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Comcast is continuing to mull what to do with all of its NBCUniversal assets. The latest example: The Wall Street Journal reports today that NBCU is in talks with mixed-martial arts league Ultimate Fighting Championship to take a controlling stake in the company’s struggling G4 cable network. The league is looking for an outlet to promote its sport to a growing fan base of young men, the exact target demographic of G4, which focuses on gaming and gadgets but is struggling ratings-wise and recently was dropped by DirecTV. It makes sense — UFC has a distribution deal with Spike TV that expires at year’s end and already shows events on Comcast’s Versus network — but NBCU should watch out for that backlash: It has added wrestling programming to its Syfy channel, sparking complaints from fans angry that their core sci-fi programming is being pushed aside.
Is Comcast Selling Stake In G4 Network?
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MMA on G4 makes a lot more sense than wrestling on SyFy.
Yeah, that comparison doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The point of the UFC buying G4 isn’t to put UFC programming on G4, the point of buying G4 is to convert it to the UFC Network like Discovery Health became OWN. UFC doesn’t want to own a video game based channel. They want it’s distribution so they don’t have to start from scratch when they launch the UFC Network.
Meh. They can have G4. It’s an utter wasteland of a channel, and bears no resemblance to the G4 that it originally was, or the TechTV that they hijacked. Of course, I’d prefer if they’d bring back TechTV, but that ain’t happening.
G4 is still on the air? o_O
Geeks meet the bullies. Match made in heaven. Who’s going to win?
Should not sell it, especially considering it is an original Comcast property. What they should do is put new management in place and then come up with a damn plan. The Video Game industry is a 65 billion dollar industry. What Comcast should be doing is finding away to reach every major developer and work with them to form a community with their channel.
No excuse not to tap into Hollywood and see who the gamers are that are A-list producers, writers, directors and actors. G4 has a ton of potential and it’s not being utilized correctly.
Don’t be surprised if World Wide Wresting jumps into this… they’ve been trying to pull off a channel ever since XFL failed on NBC 10 years ago.
World Wide Wrestling?? They haven’t been called that since 1979. haha
Actually the word is they do NOT have interest in buying G4 right now. They’re actually more interested in seeing the UFC do it first, see how it works out and then try building off the UFC model when they launch their own network.
Rumor has it they (WWE) might want to start their own network by this time next year, which isn’t a bad idea if you think about it. Used to be called WWWF, then WWF and now WWE.
first comcast sells the 76′ers…now they’re selling off G4….it’s like a fire sale to pay for the Olympics over there. somebody better bolt the furniture down at the Style network.
It’s not the Olympics they are paying for right now. They just bought out Blackstone Group to own outright Universal Studios Orlando. Blackstone in-turn is the investment team purchasing the Sixers. Seems like that might have been part of the deal since a few of the major principals in Blackstone are Wharton graduates.
Smackdown’s ratings on SyFy have been abysmal to say the least, so why not move it to the USA Network where it can get more traction and then the UFC can purchase G4 and utilize that as a marketing platform for their events and shows, as SPIKE TV has been a joke as of late. They air Impact Wrestling, so what does that tell us?
TechTV Rocked. G4? Double Meh
Wrestling is only one of the reasons SyFy fans are ticked off. It’s just a symptom of a deeper underlying problem; the gradual move away from scifi programming that brought long time viewers to the channel in the first place, with insultingly bad “reality” programming like Quantum Kitchen and Psychic Nanny, instead of sticking with fledgling genre shows like Caprica and SGU. The biggest beef the fans have with wrestling is not that it’s on the network, but rather, that it is scheduled during the primetime Friday block, which had previously been the home of Stargate and Battlestar Galactica. The loss of that time slot meant that those shows would be moved to the middle of the week, and face competition from the highest rated shows on the big four broadcast networks.
No, Cash. The biggest beef most of the fans have about wrestling being on SyFy is the mere fact that wrestling is on the network, period. (Same applies to all the “reality” crap, but I digress.) That they’ve slotted wrestling for Friday nights is what’s known as “adding insult to injury.”
I used to watch the channel when it was on DirecTV, as they ran some good films – “Movies That Don’t Suck”!
I find G4 original programming very informative but too tech oriented. Direct TV supposedly dropped G4 because it didn’t have enough original programming and was showing repeats or syndicated shows most of the time. How many other channels do that? I think it’s because Comcast and Direct TV hate each other and Direct TV just wants to dump Comcast channels that aren’t going to cause a huge revolt with their subscribers. As a Direct TV subscriber I hope Direct TV buys it. I see plenty of other worthless channels on there that it could replace.
This excuse was complete garbage. G4 was just a casualty of the ongoing battle of rebroadcast licensing fees between Comcast (A content producer AND competing provider) and DirecTV. If you look at the channel guide for DTV, it is readily apparent that the lineup is padded copiously with half-baked special interest channels that don’t bring in a tenth the viewers G4 did. For a tiny network, G4 does pretty well for itself, and continues to score exclusive broadcast rights to special events like E3 and ComicCon, which skew right smack dab into the young male demo advertisers get so excited about.
R.I.P. G4/Tech TV
i’ll never forget x-play, arena, cinematech, portal, judgement day, electric playground, cheat!, martin sargent, screen savers, icons, diana mizoto, anime unleashed, cory rouse and g4tv.com.
“It has added wrestling programming to its Syfy channel, sparking complaints from fans angry that their core sci-fi programming is being pushed aside.” – next week Sci-Fi/SyFy will hit the fifth anniversary of continuous WWE programming (since ECW started there in June 2006). If anything SyFy de-emphasised wrestling late last year by replacing NXT (which itself inherited ECW’s Tuesday night slot early last year) with Smackdown (on Friday nights). If there’s a concern among SyFy viewers is it due to the higher profile Smackdown brings the station?
If anyone must be concerned about the G4/UFC move though (other than the G4 viewers themselves) it would be WWE. Their programming is now pretty much reliant on NBCU (with NXT and Superstars off TV altogether in the US as NBCU don’t want them) – they won’t like UFC moving in on their relationship.
Anime unleashed introduced me to Serial Experiments Lain which was fantastic. Why must every channel become pure trash. Isn’t a niche audience the whole point of cable channels??
In my opinion if this goes through, move the tech and geek shows to syfy. Most of its viewers share those interests. Change G4 to the channel for young male viewers ie a SpikeTv clone with MMA, Wrestling, Ninja Warrior, etc. Bring back Anime to Syfy and add more Tech & Scifi relevant shoes. Its not rocket science that showing reruns of the same show every day and multiple times is no way to run a channel
I agree but as long as they don’t screw with the current programing I am ok with it. Being a avid AOTS & Ninja Warrior Fan. I could care less about the rest of G4′s programing but screw with either one of these and I will declare war on you. Not to mention that UFC game sales haven’t been so good and if they want that to change eventually. It would be wise not pissing off your potential buying audience. G4 at current may as well be changed to Ninja Warrior TV which they frequently run marathons on all day. Not surprising since it is their highest rated show by a landslide. NBC is even giving it a 2 hour prime time slot on July 31. So it would make since keeping this and tapping into the legions of fans it has already massed. As long as UFC doesn’t screw with my 2 favorite shows then I have no problem. If they do a once avid fan will be their worse enemy!!