Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works and Love of
Speaker 1: all Things Tech. And this is the second episode I'm
Speaker 1: devoting to a pair of tech related television channels that
Speaker 1: made an attempt to court a tech savvy, largely male
Speaker 1: audience on cable television. Our last episode was about tech TV,
Speaker 1: which I talked about up to when that channel merged
Speaker 1: with another one. Today, I'm going to focus on that
Speaker 1: other channel that would end up getting merged with tech
Speaker 1: TV before spoiler alert, both would be ultimately shut down entirely.
Speaker 1: That tech channel was called G four TV, which was
Speaker 1: a television channel marketed towards gamers. For a bit longer
Speaker 1: than a day, cade video game enthusiasts had their very
Speaker 1: own cable channel, well sort of, because the channel would
Speaker 1: change dramatically and would no longer really cater to video
Speaker 1: 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 aisle 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: M 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 is 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: Hershorn would recruit Keenan Ivory Waynes, who successfully pitched a
Speaker 1: sketch comedy show called In Living Color, which in turn
Speaker 1: would launch the careers of folks like Jim Kerry, Jimmie Fox,
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Lopez, among others. Her Shorn stayed with Fox
Speaker 1: for just three years, from nineteen eighty six to nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. Bull Durham and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels would both
Speaker 1: come out in Night, but his involvement in those had
Speaker 1: been in the early stages of the films, and he
Speaker 1: still did some independent production work. He then moved over
Speaker 1: to the mouse House. He joined the Walt Disney Company
Speaker 1: as the senior vice president of production for a brand
Speaker 1: new movie studio under Disney called Hollywood Pictures, which would
Speaker 1: make films like The Santa Claus among others. In nineteen
Speaker 1: Disney named her Shorn the president of Walt Disney TV,
Speaker 1: while he would also serve as executive vice president of
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group. He stayed on until nineteen
Speaker 1: when he either left or was you know, told to leave.
Speaker 1: While Disney TV and ABC began to streamline operations and
Speaker 1: get rid of redundancies. It was in two thousand, two
Speaker 1: years after tech TV, then called z d TV, had launched,
Speaker 1: that her Shorn began to put together his first ideas
Speaker 1: for what would become G four. He attended the trade
Speaker 1: show E three for the first time. That's the big
Speaker 1: North American video games trade show, and according to later interviews,
Speaker 1: her Shorn originally thought about how video games have a
Speaker 1: lot of animation in them, and he had just spent
Speaker 1: a few years as president of Walt Disney Television, which
Speaker 1: produced several animated series, So maybe he thought you could
Speaker 1: do something with the animation and video games and turn
Speaker 1: it into a linear form of storytelling. His concept evolved
Speaker 1: into a channel that would be similar to something like
Speaker 1: MTV was back in the early nineteen eighties, only instead
Speaker 1: of focusing on music and the rock and roll lifestyle
Speaker 1: cue the song by Cake here, it would use video
Speaker 1: games as the central focus for the channel. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, he wanted to engineer a channel geared toward
Speaker 1: a younger audience with a bit of a bellious edge,
Speaker 1: you know, in 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 tried 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 games, 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 Advanced, because cell phone
Speaker 1: games were almost not a thing. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: snake but there wasn't much else in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: but hey, who am I to criticize this logic. Also
Speaker 1: much later, her Shorn would reveal in an interview with
Speaker 1: Kevin Pereira that he had asked his wife to secure
Speaker 1: a U r L for the new company before they
Speaker 1: had even figured out what the name was going to be,
Speaker 1: and he wanted video game to be in the name
Speaker 1: for the U r L, but his wife wasn't able
Speaker 1: to find an available U r L with video games
Speaker 1: in it, so he said, just grab something with the
Speaker 1: initial V or G or something, and she went down
Speaker 1: the list and said, G once taken G two's tip,
Speaker 1: and G three, G four is available, and he said,
Speaker 1: just take that. So it's possible that G four got
Speaker 1: its name because literally that was the available U r L.
