, because these sort of jobs require an
Speaker 1: awful lot of focus, a lot of energy, a lot
Speaker 1: of time, a lot of effort. It is. It is
Speaker 1: not easy work to create content. It's great work, it's
Speaker 1: not easy. So you want to make sure that any
Speaker 1: agreement is uh fair to both you and to the employer.
Speaker 1: And that means, you know, don't just if you get
Speaker 1: an offer. For those out there who are going to
Speaker 1: try and apply, if you get an offer, look it over.
Speaker 1: Make sure it's fair. And I'm not saying that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be. I just don't know, and I know that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of horror stories about people who
Speaker 1: got into agreements because they really wanted to do this thing.
Speaker 1: They always wanted to create content and then turned into
Speaker 1: something that was a lot harder and a lot bigger
Speaker 1: of the demand and not as much return as what
Speaker 1: they needed in order to make a living. So just
Speaker 1: be careful, is all I'm saying. But I am excited
Speaker 1: to see G four TV comeback, in whatever format it
Speaker 1: will re emerge in. I have a lot of fond
Speaker 1: memories of watching G four TV. I mean, I did
Speaker 1: audition for them once upon a time, So you know,
Speaker 1: I want to see them succeed, and I want to
Speaker 1: see all the people attached to it succeed as well.
Speaker 1: So I have high hopes. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: to expect, but I thought it would be good to
Speaker 1: rerun this episode, remind everyone what G four TV was
Speaker 1: all about, and to start looking forward to see what
Speaker 1: will come next. If you guys have suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a technology, a company,
Speaker 1: trend in tech, whatever it may be, let me know
Speaker 1: reach out on Twitter to handle this Text Stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Eight