G4 cancels two shows, revamps a third

BRING BACK TECHTV YA WANKERS

G4 is such crap. Everyone gushes about XPlay, but it's simply not entertaining to watch the clueless musings of that whiny balding ferret and the bassist from Type O Negative as they desperatley try to be funny, witty, or sarcastic. Nothing signals coming demise like showing 5 year old reruns of The Man Show. They really dropped the ball with that transition from Tech TV to G4. Here's hoping that they get bought up by Oprah Winfrey and made into the Uteran Spasm Network.

X-play is the only show with decent, trustworthy reviews. Just about every show is a thinly veiled commercial.

"X-play is the only show with decent, trustworthy reviews. Just about every show is a thinly veiled commercial. "

SHeet, I meant every OTHER show (other then xplay :) )

x-play sucks 'cause they need a better rating system. everything gets a 3 out of 5. more quality reviews and less terrible skits would help too. i wouldn't mind if they played real old episodes sometimes to show how older games got reviewed, but they only rerun the last few shows over and over.

the man show is not a bad show, but has no place on G4. Neither does all the damn car shows and reruns of crap Fastlane.

a few months ago their "flagship", the former Screen Savers, Attack of the Show held open castings for a new host. They picked a few finalists, who each had a week gig on the show, and the audience would pick who stays. 5 months later, THEY PICKED NO ONE.

Filter was pure crap. The top ten lists were mostly awful, and filled with BLATANT PRODUCT PLACEMENTS. Do you really need to interrupt the show to tell us what movies are coming out this weekend and what dvds come out this tuesday?

Cinematech is good sometimes. The show should be only be gameplay clips put to music. I dont want to see prerendered cutscenes, but actual gameplay. The worst was when they let Gamespot host, because although they showed some good games that the show would usually never show, they had to keep cutting to their UGLY EDITORS. Maybe thats why their video reviews suck too. Every news channel hires attractive reporters, not competent ones, for a reason. I want to see pretty people.

I actually kinda liket G4TV.com, but it was a terrible show name, and it should've been more than a half-hour per week.

they gave Leo Laporte a new show but only air it at 10am when true games are still sleeping 'cause they stayed up late to watch adult swim, not G4. and never repeat it throughout the day. But they will show crap Arena all day so Kevin Prereia can get royalties every time they show his peach fuzz.

thats my anti-G4 rant.

OK I just wanna say, my last comment was 12:36 AM. Yet this article was posted, apparently, at 4:05 AM. Free prize if anyone else can pre-comment on a post.

Dude, there was a glitch that caused the post to be hidden for a few hours. Chill out and back away from the tinfoil haberdashery.

hehe ok. At least its not as bad as G4.

A couple of weeks ago Leo Laporte mentioned on his weekly podcast that the man show reruns are about the highest rated thing on the network. And by highest rated he meant that it gets a 0.1 so it's the only show on the network that actually gets any kind of a rating.

The fact that they bought their way into most cable systems by buying techtv... and then ruining what was such a great thing did way more harm than good. the fact that whole network really does suck is just icing for those of us who liked techtv.

the only show i watch on g4 is now Cancelled... G4tv!!!

Also you completely misused the word haberdashery, but that's ok 'cus its an awesome word that u rarely hear. There just aren't enough good haberdashers around anymore.

G4 should put quality gaming shows on. How about some machinima? How about they hire Red vs Blue and make it a half-hour sitcom? That would be fantastic. Stupid shows like on Adult Swim, but rendered in games instead of cartoons. Even old-school games, like the extra lives guys on the GameTap commercials. Not all of Adult Swim is good, but it keeps changing and Cartoon Network is always eager to try new creative things. And it eats up the same demographics that G4 keeps losing.

Filter and G4TV.com each had their own studio. Of course makeup and wardrobe and everything else for each show. For a top-ten list and half-hour per week show. They were bleeding money and had to cut it. I'm not optimistic about what will replace them tho.

Cheat is the next to go. has its own studio too. I mean the girl is hot but if I want those codes I can google them in about 10 seconds.

Make some kind of show with regular guys just talking games. Like some of the cable news channel shows have some kind of moderator and a panel of pros talking whatever issue is big that day. Thats why I like Judgement Day, the banter between Victor and Tommy is great, especially when one of them hates the game and the other loves it.

ok this is the real end of my anti-G4 rant. I hope I dont think of any more to day.