Speaker 1: In case you are curious, this was during what is
Speaker 1: generally called the sixth generation of video game systems, also
Speaker 1: known as the eight bit era, this being, you know,
Speaker 1: at the time when G four would launch. That is,
Speaker 1: Consoles belonging to this generation included the original Xbox, the
Speaker 1: PlayStation two, the Nintendo GameCube, and the Sega Dreamcast, though
Speaker 1: the Dreamcast was already starting to fade away by two
Speaker 1: thousand two, and that was the last year anyone made
Speaker 1: games for the Dreamcast outside of Japan. Uh Japan Dreamcast
Speaker 1: games would keep on going till about two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: The executive crew for this company would include a lot
Speaker 1: of folks from the production side of entertainment, so her
Speaker 1: Shorn would serve as president and CEO. That chief operating
Speaker 1: Officer or c OO 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 there 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 around thirty
Speaker 1: to forty million households total, and the prime demographic, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, was eighteen to thirty four year old men.
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind, this was back in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's, when video games were still considered a sort
Speaker 1: of niche hobby for nerds. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: negative stereotypes about gamers, mostly that they were a bunch
Speaker 1: of socially awkward losers. And I used this as the stereotype.
Speaker 1: I don't think people who are socially awkward are losers
Speaker 1: at all, but this is the kind of thought process
Speaker 1: people were in back then, that video game players were
Speaker 1: socially awkward losers who, according to most insults, lived in
Speaker 1: their parents basements and played video games, never stepped outside ever,
Speaker 1: didn't know how to talk to anybody else. That kind
Speaker 1: of thing. That was very much a predominant stereotypical view
Speaker 1: of people who liked video games back in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's, And it's quite possible that some of the
Speaker 1: folks at G four Media, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: people in charge shared some of those perceptions about video
Speaker 1: game fans. There was next to no acknowledgement that women
Speaker 1: can also play and enjoy video games too. They were
Speaker 1: just not really considered part of the equation, or that
Speaker 1: there are video game fans out there who are also active,
Speaker 1: productive and successful members of society. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the guiding decisions for designing programming would be
Speaker 1: rooted in the same sort of toxic mindset that much
Speaker 1: of gamer Gate was based in. And also, while I
Speaker 1: don't want to suggest that gamer Gate was in any
Speaker 1: way a legitimate movement, I do think that G four's
Speaker 1: revenue practices would raise some eyebrows when it comes to
Speaker 1: journalistic integrity and unbiased reviews. I'll explain more about that
Speaker 1: in just a moment. Skeptics worried that the channel would
Speaker 1: be unable to muster a following. I mean, who the
Speaker 1: 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 thousand two that Comcast
Speaker 1: was going to launch a video game centric channel later
Speaker 1: that year. As far as I could tell, this was
Speaker 1: the earliest public acknowledgement of G four. Comcast said it
Speaker 1: would launch the channel to seven million subscribers of the
Speaker 1: company's basic cable package. That wouldn't quite be the case
Speaker 1: at launch. The hope was that Comcasts support would give
Speaker 1: the fledgling channel enough of a head start to land
Speaker 1: some good advertising deals for its programming. An article in
Speaker 1: sf Gate that published one month after the channel actually
Speaker 1: went live, which was in April two thou too, had
Speaker 1: a slightly different set of figures. According to the article,
Speaker 1: G four was initially available in about three million households,
Speaker 1: with the goal of reaching five million by the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand two oh and like tech TV, it
Speaker 1: wasn't initially available in San Francisco, which, at least in
Speaker 1: the minds of the tech industry, is the center of
Speaker 1: the known universe. When the channel went live, it broadcasts
Speaker 1: something pretty unusual for its first week, a Pong marathon yep,
Speaker 1: the classic video game Pong. It was the thirtieth anniversary
Speaker 1: for Pong, and sometimes the footage included two players going
Speaker 1: head to head against each other. Sometimes it was a
Speaker 1: player versus a computer opponent, but it was just Pong.
Speaker 1: After the first week, we'd get a better idea of
Speaker 1: what G four was going to be all about, at
Speaker 1: least at first. I'll explain more in a second, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. After the Pong marathon stunt,
Speaker 1: there were about a dozen programs that ran in heavy rotation.
Speaker 1: By that, I mean reruns or replays of a show.
Speaker 1: Some of the shows were done live, but then would
Speaker 1: be shown again and again throughout the twenty four period.
