January is CES month for G4. We’re all focused on covering the show that brings nearly 130,000 people together in what has affectionately been referred to here as the “nerd carnival”. Good times.
Also, on January 25th, don’t miss our annual coverage of AEE, the Adult Entertainment Expo 2009… not sure much more needs to be said here.
Finally, January 31st brings a Heroes Season 3 marathon as we present all 13 episodes back-to-back as we get ready for the next all-new chapter of Heroes, which begins right here on G4, starting Tuesday, Feb 3 at 10pm ET.
The first season’s ratings for Code Monkeys were very strong, but the second season did not show the growth we would have liked to have seen. For this reason we are evaluating a third season among other programming options that are being considered.
We’ve aired both MLG (Major League Gaming) and the now defunct Championship Gaming Series (CGS) on G4 over past year. Neither performed very well for us in the key demo we seek (Men 18-34). I just don’t think that watching others compete makes for exciting/compelling TV for the masses.
While G4 may not have as many different Videogame themed shows, we still are committed to the genre. We’ve expanded X-Play from 3 times a week to 5 times a week (and are seeking to make our 60 minute daily show trial a permanent format at some point in 2009). Also, we’ve expanded our annual E3 coverage every year as well as bringing you deeper coverage from PAX and the GDC. We also just rolled out 10 new episodes of Cheat! Finally, we’ve done hour long specials on nearly every major game release for this generation’s consoles. As I have said numerous times in past, the reason we don’t have as many different regularly scheduled gaming programs is simply due to the fact that the gaming shows in the past didn’t have enough people watching them to support continuing them. We’re always looking for new show concepts, but need to feel that any gaming themed ones a) are different from what we are already doing with X-Play, etc b) have the potential to attract the widest audience possible.
The reason G4 doest show programs solely dedicated to technology is simply based on the anticipated ratings, or lack thereof, that we could expect to get from them. TechTV had a hard time finding broad adoption of programming specific to this genre so, with limited resources, we need to use what we learned from the past as we make decisions today and in the future. As I have said before, the young male portion of our audience that is interested in tech specific content doesn’t appear to watch live linear TV as much as other demos do. Therefore, I think a lot of specialized genres are best delivered to this group via forms of on-demand media (web sites, VOD, podcasting) where they can be viewed whenever they are ready/available.
I don’t miss an episode of X-Play or AOTS… so, I’d go with them. As far as what it takes to get a station on TV… there isn’t a simple answer, but in terms of a TV channel on cable or satellite, I think you need to be a part of a major media company these days to secure distribution and start-up funding. This business has changed quite a bit over the past few years…because of bandwidth constraints, I think the new “channels” in the future will be more “on demand” or web based (vs. live or linear based) where the internet can be used as a means to distribute content. The issue here is the business model would likely need to be fully supported by advertising, which is still in the early stages of adoption.
I was wondering if G4 is ever going to make it's shows watchable on the website in their entirety, i am on my computer constantly and am not always in a place to watch the channel (even though I do so at home)so it would be awesome if I could sit down and watch an entire episode of AOTS without having to hunt for clips on the site.”user: KiLLeR_friend
I’ve commented on this before… it would be “awesome” except for our distribution partners (i.e. cable, satellite or telco) who all pay us for the right to distribute our content. Now, different networks have different agreements with respect to free streaming of full episodes, but for now, G4’s agreements pretty much prohibit us from offering full shows free online.
Great question. I do think we will find better success as advertisers seek to concentrate their ad dollars in more targeted media in this economy. We deliver a concentrated audience (young men) that is still rather desirable. I think one of the biggest challenges will be to continue to push for the adoption of advertising within web video. Most of the money on the web is in paid search…but it’s convincing advertisers to take advantage of web video that’s a big opportunity for us.
Also is thare any plans on airing a Machinima like Red vs Blue?”user: kman1313
No plans on Arena but we’re looking at options for something similar to Game Makers…but, perhaps, in a different format. I’d very much like to pursue machinima based ideas… the issue is legal/rights. Machinima, as you know, uses other companies’ intellectual property to execute. Creating episodes for free on the internet is viewed by IP owners as an entirely different use of their copyrights versus a TV network with subscribers and advertisers…so it’s a bit more tricky.
I thought Fable II was a bold choice and I’m proud of the X-Play staff for sticking with what they truly believed to be the best game among many great options. In the end, their rationale went way beyond popularity and took into account many nuances that set Fable II apart from the others. For this I think the X-Play team should be commended for pursuing this line of thinking. Whether you agree with the selection or not, I think we can agree that awards of this kind would all be better off if the level of consideration X-Play gave to its selection was adopted by others be it games, TV, film, etc.
Your guess is as good as mine. I would love to see more technology that seeks to address the convergence of the home computer with the TV screen. I think the broad adoption of this concept out-of-the-box (i.e. like Apple TV or Windows Media Center), but with live TV integrated too will usher in all sorts of new network and programming models.