Hopefully they go under soon!

Also Call for Help isn't very good anymore. Those canadians are really boring.

I'm kind of not surprised with this. G4 has been axing shows ever since they took over TechTV My version of G4 is STILL called G4TechTV (live in Canada) but the Tech part is largely dead besides Call for Help that gets repeated every 3 hours because Canada we are prudes when it comes to free trade TV and TechTV was licenced as a Technology broaster by our government (has to mosty show Tech related shows like on Computers for example).

And we had to get Call for Help moved to Canada after the G4 takeover of Tech TV or else the Canada broadcaster would get in trouble with the Government that they were not meeting their quotas as set out by the rules of their broadcasting terms. We still have very old and done with programs like Tech Books and some medical tech program as well but they get shown at dawn only once thank god.

I'm kind of glad to see Filter gone because of that product placement stuff pissed me off. I kind of liked G4TV.com I would of not got much information on the debate some of the hosts had with the Hot Coffee issue and get more information from it.

And I'm also not surprised that they are cutting out two more of their founding line of shows because from the way it looks when they passed the management to someone else the new guy wanted to get more viewers by making G4 in to a SpikeTV clone. Let me make a guess here. In the next few years G4 is going to pull an MTV and show more stuff like the man show and the like and way way less about video games.

Hell if it gets very bad G4 will get it's plug pulled altogether (hoping that happens). I'm wishing one day I can step up to the plate and make a gaming network (hell maybe even a BETTER anime/cartoon only network for Canada as well) that does not use cheap ass promo stuff or in a few years later change the format of how the network shows programs.

That's my rant on G4. Oh yea most of the TechTV guys made Revision3 that is sort of the same as pre G4 take over of TechTV. And to Adam and Morgan find a way out of G4 and fast because I have a anouther feeling your next on their list of shows to take to the woodchiper.

It was better when it was just tech tv, instead of G4, G4 fucked it all up!

Making G4 into a SpikeTV clone is exactly what it seems to be turning into as Nightfire says. But I wonder, how many fans of the old TNN (the NASHVILLE network, not after they changed to the national network) were pissed when they changed to Spike. The country music fans may have been vocal like us, but I'm sure the network had dismal ratings. The suits won't care about building a good game channel, only bringing in the $$.

I just started getting G4 by accident and I don't think it's nearly as bad as everyone said it was. I enjoy Attack of the Show and X-Play mostly...oh and of course Icons. Now it's certainly not great to watch all the time but all I've got to say is I see more games on G4 than music on MTV, so they're doing something right. And if you've ever seen even a second of the Spike TV awards in the past then you know that it could be much worse.

I have found myself watching less and less of g4. Now I hardly watch at all. I loved the screensavers I remember when it was 90min long. I also liked x-play and call for help along with tech live. But now all the shows seem the same. Although I do still watch x-play sometime I agree that they do need a better rating system because everything gets a 3....out of 5. Oh well at least I still get my CFH episodes from my friend in Canada through ftp because the ones that are on G4 in the US are about 2 months old.

hey, comcast, ever since you bought techtv and turned it into G4 it BLEW

techtv was QUALITY TV. G4 is absolute crap and has the worst ratings of pretty much any channel in the nation!

you even runined call for help.

if G4 doesn't become more like Tech TV, the whole channel is going to be cancelled

I want TechTV back with the good old Screen Savers with Leo and Pat! And make sure X-Play comes along too. Anime Unleashed is going the way of G4 at this rate..

I agree with you boys, G4 sucks! And its a damn shame that we will never see another channel like TechTV again, because the big corporate wigs are too stupid to realize that there's a huge market out that there that loves their daily dose of computer software and hardware talk, tech help advise, tech news, etc. Back when I was kid I thought a video game show would be awesome, I remember the GamePro tv show that was short lived, but even I knew a channel dedicated to video games 24-hrs is ridiculous. I rather go to Gamespy or Gamespot if I want to check out a review of a video game. TechTV was suppose to be the future, my favorite shows, The Screen Savers, Call For Help w/ Chris Pirillo, and TechLive. It's too bad Paul Allen of Microsoft and his Vulcan Venture company didn't give TechTV a break, before they sold it off to greedy Comcast to destroy with their cheap G4 channel. This is probably a good example of one of the worst results of a corporate merger.

