SDCC 2015: Could G4 Be Coming Back?
All of us at Geekscape are getting back into our old routines like zombies after the party that was San Diego Comic-Con. Expect more stuff from that in the next few days. But there’s one thing we need to get to right now: If former G4TV host and Film Threat founder Chris Gore is to be believed, there are rumblings that G4TV could be making a comeback in a big way.
Yesterday on the last day of San Diego Comic-Con, I lost my Periscope virginity with Chris Gore at our Geekscape booth right in front of Legendary (I know every word of the Straight Outta Compton trailer by heart now) and he let slip that G4TV could be resurrected.
LIVE on #Periscope: San Diego Comic Con – ask me anything. https://t.co/hCK8hvYuis
— Chris Gore @ SDCC (@ThatChrisGore) July 12, 2015
“I shouldn’t even be saying this, but yeah.”
It’s not long into the Periscope, maybe less than a minute, but somehow that divisive digital cable channel we know as G4TV, the one that caught the rising nerd wave early and, fortunately or unfortunately (I’m the latter) wiped out could come alive once again. You can see me freak out a little.
G4TV is why I got into this crazy business in the first place, so my visceral reaction is total excitement. Though the cable channel couldn’t compete against the Internet — as our own Jonathan London says, the Internet is G4 — it offered something mainstream TV still ignores. For all the cultural impact Marvel and DC and Star Wars and everything in between has now, there’s still no massive coverage of things like Comic-Con, E3, or even Star Wars Celebration. Scouring your favorite blog and stalking Twitter and Instagram is the new G4TV.
But I remember being a restless teenager watching that channel. It kept me sane during the summers I spent stuck at my aunt’s place in New York with no where else to go, thousands of miles away from Comic-Con and everything else they were at. It was like MTV’s Spring Break, but nerdier and kind of better. Yeah, the pandering kind of sucked, but the people that spoke for it were smart, charismatic individuals who (usually) cared about what they talked about.
Bethesda gave gamers a mini G4 reunion when Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb co-hosted Bethesda’s pre and post shows at this year’s E3. Watching those two again with chemistry that remained on point, their years separated showing no damage whatsoever, unleashed a flood of emotions. Memories came back of X-Play and other shenanigans those two maniacs and their equally insane production team did in front of cameras. It was wonderful and sublime.
The pitfall to a geek TV channel is that geeks barely watch TV on TV. They’re downloading and streaming. The culture is too big and too divided now to attract with one cable channel. They’d have to come back with a vengeance, cornering the Twitch-like streaming of live games and producing better, compelling, totally original content. No more COPS.
I don’t know much more to the story, Chris only told me a little and I can’t quite tell you guys what that little bit was. But there’s some hope, so if you care about G4 you’d have to tweet endlessly about it (because that’s how we do things #now). There’s no official hashtag or Kickstarter campaign, so it’s curious as to how whoever is trying to make this dark voodoo work is gauging interest.
I’m going to honestly ask: Would you watch a newly resurrected G4TV? I would.
