this would be a sad deal for a bit of gaming culture, tho apparently it hasn't been much of the gaming culture for a while now :/

Remember back in 2002-2005 when G4 was actually pretty awesome? Yeah... I miss those days. I guess now they can finally make the full transition to Spike TV Jr.

Adam Sessler, Tommy Tallarico, Victor Lucas... I miss those guys, especially Tommy.

It's been going downhill for years.

I want to ask "What now?" But we gamers get everything we need from site's like this. We don't need a television network.

dyre:

kajinking:
Ok I have to ask, WTF is G4? I know they were a channel but all I ever heard about them was that they played all that ninja stuff, I never knew they did anything with videogames.

Beautiful End:

This, please. I know G4 was a videogame related channel or something like that. But honestly, that's all I know. Where do they transmit it? Is it online only? Is it like HBO where you have to pay extra to get it?

I wouldn't mind checking it out at least for a while to either confirm how much it sucks or contradict people's opinions. I mean, all I have videogame related on my TV is...Spike TV. And it shouldn't even count!

When they were founded (early 2000s, I think), they were a channel dedicated completely to video games, and from my memory (perhaps somewhat nostalgia coated, dunno), a lot of the hosts of the various shows on that channel actually seemed genuinely interested in gaming. But after they merged with TechTV, they decided to become a "men's stuff" channel, which apparently meant cutting 90% of the video game related shows they had and replacing them with COPS, Cheaters, Ninja Warrior (not that I don't like Ninja Warrior), and random movies. They've since been dropped by a bunch of cable providers and no one really cares about them anymore. It's just sad to see the final nails in the coffin, I guess.

What little I saw before the hostile takeover of TechTV, made it seem that they were going after the MTV crowd, which turned me off to the channel almost entirely. It also saddened me greatly when they trashed TechTV, as that was my favorite channel at that point in time.

lord.jeff:

kajinking:
Ok I have to ask, WTF is G4? I know they were a channel but all I ever heard about them was that they played all that ninja stuff, I never knew they did anything with videogames.

They used to be the nerd channel essentially several shows focused on games and the web such as shows like Screensaver, a do it yourself type of show for computers, Unscrewed, a late night talk show that focused on a lot on web stars and a few porn stars(same thing in most cases) as well as a few video game review shows other then X Play, plus they were the only channel other then Cartoon Network that regularly played anime.

Nono, that would be the final years of TechTV, and it was AWESOME!

Wait.

G4 still had gaming programming?

Oh well, the guys on Attack of the Show and Xplay will most likely get a job on a gaming website of some sort of or another, just you wait.

I can't wait for the week-long marathon of "Ow, My Balls!" on G4. You know that's where it's headed.

One less TV channel to watch. It's been a slow downward spiral, but it's still sad seeing the end...

GenericAmerican:
It's official, G4 is no even attempting to act like they are not the Cops and Cheaters network.

Apparently, they're trying to make themselves appeal to the "modern man" a la Esquire/GQ.

That's really ironic. As a regular buyer of Esquire, I can attest that it's basically one step away from being Maxim itself. The only thing both those magazines still have going for it is the men's clothing advice and feature stories, and I don't see those translating over to this new station.

It truly is the end of an era.

When seeing this I had to go look up one of the older shows that was my favorite.
Portal!
For anyone new that might click it, yeah it's cheesy but that's the beauty of it I think.

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

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

Pariahwulfen:

dyre:

kajinking:
Ok I have to ask, WTF is G4? I know they were a channel but all I ever heard about them was that they played all that ninja stuff, I never knew they did anything with videogames.

Beautiful End:

This, please. I know G4 was a videogame related channel or something like that. But honestly, that's all I know. Where do they transmit it? Is it online only? Is it like HBO where you have to pay extra to get it?

I wouldn't mind checking it out at least for a while to either confirm how much it sucks or contradict people's opinions. I mean, all I have videogame related on my TV is...Spike TV. And it shouldn't even count!

When they were founded (early 2000s, I think), they were a channel dedicated completely to video games, and from my memory (perhaps somewhat nostalgia coated, dunno), a lot of the hosts of the various shows on that channel actually seemed genuinely interested in gaming. But after they merged with TechTV, they decided to become a "men's stuff" channel, which apparently meant cutting 90% of the video game related shows they had and replacing them with COPS, Cheaters, Ninja Warrior (not that I don't like Ninja Warrior), and random movies. They've since been dropped by a bunch of cable providers and no one really cares about them anymore. It's just sad to see the final nails in the coffin, I guess.

What little I saw before the hostile takeover of TechTV, made it seem that they were going after the MTV crowd, which turned me off to the channel almost entirely. It also saddened me greatly when they trashed TechTV, as that was my favorite channel at that point in time.

I may be getting the two mixed up. At the time I had just started playing video games (a bit late to the party, yes), so I didn't watch too much of it anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

thebobmaster:

Beautiful End:

kajinking:
Ok I have to ask, WTF is G4? I know they were a channel but all I ever heard about them was that they played all that ninja stuff, I never knew they did anything with videogames.

This, please. I know G4 was a videogame related channel or something like that. But honestly, that's all I know. Where do they transmit it? Is it online only? Is it like HBO where you have to pay extra to get it?

