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G4 and TechTV merge into... G4techTV!

Announced back in March, the merger of G4TV and TechTV becomes a reality starting today. Under the 'new' name of G4techTV, the cable TV channel seems to lean more towards the "G4" side of things than the "Tech" side.

G4techTV - "Stay Connected"

Technically, G4 acquired TechTV. Well, Comcast who owns G4 bought TechTV (from Vulcan Programming) and decided to merge the two channels into, get this, G4techTV. A channel they are describing as the "nation's premier 24/7 television network all about video games, technology and the gamer lifestyle". I can't blame them since both networks seemed to have problems filling out their schedule. G4 used to be the "TV 4 Gamers", but it's been retrofitted to stand for "Games, Gear, Gadgets, and Gigabytes." For now at least, most of the shows from each side have survived intact. We'll see how long that lasts. All I know is, they better not mess with X-Play and Adam Sessler (and Morgan Webb too of course).

The biggest plus of this merger of course is that G4 will now be much more widely available. G4techTV is currently available on: Comcast, Time Warner, Mediacom, Insight, Cablevision, Charter, Adelphia, Cox, Cable One, Dish, and DirecTV. That increases G4's TV audience from about 15 million homes, to 44 million. This could help push a network about video games into the "mainstream". Which could increase revenue. Which in turn could help the network provide better quality programming.

I haven't had the chance to check out too many of G4's shows yet, but I watched a little here and there as they slowly made their way to TechTV over the past week. Unfortuently, the ones I saw I probably won't watch again. Too often it seemed I was just watching others play games, which isn't much fun, or interesting. And why did so many of the shows lack actual "hosts"? Watching teams play Mario Kart and SOCOM on Arena as if it were a sporting event isn't my cup of tea. And the reviewers of Judgement Day seemed much too bitter to review anything. On Filter, the "gamers" awkwardly explaining why they liked a certain basketball game was so hard to listen to, and the the outfit the host (Diane Mizota) was wearing was so hard to look at. Though to be fair, I hear these arn't G4's best shows. I'm told to check out their "flagship" shows G4tv.com, Pulse, and Electric Playground (EP for short), which is their version of X-Play (which used to be called EP, hmm...). So we'll see, but so far G4 pales in comparison to TechTV's X-Play.

Update: I've since seen more shows. Pulse wasn't bad. I'd say they were more informative than X-Play, but not as entertaining. And if all I wanted was news, well, I've got the internet for that. Though I will say that Homestar Runner segment was cool. I've enjoyed the biography/history show 'Icons', but G4tv.com was just okay. The whole "call-in" format didn't interest me. I was also less than impressed wiith EP. Much less. And stay away from Portal. You've been warned.

Bottom Line: Check out X-Play, Pulse, Icons (and The Screen Savers), but skip everything else.

The new lineup of shows borrows heavily from G4 (i.e. G4techTV seems it will lean more towards gaming). Only a few are TechTV holdovers. Though how many worthwhile shows did TechTV have? The Screen Savers and X-Play? All I've noticed missing is their daily tech news show, Tech Live, and the Screen Savers spin-off, Call for Help. All of the below shows come from their website (g4techtv.com), but not all have air dates yet (and might not get them, let's hope).

From G4 we have: 10 Play, Arena, Blister, Cheat!, Cinematech, Electric Playground, Filter, G4tv.com, Game Gods, Game On (feat. Matt Gallant!), Game Sauce, Gamer.tv, Hi-Score, Icons, Judgement Day, Players, Portal, Pulse, Sweat

From TechTV we have: Anime Unleashed (WHY!), Fresh Gear, Future Fighting Machines, Invent This!, Nerd Nation, Robot Wars (WHY, WHY!), Secret Strange & True, The Screen Savers, Thunderbirds (WHY, WHY, WHY!), Unscrewed with Martin Sargent, X-Play

I know there are a lot of X-Play haters out there, but they seem to hate it for the same reason some people hate certain websites. They just hate the show, and Adam Sessler, because they disagree with his opinion. Nothing more than claiming he's "biased" or whatever against such-and-such platform or developer. I don't agree with him (I mean come on, "Sly Cooper" for Game of the Year?), but I still enjoy the show! Even though Adam Sessler sucks, I can still enjoy his antics... Dik-Dik! But I digress.

So in short as one of your channels goes black today, we'll see what becomes of this "new and improved" merged channel. With G4techTV now so widely available, G4TV and TechTV have the chance to grow into something really good for once. Which as a gaming fan, would be nice. They do promise new programming will come along as the channel finds its "groove" (i.e. gets feedback on the shows it should keep), and it moves into its headquarters in L.A. (TechTV was based in San Francisco). Their goal seems to be at least 20 shows and 800 new episodes a year, so I'm sure a lot of the "garbage" will be filtered out. They just better not mess with Adam Sessler, or even Leo Laporte (aka "Leo") for that matter!

Source: G4tv.com