Speaker 1: A lot of these were half hour shows, so they
Speaker 1: didn't fill up a full day's worth of programming. So
Speaker 1: shows included stuff like Cheat, a show that revealed cheat
Speaker 1: codes and strategies for games. There was a show called Blister,
Speaker 1: which 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. Send the Tech was a bit of an
Speaker 1: odd program. 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 Day, 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 of their favorite on
Speaker 1: air personalities. Some of the people in charge of monitoring
Speaker 1: the forums had come from other online communities, such as
Speaker 1: the pseudo Entertainment forums. Now. According to an article in Variety,
Speaker 1: her Shorn had said that the channel had done quote
Speaker 1: better than expected end 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 expect did comment might have
Speaker 1: been a bit disingenuous. 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 Detech TV episode that came out
Speaker 1: before this one. One of those reasons was that the
Speaker 1: economic impact of both the dot com bubble bursting and
Speaker 1: then the terrorist attack in the United States on September eleven,
Speaker 1: two tho one, meant that a lot of companies were
Speaker 1: cutting way back on advertising and marketing budgets, so there
Speaker 1: just wasn't much money to go around. Complicating matters is
Speaker 1: that there were a ton of cable channels out there.
Speaker 1: Some of them, like G four, were pretty niche in
Speaker 1: their focus, a very narrow focus on a on a demographic.
Speaker 1: Others were a little bit more broad, and everyone was
Speaker 1: after that ad revenue because that was the main source
Speaker 1: of money for most of these cable channels, at least
Speaker 1: the ones that were not based on a subscription model.
Speaker 1: So let's say you are running an ad agency and
Speaker 1: you've got a big client that wants you to run
Speaker 1: ads on television. So you're looking at your options, and
Speaker 1: it's a buyer's market because there are so many channels
Speaker 1: out there. They all have inventory, they all have these
Speaker 1: ad slot spaces, they want to fill up, So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of potential space out there. So do you
Speaker 1: go with a niche channel geared towards a very specific
Speaker 1: hobby and it's a channel that doesn't even reach that
Speaker 1: many households in the grand scheme of things, or do
Speaker 1: go with a channel that has a more broad appeal
Speaker 1: and reaches more homes and it's probably for a pretty
Speaker 1: similar price, because no one can ask for very highs
Speaker 1: on their advertising at this point. Well, it will surprise
Speaker 1: no one that many ad agencies would take option number two.
Speaker 1: It just made more business sense, but it meant that
Speaker 1: G four was really having to hustle to get ads
Speaker 1: on its channel, which in turn meant that the channel
Speaker 1: was hustling a lot to meet revenue goals. The company
Speaker 1: was trying to keep costs down and the shows were
Speaker 1: fairly low budget to produce, but it was still a struggle.
Speaker 1: By two thousand three, a year into the channel's existence,
Speaker 1: G four had made its way onto the basic cable
Speaker 1: package of eleven million households in the United States. That
Speaker 1: was a big improvement, and in fact it was a
Speaker 1: bit ahead of schedule, but still far shy of that
Speaker 1: thirty to forty million households. It would need to make
Speaker 1: it look attractive enough to many big advertisers to jump
Speaker 1: on board, So the channel was caught in kind of
Speaker 1: a catch twenty two. It wasn't going to land those
Speaker 1: ad deals without getting onto more basic cable packages, but
Speaker 1: because it was almost entirely depending upon Comcast as a
Speaker 1: cable carrier, and because Comcast itself had a limited number
Speaker 1: of subscribers, it wasn't likely to reach that goal. But
Speaker 1: it's still the channenge just kept plugging along, and besides,
Speaker 1: the channel still had a few years to go before
Speaker 1: it had to break even on that one million dollars
Speaker 1: that Comcast had floated at launch. And keep in mind,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about households that could potentially watch this channel.
Speaker 1: I'm not even talking about viewers here. I'm saying forty
Speaker 1: million households that would have G four as a viable
Speaker 1: option on their cable subscription, not even whether or not
Speaker 1: they ever watched it. Well, all of this stuff was
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes, but in front of the
Speaker 1: cameras things were also getting very rocky. The channels sent
Speaker 1: hosts to cover the E three event, which actually went
Speaker 1: pretty well, but towards the end of two thousand two,
Speaker 1: Travis Oates and Will Wheaton, the hosts of the show Arena,
Speaker 1: quit their jobs right in the middle of the season
Speaker 1: or towards the end of it. Wheaton posted an explanation
Speaker 1: from his point of view about what had happened that
Speaker 1: led up to his departure, and he included allegations that
Speaker 1: a producer on the show had seriously mishandled pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine, who was a moderator for G
Speaker 1: four's online forums, wrote a blog post that said there
Speaker 1: was more to the story than what Wheaton had shared,
Speaker 1: but sounds to me like, however you shake it out.