G4TV will become an alternative Spike TV.

Attention joystiq readers, would you like to get these head lines hours, even days in advance? Impossible you say, some kind of time traveling magic? No, it's called digg.com.

I don't see any problem with Call for Help except for the fact that it's on a dying channel. You can sorta' blame 24-7 Gamer and other gaming related on-demand programming for slowly killing off G4. In case y'all didn't know, 24-7 Gamer is part of the MagRack package.

Listen people, AOTS is a good show. The Screen Savers with Leo and Pat was excellent, however Kevin P. is one of the funniest people on T.V. It's no surprise that they axed G4tv and Filter they weren't very good shows anyway.

As for the whole G4 turning into Spike. That is so true, and kudos on the analogy. It's sad that G4 is becoming this way, as TechTV it had so much potential and lived up to it.

I hope they can shape up soon, or people are going to ship out.

G4 was good once.......now its not......it was once a great tv channel and now it sucks......it has xplay and judment day and attack of the show wich are all good shows....then they came out with street fury fastlane and the man show. dont get me wrong these are good shows but when i watch G4 i dont want to see those. i want to see video games..if they cancle shows it should be those three cause the are taking over the channel and it sucks...XPLAY ROCKS

They should get rid of Cheat, that woman host is annoying as hell.

I liked filter, but mainly just so I could stare at diane mizota

"G4 was good once..."

When the heck was that??

TechTV was good. G4 never was. So G4 took over a good channel, killed it and replaced all of its programming with their own garbage. Except for X-Play, which they kept, and it's one of two shows (well, really three) that I ever actually watch on that channel. On TechTV, I used to watch a whole bunch of stuff - Call for Help, Screen Savers, Fresh Gear and X-Play (and Extended Play before it!) were the ones I watched regularly enough to TiVo them, but it was a channel I could just have on pretty much all the time in the background.

On G4, the only shows I can even stomach are X-Play and now Call for Help since they've restored it - which are not coincidentally former TechTV shows. I've started to warm up a *bit* to Judgment Day, but like all G4 shows it has this really amateurish, community access cable feel to it. I'm sure most of G4's producers are basically college kids that have no idea what they're doing. They need to hire some actual professionals.

I can't even believe their new direction is to bring back crap like The Man Show. What the hell kind of channel is this? Are they trying to be another Spike TV now or what?

They need to just admit their mistake and bring TechTV back. Seriously. There is just not enough to talk about everyday to justify a 24 hour video game channel, as crap like The Man Show pretty much proves. But all shows like that do is bring the channel down - that show doesn't offend me as a man, it offends me as a gamer! It's an insult to my intelligence. It would make a hell of a lot more sense to just go back to having a consumer tech channel that incorporates video game programming as part of the whole thing - game consoles are tech, after all.

You all have it wrong, it was the best as ZDTV. Before TechTV and before G4. The Screen Savers with Leo and Kate was the best hosts for any show ever on the network and they had the roundtable show hosted by John C. Davorac (misspelt?) called Silicon Spin. Those were the days ZDTV.

Tear.

G4 has never been very good, and cancelling two shows I never much cared for certainly doesn't hurt them, in my eyes.

Xplay is worth watching, Icons would sometimes be worth watching and Attack of the Show could be good if it weren't so damn cringe-worthy....you know, if it was still the Screen Savers without Adam Pineira.

There are lots of things G4 could be doing to improve their ratings...but they don't really care; Comcast purchased TechTV for it's bandwidth, which they now have. The came to bury Ceasar, not to praise him.

They need at least one live news show everyday. That would bring people in. Half the reason I never watch the channel is because when I do, they're showing previews of a game that came out months ago.

You can't do lots of re-runs when your topic is games. Games change too quickly for that.

And, game music aside, Tommy Tallarico is an idiot. He didn't like Viewtiful Joe and he *recommended* Dragon's Lair 3D. How the hell can anyone like that game? It was awful.

I personally think that it was bad move to get rid of the TECHTV shows. Since G4 bought TECHTV the channel has really sucked. I loved "Call for Help" and "Screen Savers" in their original form, watched them through college. I don't even bother watching G4 amymore.

