Established geek shows calling it quits after almost a decade on air as the channel they’re hosted on moves in a new direction.
Sports geeks should know the name of Don Meredith. 1) For being the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboy’s during the 1960s, and 2) being a color-commentator on Monday Night Football, known to sing a line from Willie Nelson’s “The Party’s Over” during any garbage time of a game.
And sadly, “turn off the lights” time has finally come for those working on G4’s Attack of the Show and X-Play. Both geek-focused shows will cease production by the end of 2012 as the channel prepares for its upcoming “modern male” makeover. In fact all of the channel’s remaining programming centered on gaming or tech is getting the boot.
I’m going on a stretch that “modern male” is code for the trendsetting male viewer who has better, more important things to do than spend his time on such childlike matters such as videogames and comic books. Important things, like… Stamping papers! Smoking cigars! Business suits!
A new age gentlemanly image of sorts that definitely does not fit with the viewership of either AOTS or X-Play, which have been cornerstones of geek-related media ever since the channel was at one time called TechTV.
That was around the early half of the 2000s, when much of television at that time still painted nerds as glasses-wearing freaks much less having programming with them in mind, but, that soon changed when the channel launched.
Now, with the emergence of the Internet as a new home for niche programming via YouTube and other online video content holders, the need for such a geek-focused network doesn’t have as much relevance as it once did… And, yeah, its round-the-clock showings of Cops and gutting of many of its game-specific shows – Arena, Cinematech, ICONS – certainly didn’t win G4 any favors.
Grievances aside, I’m going to miss the old G4, and more importantly Attack of Show and X-Play. A feeling, I’m sure, that will hit doubly hard as AOTS and X-Play dedicate the last two months of each show with “farewell” episodes that will have special guests and former hosts. The G4 presser lists many recognizable names that’ll have appearances during the show’s last days, but not one mention of former X-Play and Attack of the Show hosts Adam Sessler and Kevin Pereira, who both left their respective programs early this year.
It’s uncertain if either will return to give their last goodbyes to shows which gave them a good share of their fame, especially in the case of Sessler, who reportedly left X-Play on non-amicable terms, but we will see if that holds true.
I’ll certainly be tuning in once in an a while to pay my respects as well and give as much well-wishes as I can to the hardworking staff there at G4 who will soon be left jobless in the coming months. And at a terrible time to be so, too.
Ugh. What a depressing thought. Hopefully the tide of geeky topics on Walyou – from a life size replica of the Millennium Falcon to a set of Nintendo 3DS trailers from the latest Nintendo Direct – will lift my lowly spirits.