Speaker 1: The arena situation was particularly ugly. G four replaced the
Speaker 1: original hosts with Lee Rareman and Michael Loudon. Loudon would
Speaker 1: later get replaced by a guy named Kevin Pereira. Kevin
Speaker 1: Pereira had been an active member of the G four
Speaker 1: forums and then he landed a gig as a production
Speaker 1: assistant for G four tv dot com and gradually worked
Speaker 1: his way up so that he could be considered for
Speaker 1: this host role. So that's how Mr. Pereira got his
Speaker 1: start in front of the cameras. He would end up
Speaker 1: playing an increasingly important role over at G four as
Speaker 1: a personality. In two thousand three, G four held its
Speaker 1: first award show, which acknowledged video game developers for stuff
Speaker 1: like best Online Game, which was Battlefield ninety two, and
Speaker 1: it won that in two thousand three. In that first
Speaker 1: award ceremony, they also had categories like Best Story. Kingdom
Speaker 1: Hearts won that one. I tried to understand what Kingdom
Speaker 1: Hearts this story was, but even the brilliant Brian David
Speaker 1: Gilbert couldn't get me up to speed on that one,
Speaker 1: and I tried. The show also had awards for some
Speaker 1: more tongue in cheek categories, such as character You'd most
Speaker 1: like to be. They ended up being Dante from Devil
Speaker 1: May Cry two or Hottest Character Tina Armstrong in Dead
Speaker 1: or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball. I think those categories were
Speaker 1: a clear indicator that the channel was really taking aim
Speaker 1: at that eighteen to thirty four male demographic. Also feel
Speaker 1: badly for anyone who loved video games but who did
Speaker 1: not fall into this particular stereotype that the channel was
Speaker 1: catering to. I read a few mosts written by women
Speaker 1: during this time who were watching programs like G four
Speaker 1: tv dot com because they love video games, but they
Speaker 1: were starting to feel purposefully ignored or alienated with just
Speaker 1: about everything else the G four channel was doing. The
Speaker 1: channel canceled a few shows like Game on that just
Speaker 1: weren't doing very well, but ultimately the limiting factor for
Speaker 1: the channel was its reach. Comcast was able to carry
Speaker 1: 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: there 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 lineup, and an anime show called Anime Unleashed.
Speaker 1: All the other shows on tech TV in the United
Speaker 1: States got the ax. G four relaunched on MA two
Speaker 1: thousand four as G four tech TV, and while tech
Speaker 1: TV had been gutted in the process, G four also
Speaker 1: canceled several of its original programs as well over the
Speaker 1: following year, including shows like Players, Pulse, Blister, Arena Portal,
Speaker 1: and eventually Judgment Day, since the executives figured there'd be
Speaker 1: no reason to run to video game review shows on
Speaker 1: the same channel, and they also canceled reruns of an
Speaker 1: old game show called Starcade that had been playing on
Speaker 1: G four. The Screen Savers, which initially did survive the
Speaker 1: transfer over to G four, would also change dramatically. While
Speaker 1: it was originally a show dedicated to technology in general
Speaker 1: and computers in particular, and had segments about hardware ways
Speaker 1: to fix computer problems, they took live calls from users
Speaker 1: to help them with whatever issues they were having. It
Speaker 1: 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 o gool video game characters, I guess
Speaker 1: that was the show for you. The channel also began
Speaker 1: to invest more in syndicated runs of shows that also
Speaker 1: aimed 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 fift two thousand five, the pretense that G four
Speaker 1: and Tech TV where a partnership, was completely dropped and
Speaker 1: the channel became just G four. Not that this game
Speaker 1: as a surprise to anyone. What might have come as
Speaker 1: a surprise to her Shorn was that by September of
Speaker 1: two thousand five he would be on the outs. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot that was actually written about his departure
Speaker 1: at that time, apart from the fact that Comcast quote
Speaker 1: unquote dismissed him. But whatever the circumstances were, he was
Speaker 1: replaced by a former Direct TV executive named Neil Tiles.
