{"id":25,"date":"2004-06-17T09:16:23","date_gmt":"2004-06-17T13:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=25"},"modified":"2004-06-17T09:59:19","modified_gmt":"2004-06-17T13:59:19","slug":"take-two-mediocre-networks-and-put-them-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=25","title":{"rendered":"Take two mediocre networks and put them together&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wasn&#8217;t a big fan of TechTV when it was, well, TechTV.  To me, TechTV is a lot like a Macintosh: useful to some people, but the handholding and coddling and training wheel-esque presentation wasn&#8217;t something I could stomach.  It struck me as TV for people who wanted to pretend they knew about computers, but really didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>But apparently now that Comcast has purchased TechTv and merged it with its existing gamer channel G4, the new FrankenTechTVG4 [tm] <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/news\/digiwood\/0,1412,63879,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3\">isn&#8217;t leaving anyone very happy<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>G4 fans are willing to tell the TechTV types to stop whining, and some complain about the influx of computer geek shows. But the TechTV troops are throwing every digital bit they have at the problem, including a Yahoo news group called Long Live Tech TV with more than 700 members, a <a href=\"http:\/\/techtv.meetup.com\/\">TechTV Meetup day<\/a> and e-petitions. Web cartoon strip <a href=\"http:\/\/ars.userfriendly.org\/cartoons\/?id=20040616\">User Friendly<\/a> is tackling the subject this week. At one point, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leoville.com\/\">Leoville<\/a>, home of the discussion boards for deposed TechTV host Leo Laporte, drew 1,000 simultaneous users.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I think this whole debacle is proof positive that <a href=\"http:\/\/ars.userfriendly.org\/cartoons\/?id=20040617\">Comcast knows nothing about quality programming<\/a>.  Imagine if they had bought Disney?  They would have done the almost the same thing: taken an old, tired, uncreative entertainment outlet that&#8217;s been resting on its laurels since 1960 and produced nothing of value since, and made it completely unwatcheable to even the most vapid of audiences.  Of course, I wouldn&#8217;t have cared, because like TechTv, I haven&#8217;t paid much attention to Disney since I &#8211; to put it bluntly &#8211; started thinking for myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; and you get the new TechTV.  And no one is happy about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets-widgits-and-whatzits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}