In a press release earlier today, G4 finally stopped kidding itself (and us for that matter) and formally announced it’s name as G4 – Video Game Television. It’s a move that everyone expected from the getgo, finally putting the last nail in the coffin that holds the fond memories we all remember as TechTV, and signing away any hopes that G4 would hang on to any of the technology they absorbed during the merger.
Considering the only programming left from the TechTV side of the merger at this point are The Screen Savers, XPlay and Anime Unleashed, and even holdouts like Robot Wars reruns and Future Fighting Machines got canned, this shouldn’t really surprise anyone, but it’s still saddening to see this kind of corporate deception at work, and to see exactly how deeply the lies told during the merger extend.
The press release: [ http://www.g4techtv.com/html/about/press/showrelease.asp?pressrelease_key=64 ]
So where to go from here? Well, the majority of the press release discusses Forumla D, a racing show apparently, and Girls Gone Wired, an idea stolen shamelessly from Unscrewed that apparently they decided deserved it’s own entire show when Unscrewed for some unknown reason, did not. Here’s hoping that he name TechTV gets shopped around and hopefully bought, and someone else decides to put some technology programming on television, but it’s more likely that Comcast will just sit on the rights for spite’s sake.
And what about TSS and X-Play? And even Anime Unleashed? Well, Anime Unleashed probably won’t go anywhere-they’ll try to compete with Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and Toonami and they’ll try to stay in the game against Anime Network and other anime-airing networks; although it remains to be seen if they’ll invest in new Anime licenses. TSS? Well, it’s only a matter of time before they shelve it entirely. Viewership is plummeting and no one’s interested anymore-they can’t even create a decent in-game flash mob or bring down a site when they mention it on air anymore, even though it’s better now than it was after the merger. And X-Play? Still the channel’s flagship ratings cow, it probably won’t go anywhere in the near future.
But these are all just my predictions, and as always, I could be very wrong.