More Money Less Values

After the discussion on the history of BET and if it was the ethical thing to do to show the content that it was broadcasting, I could not help but think of what just happened to a similar station that I grew up watching G4TV.

Back in the early 2000s Comcast created G4TV after they wanted to get a larger audience that what the channel's predecessor TechTv was getting.  G4TV launched with thirteen original shows as well taking some of the highest rated programs from TechTv.  The channel was trying to appeal to a small demographic of gamers and tech junkies with many of their shows appealing to one or both of these groups.  

I remember watching the channel when I was a kid and thinking of how cool all of the shows were.  Waking up really early before school became much easier when I could watch Arena and Cheat!, and running home after school to watch X-Play was a must.  However as the years went on people became more interested in other things and G4TVs viewership dwindled.  To get more money, Comcast decided that G4TV was no longer going to narrow cast to a small group of people.  Instead they decided to appeal to all males, broadcasting shows like Cops, Cheaters, The Man Show, and many rebroadcasts of Spike TV shows.

This was a huge bummer for me.  No longer was there a station that was heavy into my interests.  There was still blocks of their old programming, but it was not the same.  Eventually money became more important to them than their original values and viewers.  And now the station is dying out again and being rebranded into Esquire Channel.

It is a shame that this happened.  Instead of sticking to their original values and putting out quality programming, they decided to go after the money.  I often wonder what would have happened to the station if they decided to invest more in their original content and kept narrow casting, but maybe the market was never really there.