WHAT???!!! No, no, nooooo, you can't cancel G4tv.com. That was actually a good show. Seriously. Cancel AOTS and move that G4tv.com to that time slot and give them the extra half hour.

Ya need to also cancel Cheats! (unless they already have)because that show is just a complete waste of money. Seriously, the money they spend on that show is better spent handing it off to Paris Hilton.

G4 is gonna die. I mean, to cancel their one show that actually addresses issues in the industry is rediculous!

I think Geoff, Tina, Laura, Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb need to start having some serious discussions with the TWiT group and Kevin Rose to see about getting a podcast out and some IP TV. They need to be ready for when that network dies.

What are you people talking about? Yes, G4 isn't great, but TechTV wasn't all that great either. I know that I personally stopped watching as soon as the Screensavers was over. Between that, Future Fighting Machines, and Extended Play, they could hold my attention for MAYBE 2 hours a day, and even then only if it wasn't all reruns.

As of right now, G4 has pretty much the same amount of good content as TechTV did. Attack of the Show is actually pretty decent now that they got Kevin over there, still hate Sarah though. Still got Xplay which, now that I've gotten used to Morgan's strangely angular features and massive shoulders, is completely watchable. Cinematech, Icons, Braniac, and Judgement Day (as long as I mentally block out that idiot Tommy) are all good for wasting time.

So to me, I think there's a whole lot of sepia toned memories going on right now in this place. Yes they should have kept the old shows and added theirs to make one decent day of programming, but overall nothing has really been lost in the shuffle, it's just been... shuffled.

And Leo, Kate, and John C Dvorak? UGH! Talk about the trifecta from hell..

The only one of the TechTV gang that I miss is Patrick. The rest weren't all that great.

On a recent episode of TWiT (twit.tv) Leo,Pat and Kevin were talking about the new management at G4. I guess the guy who fired all of them just got fired.
AOTS has a 0.1 share rating as compared to TSS had a 0.9. X-Play has 0.2 and the old Extended Play had 0.5. All of the old shows Fresh Gear, Tech Live, even things like Spy School had better ratings than things like Arena and Filter. Don't get me started on Judgment day.
The Thing is that the G4 model didn't work. So now they have to do something else and you'll see this network slowly devolve into another Spike TV. Look around most channels have adopted the same formular. Look at A&E, TNT, SPIKE, VH1, BRAVO. They are all cookie-cutter networks and largely interchangeable. What once made them stand out is all but gone and they are all fighting for the 18-35 male vewers--except we're all watching Adult Swim and IPTV.

Wow, people like X-Play? Morgan Webb is hot, but other than that, what's the point? Two unfunny people making fun of everything for half an hour isn't good television -- it's just VH1 for video games.

The only shows I like on G4 are Cinematech and Icons. Everything else is mostly pointless.

My wife won't let me watch X-Play because that Adam guy's voice annoys the everliving shite out of her. But that's not such a bad thing because he annoys the everliving shite out of me, too. :-)

I do enjoy Judgment Day, though. Best program on G4.

I personally think that it was bad move to get rid of the TECHTV shows. Since G4 bought TECHTV the channel has really sucked. I loved "Call for Help" and "Screen Savers" in their original form, watched them through college. I don't even bother watching G4 amymore.

Leo Laporte rolls over in his career-grave every time they show that retarded nutjob from Street Fury screaming into some skank's ass at a car show.

X-Play still rules. It's been one of my favorite shows for a long time.

TechTV was cool. G4 is the toilet.

I want Fresh Gear, Extended Play, Call for Help and TSS back. What really sucked is i had g4 and tech tv. Never watched g4. Then they bought tech and kicked the tech out of it. Now I have one station that I only watch XPlay and g4th.com. Well now all I watch is g4. ATOTS really has gone down his since Kevin R left. Bring Back Oshi, Pat and Leo. Thank God for Tivo. Now I can watch Call for help, but its not as good as it use to be.

First of all, Morgan Webb is NOT hot. She's like 8 ft. tall and makes our star tight end in high school look like a geisha by comparison. Second, someone mentioned that Geoff Keighley should start his own podcast and branch a la Kevin Rose, but there's something wrong with that. Geoff Keighley is a tool and G4TV.com had very little value. It was really a talking-head spin venue for G4. G4 is an affront to whatever in the hell it's supposed to stand for. Ask anyone what the purpose of that channel is and you wouldn't be able to hear a coherent response. I hope it fails miserably and spares the tech/gamer scene (which really shouldn't be one and the same) any more pain.

