Category: Features

It’s a sad but sobering reminder that even the venerable Revision3 is a business; a network that has to make money and earn the keep of the shows that they produce on a regular basis. If the shows don’t manage to find an audience or don’t bring in the sponsorship revenue to make them worth producing, they’ve got to go, like any TV network and their TV shows.

Of course, those of us who have been around TechTV Forever for a while are accustomed to this; we know the dissapointment of losing some of our favorite shows, so the announcement comes with a little pain.

So Jim Louderback announced on the Revision3 blog today (courtesy of my colleagues at AppScout):

We’ve had a number of great successes here at Revision3, including Diggnation, Tekzilla and The Totally Rad Show. But not everything pans out. Just as in the past, when we ended shows that just weren’t building audiences or driving revenue, we had to make changes. As you may have heard, today we had to make some tough staffing decisions as we ended the run of a few of our shows.

For our long-running Photoshop show Pixel Perfect, it’s the end of a show that’s done over a hundred episodes, and delivered essentially a graduate level course in graphic design and technique. For PopSiren and Internet Superstar, it’s the end of 2 shows that had great promise, but never really found their audience.

For two of the shows, we’re simply stopping our distribution agreement, but the shows will live on. You’ll still be able to watch Epic Fu, and Wine Library, both at their own sites, and through new and existing distribution partnerships. Epic Fu will be available on Revision3 through mid December, Wine Library ends its Revision3 run today. We remain huge fans of these two shows, even though they don’t fit our long-term plans at Revision3.

All past episodes of these shows, as well as all other shows no longer in production, will still be available for download from Revision3.com in our show archives.

Well that sucks. Here’s what I’m thinking:

Our good friend Bert Monroy will sadly go by the wayside, but admittedly Pixel Perfect had more then run its course. I’m sure it won’t the be the last we hear from him – I’m certain that he’ll make an appearance on episodes of Tekzilla or Systm when Photoshop tips are called for.

Internet’s Martin Sargent knows what it’s like to be cancelled. Over, and over, and over, and over again. It really really sucks that Internet Superstar didn’t get much traction, but frankly, I think they spread themselves a little too thin by producing too many episodes – doesn’t hurt that they all but ran out of superstars to interview and wound up interviewing anyone who got a 5-star funny video on YouTube after a while. Still, it’s really really sad to see the show go, and Martin – as always – will be sorely missed. Martin: we salute you.

popSiren is another show that’s sad to see go: the show was supposed to be for the modern geek girl, the technologically inclined intelligent woman who defied the “ew computers” stereotype. There are plenty of ladies like that out there, I’m just saddened that they didn’t find popSiren – I think popSiren was just light-years ahead of it’s time.

Like Jim said, for Epic Fu and Wine Library, they just won’t be part of the Revision3 network anymore. That’s something of a shame; I myself hadn’t even gotten around to giving Epic Fu a fair shake, and I’d been meaning to subscribe to Wine Library, but maybe it just didn’t resonate with the tech-heavy audience at Revision3. That being said, both shows are already immensely popular, and their fans will follow them both wherever they go. Just because they won’t be syndicated at Revision3 doesn’t mean the shows are over, so look them up either in the iTunes podcast directory or at their respective sites and subscribe directly:

[ Epic Fu | Wine Library ]

If this feels familiar to the old timers around here, it should – but at least this time it’s not cutting off your nose to spite your face; it’s trimming the fat to keep the meat healthy. A number of the commenters over at Revision3 are absolutely furious with the news, and are screaming with vitrol and anger that I haven’t seen since well – since the times that spawned this blog. That being said, I’m with everyone who’s dissapointed to see the shows go, but I don’t think this is the end-all-be-all of Revision3. Traffic doesn’t lie, subscriptions and downloads don’t lie, but anecdotal preferences do. One incredibly passionate Internet Superstar download doesn’t equal the hundreds that may be needed to keep up with the other shows.

With the farm leagues running strong at Revision3 Beta, there’s doubtlessly more shows on the way, and only so many resources to go around. Here’s hoping some of the shows coming out of beta will match the ones being sunset!