Speaker 1: Tiles would push even harder to move G four away
Speaker 1: from its focus on video games, with the goal of
Speaker 1: turning it more into a lifestyle channel aimed at men,
Speaker 1: not two different from what Spike TV 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 Screensavers all left to
Speaker 1: pursue other opportunities. One thing Attack of the Show did
Speaker 1: 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 East with the actress Olivia Munn, who would go
Speaker 1: on to become one of the biggest stars to really
Speaker 1: first make her name at G four. Oh and and
Speaker 1: this is no shade on miss Munn, who I readily
Speaker 1: admit was a much better choice for what they wanted
Speaker 1: than than I would have been a dumpy, bald dude
Speaker 1: from Georgia. Olivia mun was hands down the best choice.
Speaker 1: G four made the right call on that one. By
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, the only original G four show
Speaker 1: still on the air was Cinema Tech Everything Else by
Speaker 1: that point had been canceled. Every original G four show
Speaker 1: was no longer on the network, and Cinema Tech pretty
Speaker 1: much featured gameplay and cut scenes from games, so you
Speaker 1: can't get much more low budget than that when it
Speaker 1: comes to production costs. I mean, I imagine there are
Speaker 1: probably some licensing fees that had to be paid, but
Speaker 1: that's about it. Cinema Tech, however, would finally get canceled
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, and then none of the original
Speaker 1: G four shows would be still with the network, and
Speaker 1: two thousand seven the channel didn't look anything like its
Speaker 1: original incarnation. Pereira and Munn continued to host attack of
Speaker 1: the show, and Pereira was really the only link back
Speaker 1: to the old crew, and even then you have to
Speaker 1: remember that he had started on camera as a co
Speaker 1: host on Arena. G four continued to strike deals to
Speaker 1: run reruns of other shows on the channel, and this
Speaker 1: is when G four kind of turned into the Cops
Speaker 1: and Ninja Warrior channel, which you gotta be honest, I
Speaker 1: love Ninja Warrior that I still love American Ninja Warrior.
Speaker 1: Those men and women are incredible. But G four also
Speaker 1: began showing reruns of the series cheaters, and the audience
Speaker 1: that had been there for the launch of the channel
Speaker 1: was pretty much completely alienated. Don't even think about how
Speaker 1: the tech TV audience felt they had seen their programming
Speaker 1: get obliterated in the process. The only show that remained
Speaker 1: from the tech TV days that had not really been
Speaker 1: tampered with that much was ex Play, and even that
Speaker 1: one got a little wackier over time. The little bit
Speaker 1: of lip service G four paid to video games at
Speaker 1: that point was disastrous, Like they couldn't do that right.
Speaker 1: The channel sent crews to E three to cover press conferences,
Speaker 1: but because G four had to run commercials and because
Speaker 1: these were live events, those two things didn't go together.
Speaker 1: That great ads would interrupt highly anticipated presentations such as
Speaker 1: the reveal of Mass Effect or the Halo three trailer,
Speaker 1: and the message was clear video games just weren't important
Speaker 1: to G four anymore. The channel did try to create
Speaker 1: a few animated series, like Happy Tree Friends and Code Monkeys,
Speaker 1: which featured the Fantastic Song by Jonathan Colton as the theme.
Speaker 1: These didn't get enough of a following to last more
Speaker 1: than a season or two, and rather than risk launching
Speaker 1: more failures, G four continue to pour money into licensing
Speaker 1: deals so that the channel could run reruns of other
Speaker 1: shows like Heroes and Lost. Those licensing fees cost a
Speaker 1: lot of money. But the thinking was, these shows have
Speaker 1: already a proven track record. But here was the problem.