It's a shame... TechTV was a good channel. G4TechTV... ummm, almost there. New G4 = SpikeTV wannabe. It's not a channel for gamers or a channel for techies anymore. It's a channel for dirty fanboys whose only dream is to get paid to play video games and tweak the graphics on level 3 a little more. The Screen Savers was a really great show and so was Call For Help. X-Play has always been good. And I sorely miss Tech Live, Fresh Gear and several of the older shows that provided entertainment and information. Although, I'm learning that gluing myself to the computer has the same effect but with more popups...

It was nice some of the best people on the channel jumped ship before the drama they prolly saw coming. Filter has become a boring show and G4TV.com was very hit and miss.

Come to think of it, I haven't watched G4 much other than the occasional episode of X-Play... G4 might as well go away. I can live without X-Play (although it would be missed)

I don't get G4. Ok, before they bought TechTV they sucked. Then they buy TechTV. So now you're thinking hhhmmmm maybe it would have more cool shows. Then they turn the show to crap by changing everything. So you start with crap. You throw glitter on it and perfume. You take all that away and it's still crap. G4 is dieing again. I wonder what network they'll buy next and destroy. G4 is a blackhole.

Meh. I got to admit, I didn't watch Techtv much when it was still around because I didn't know much about it. I found out about it when I flipped through the channels and saw Anime on it. I didn't watch the Anime much because all the commercials they had during their Anime just made me loose interest. I wish I had a chance to see all the good shows, you guys mentioned.

I don't watch G4TV because it rarely interests me. I don't really like the show that Adam and Morgan do because they just annoy me. And I still don't watch the Anime because of the commercial breaks. I do like the one show they show where this guy talks about video games and is usually by a computer. Sorry I don't know the name of the shows.

I hope I can make a Gaming/Anime TV Station one day. I will keep your guys' ideas on mind and pay more attention to G4TV, so that I know what not to produce and show.

Most of the shows on G4 suck, but I do enjoy AOTS. Xplay is alright, but nothing special. I always watch it if i'm at the tv when it's on.

Nothing on G4 is worth it. Let's look at their lineup shall we?

Arena: hosted by an ex-American Gladiator (that in itself is hilarious) and Kevin P. The show only covers usually what's "hot" at the moment in terms of FPS (Unreal 2k4, CoD etc) and never cover a variety. In the last year it's added new stuff like Dance Dance Revolution (wtf?!?) and Mario Party as parts of its "competition". Utter joke.

Filter: a top ten, which has potential, hosted by a semi-hot Asian woman, all done to the tone of product placement (also see Cheat!). Great shows such as "Top 10 Sidekick Games for the NES brought to you by Pringles Nacho Ranch Chips!". Again, an utter joke.

Electric Playground/Judgement Day (same show). I forget the brown headed guy's name, but at least it has Tommy going for it (a legitmate artist in the video game industry). Some of their reviews are straight up but often when it's a title/product that overall has a more 50/50 consumer split of like or dislike, their reviews are a bit forced where you can guarantee one guy will love it and the other will hate it. I enjoyed the hardware review, such as controllers, memory cards etc but they always seemed to stick to shit like always reviewing MadCatz products. Decent but not really watchable past the first couple viewings.

G4tv.com, hi welcome to the show that actually filters out real opinions. They do sit in their official IRC channel and take questions live when they are doing/taping their show. But like any company they always spin the opinions in their favor or at least neutral. You'll never, ever, see them read out an opinion for people wanting the old TechTv back. Frequent questions on why Screen Savers has been downgraded to "Attack of the Show" or why Unscrewed was canceled are ignored and result in usually a g-line from their IRC server. (Ironic they'll rerun the Man Show but cancel Unscrewed the far superior in comparison..). Utter joke.

Cheat!, originally hosted by Corey Rouse (forgive misspellings), heavy product placement of Pringles, Mountain Dew and other stuff. Sure gamers love this stuff but we don't need big ads for it shoved in our face. For a script they literally either googled it or copied it word for word off GameFaqs. Utter joke.

