G4 screws up yet another TechTV show

March 29, 2005

Ever since G4 laid off the TechTV staff and moved most production to LA, they’ve been killing off the TechTV shows in favor of the G4TV content. They really didn’t want most of the intellectual property–they bought TechTV strictly for the expanded distribution.

So one more TechTV show bit the dust this week–The Screen Savers has been replaced by Attack of the Show. The weird thing though is that Attack of the Show is almost indistinguishable from the most recent episodes of The Screen Savers. It’s the same hosts, the same kind of content, about the only thing that’s changed are the name of the show and some of the set decorations. Otherwise it’s the same.

Of course neither the new show nor the recent episodes of The Screen Savers are as good as the original Screen Savers. Loved that show, it was really geeky stuff like video cards and tweaking the XP firewall. But now Attack of the Show is largely about gaming, and while I still like one of the hosts (Kevin Rose), the other guy Kevin Pereira is just annoying. He’s a gamer but without the technical cred that Kevin Rose has.

I believe the only remaining TechTV show is X-Play. I think they’ll leave that one untouched since it appeals to their target demographic of gamers. Plus Morgan Webb is really popular among the gaming geeks who can’t get a date and just want to fantasize about hot gamer chicks.