Speaker 1: People had already seen those shows because you know, they
Speaker 1: had already aired on broadcast television. You didn't even need
Speaker 1: a cable subscription to watch them. The two shows that
Speaker 1: were really doing well were Attack of the Show and Explay,
Speaker 1: So you could argue that the programs that actually were
Speaker 1: performing well in the channel were the ones that catered
Speaker 1: to its original intended audience, although that's a stretch for
Speaker 1: Attack of the Show since it really didn't resemble the
Speaker 1: screen savers at all at that point. Also, both of
Speaker 1: those shows came out of or grew out of the
Speaker 1: Tech TV programming, not the G four programming. Things were
Speaker 1: not going great. The best performing shows at their peak,
Speaker 1: we're bringing in a hundred thirty thousand viewers around this time,
Speaker 1: and that's nothing in TV land. Cable carriers began to
Speaker 1: drop G four from their lineups in order to replace
Speaker 1: it with something that might attract more viewers. In November,
Speaker 1: Direct TV dumped G four. This was an enormous setback,
Speaker 1: and it pretty much erased the effect G four had
Speaker 1: of acquiring Tech TV back in two thousand four. Remember,
Speaker 1: the real reason for that acquisition was to get the
Speaker 1: channel on more cable and satellite carriers. Olivia Munn announced
Speaker 1: she was leaving G four and Attack of the Show
Speaker 1: in two She had landed a role on an NBC
Speaker 1: show called Perfect Couples UH that would launch in early eleven,
Speaker 1: and that show would end up getting canceled a few
Speaker 1: months later, but Man dedicated her attention and time to
Speaker 1: pursuing her acting career. She landed gigs and films and
Speaker 1: TV series. Her departure was a big blow to G four,
Speaker 1: as her on screen chemistry with Pereira was one of
Speaker 1: the big reasons Attack of the Show was doing so well.
Speaker 1: Actress Candice Bailey would step in to become the new
Speaker 1: co host of the show. While things were super rocky,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't end just yet. The channel was able to
Speaker 1: hold on for a couple more years. Back in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, Comcast announced its intent to merge with NBC Universal,
Speaker 1: which was a process that was completed in eleven. In
Speaker 1: early Neil Tynes would step down as president of the channel,
Speaker 1: and Adam Stotsky, who had previously been the president of
Speaker 1: NBC's entertainment division, would take on the leadership role. But
Speaker 1: one thing Stotsky did not have, notably, was experience in
Speaker 1: actual television programming. He did have experience with branding, however,
Speaker 1: and Stotsky worked to try and land a deal in
Speaker 1: which G four would undergo an entire transformation. It would
Speaker 1: undergo a full rebranding into the Esquire Network, but that
Speaker 1: deal ultimately fell through and instead the Style Network would
Speaker 1: get that rebranding instead. Turns out it wouldn't have mattered.
Speaker 1: The Esquire Network ceased to be in twenty seventeen. Anyway.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twelve, ex Play host Adam Sessler began
Speaker 1: hearing rumors that his days were numbered as a host
Speaker 1: on the channel. In April of that year, he was
Speaker 1: officially fired for reasons I've never been able to determine,
Speaker 1: apart from perhaps the channel just wanted to cut costs
Speaker 1: and Sessler, as a longtime veteran, might have had a
Speaker 1: pretty high salary comparatively speaking. He would end up with
Speaker 1: Revision three for a while, so for a short time
Speaker 1: we were technically co workers. The following month, Kevin Pereira
Speaker 1: announced he was leaving G four and Attack of the
Speaker 1: show after the E three trade show in June of
Speaker 1: that year. His departure was pretty much the death blow
Speaker 1: two Attack of the show, though it would limp along
Speaker 1: for the rest of two thousand twelve, shooting the final
Speaker 1: episode in December two thousand twelve that would not air
Speaker 1: until January two thirteen, so technically most people say the
Speaker 1: show lasted till x Play also aired its final show
Speaker 1: at that same time. G four would continue to run reruns,
Speaker 1: but slowly those licensing deals were expiring. By November, there
Speaker 1: just wasn't enough there there, and NBC announced that the
Speaker 1: channel would go off the air. It was done. The
Speaker 1: Canadian version of G four, which I haven't really talked
Speaker 1: about here and which would carry much more of the
Speaker 1: old tech TV programming for much longer, would last until
Speaker 1: two thousand 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 could 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 personally
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. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, send
Speaker 1: me a note. Let me know. The email is tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, where you can
Speaker 1: reach out on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both
Speaker 1: of those is text stuff hs W. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: go to our website that's text stuff podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You'll find an archive of all of our past episodes there,
Speaker 1: plus links to our online store, where every purchase you
Speaker 1: make goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.