Icons, also like EP or JD, had it's moments the first few times you saw it. Until you realized they spin the shit like the best of politicians. History of the Xbox or PS2? It's all good stuff, they never mention anything remotely bad. Hell this show has been known to lie outright. Utter joke.

Players. What genius took this one to greenlite? Seriously. Ok, picture someone semi famous, like Xhibit or whatever his name is from Pimp My Ride. Now imagine a camera crew, filming him, playing a video game. You have the entire show right there. Footage of people, playing video games. No review, or input on the game other than "this shit is great i love this game!" and watching them sit on their ass playing it. That's it. I'd rather eat wall candy. Utter joke.

Attack of the Show. G4's biggest colosal failure. When it was still Screen Savers, they lost Pat, and Leo, and eventually Yoshi plus the other minor cast. Sara, Kevin P. and Kevin Rose were left. Now any long time fans will tell you Kevin P. is a fucking IDIOT. Seriously, dude knows nothing about computers or gaming, and just goes with what the script tells you. Kevin Rose on the other hand, he's like us your average game fan, he likes to tinker around with shit, knows his way around a PC and even Mac's, he's not just some actor paid to play a gamer/pc geek, he IS a gamer/pc geek. Sarah Lane, obligatory tits thrown in as always with G4. Once great, now it doesn't even rank as an utter joke it's just dismal.

X-Play, long ago Morgan and the guy gave good reviews. Their OWN opinions. Then they became "mainstream" as people call it. Sure Morgan is somewhat hot but all the photo shoots for Maxim and Stuff! and other magazines just went to solidify her as the obligatory tits for the show. Gone are the personal reviews, they probably just read whatever is the "cool" reviews off gamespy.com or gamespot.com and go with that. As people have mentioned, most games get a middle 3 out of a maximum 5. A 1-10 system is much better, 1-5 is just too limiting for some titles. Once good, not an utter joke.

Cinematech, I guess if you are a dialup internet user, this is great. You can view trailers, intro's and fmv's of games (old and new). If you are the rest of us, with broadband , it's not so hot. Occasionally it has a nice nostaliga feel to it, when you see some stuff like River City Ransom or Final Fantasy 1 but half the stuff is just filler. (Read their forums, people put in requests and it's always for stupid shit).

That's their lineup. They repeat the same stupid shit over and over and over all day long. Cancellng Filter and G4tv.com is a HUGE hit to them, that's like 1/3 of their lineup. There's only so many times they can rerun Cheat! or Arena every day.

Gone are the days of GOOD Screen Savers, Unscrewed, hell even fucking Robot Wars (the one with Craig Charles) was more entertaning than half the shit that G4 puts on (Battle Bots was superior but hey, it's G4, the Lifetime network puts on better tv).

I fucking broke into tears from laughter when Leo broke the news that the Man Show was their highest rated show, at around 0.13 rating (it dont get must worse folks). No one watches SpikeTV, who the fuck is going to watch G4 as it continues the train wreck of trying to become the next MTV/SpikeTV clone?

I like Icons, X-Play, Cinematech (especially Nocturnal Emissions), Happy Tree Friends and Friends and... that's about it. I might be able to stomach Attack of the Show if they got rid of Sarah. I used to like Brainiac, but then they marathoned it to death over Thanksgiving weekend and now I think I've seen every single episode.

I hate that they're turning G4 into Spike TV, especially since I wish Spike TV would just show only Star Trek.

I watch Judgment Day and X-Play all the rest of the shows are terrible.The Formula D show was ok but that's because it's a short season and goes away before it gets boring.I want to beat that idiot to death on Street Fury ,Like i need to see some skanky wobbly ho ass through the eyes of a retarded moron.

If you're over 16, G4 isn't for you. It's crap television.

TechTV needs to get their name back and go to another channel.

i used to like watching g4, but when they got together with tech tv the channel started to suck. I used to love the show pulse...To me pulse summed up the week in games better than the g4tv show ever did. I also started to hate the channel when they started adding programming that had nothing to do with games... If i want to see street fury and tv shows about cars i'd watch the car channel...and who wants to watch the 1st season of the man show???(that's what spike tv is for) This channel really went downhill when the 2 channels combined...and i know that u can't new shows everday like the news, so you're gonna see re-runs of shows, but at least make them somewhat current. I mean do you really want to see an x-play, electric playground or any show for that matter from february????(from last year!) This channel needs some serious fixing!