I wouldn't mind checking it out at least for a while to either confirm how much it sucks or contradict people's opinions. I mean, all I have videogame related on my TV is...Spike TV. And it shouldn't even count!

If you don't have Comcast or DirectTV, you don't get G4. It is one of the most unpopular channels, and every other station has removed it from their lineup. The only reason Comcast hasn't dropped it is because they have a controlling share of NBCUniversal, the company that owns G4.

Edit: Actually, DirectTV dropped G4 a couple of years ago, so Comcast is the only one that still has it.

Actually I think Dish network still has it, at least the last time I checked my channel listings.

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

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

...Well, that's depressing. Nothin' but crappy reality TV now, I guess...

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

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

I remember when I believed G4 was going to be a great channel Then when they combined with TechTV

Xplay and Attack of the Show were the ONLY reasons I ever watched that channel.

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

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

Like lord.jeff above, X-Play introduced me to the Escapist when they were showing those short segments of Zero Punctuation in 2008.

kajinking:
Ok I have to ask, WTF is G4? I know they were a channel but all I ever heard about them was that they played all that ninja stuff, I never knew they did anything with videogames.

G4 was originally supposed to focus on a few things, gaming being one of them, but by design or as a response, gaming was pretty much the only focus. I'm not sure if G4 was always owned by Viacom or if that happened later or maybe even after the merger, but it's owned them for some time now-- this is relevant partly because they also own Spike and Comedy Central. I hardly watched it before the big merger so I know this stuff from reading Wikipedia and chatting with people who did watch it back then.
TechTV started as ZDTV at the end of the 90s with a broad technology focus and was passed around between owners and companies and networks, keeping that broad focus. They had all kinds of shows that were good or at least interesting, if I get into what they were I might be here all day. X-Play started on ZDTV as Gamespot TV, with Adam Sessler and someone else hosting, and after (I think) two seasons it cut its ties to Gamespot and was renamed Extended Play. The other guy left around that time, and after that Adam hosted the show by himself. At some point Kate Botello was brought on as a co-host, and then around 2001 she left (this is about when I started watching). It was renamed X-Play in 2003, and around then they brought on Morgan Webb, who had been doing odd jobs on The Screen Savers.
In the mid-2000s, G4 bought TechTV and within a few months the two channels became one, G4TechTV. They slowly dropped shows that had come from G4 and TechTV, and TechTV wound up giving up more shows than G4, but after a while it didn't matter, because G4TechTV was renamed G4, and then almost all of the rest of the shows from the original channels were cancelled, with a few showing reruns for years afterward. Around that time, The Screen Savers (with host Kevin Rose) was renamed Attack of the Show, and started getting remodeled. As they pared down the content further they started replacing it with things like Ninja Warrior and Cheaters and COPS, and they showed Lost and Heroes for a minute there, and they started showing movies, going from cheap geeky ones to cheap old ones to less-cheap old ones to cheap new ones. They did try their hand at original programming, and a little bit of it was even pretty good, if irrelevant to what the channel used to be, but none of it was that successful.
By the late 2000s, all that was left of either of the old channels were an AotS that had been remodeled beyond recognition and X-Play.
I didn't mean for that to be that long, but there you go.

I remember when xplay was on TechTv at it was called Extended Play.

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

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

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

newwiseman:
X-Play has been done since Adam Sessler left, I long ago stopped caring about what Morgan Webb had to say.

AOTS lost my viewership when they hired Candice Bailey (Alison Haislip would have kept me watching, apparently she wasn't even considered for Munn's replacement), Kevin Pereira leaving was just the last nail in AOTS's coffin.

Yeah I was mad at that as well. Alison and Kevin had great chemistry and she was just shoved off for no reason.

Why the hell would G4 do something so stupid, their channel is primarily based on video games and gamers, so what are they going to show now? Cops, Campus PD, and Ninja Warrior, over and over again?

tehpiemaker:

P.S. Does anyone remember when they're used to be a show called Cheat? Not Cheaters--but Cheat? I loved watching that.

Yeah it was a decent show, it was hosted by Kristin Holt and they just showed off some tips and tricks.

The show was made into a small segment that was merged with X Play

Newsflash!

People who play a lot of videogames don't watch a lot of TV.

The core gamer demographic is also the demographic that watches the least television, so there really isn't any point in making television about the things they're interested in, because they don't watch television.

There are a number of reasons for this, firstly because they're busy playing videogames, but also because when you've grown up playing videogames you've grown up accustomed to on-demand entertainment, which TV isn't. When you're accustomed to on-demand entertainment it's really inconvenient and annoying to have to go back to watching things when the TV station feels like broadcasting it.

You know what they watch? Youtube. You know where the constant videogame news and coverage you would see on a dedicated TV channel is? Youtube. You know what's on demand? Youtube.

So, stuff that no-one in its target market watched got cancelled, and nothing of value was lost, basically.

I never did see the point in watching a TV channel about gaming. Most gamers aren't 'fans' of gaming, they're actually involved with gaming. So it seemed like a doomed concept from the beginning, but the early years did apparently produce some interesting shows. I'm only familiar with it because of my time spent listening to Leo Laporte and his occasional waxing rhapsodic about it.

All TV is now is fodder for DVRs, so I have to wonder how much longer they'll hold up the pretense. As long as advertisers buy advertising, I guess.