Some big company should just take all the talent that's been fired (Leo, all the old TSS crew) and make a new network with an actual plan and an actual budget. This market could be
huge. Look at how big the Discovery Channel got and that's basically just nature/science shows. This is tech/gaming! The reason G4/TTV is going down the shitter is b/c so many of its shows are so crappy, have such awful talent that even a tech fan has maybe a 5% chance of watching it more than once. Even the more-watchable shows like Pulse are downright painful to watch 90% of the time for one reason or another. I didn't even think Unscrewed was very funny either. And that's not mentioning the godawful shows that would make the most die-hard gamer/tech person avoid the channel forever (Cheat, Filter, Sweat, Arena, whatever-that-godforsaken-Cribz-style-show-where-we-have-to-watch-Bret-Michaels-play-a-motocross-game he's-never-seen-before-for-ten-minutes-is called, too many to list).
You need
quality to draw people in and then they will be hooked for a long time and you can pretty much just keep following the same formula. There were a few shows that actually almost hit the nail right on the head (early TSS, Icons). But if you're going to have bad hosts (pretty much almost everyone, even the superstars of the channel, Adam & Morgan), you're going to need mind-blowing content. Most of the programming is mediocre content, sub-public access hosting. That just won't cut it. You need a TSS-like show just covering random-ass tech stuff, I really don't think you'd even have to diverge very much from the old show, if at all. A nightly talkshow is a great idea too, but imo where Unscrewed failed is it tried too hard to be funny/like Conan. Tech/gaming can be hard to make funny in that format, but it doesn't have to be funny! Do a straight show where you have a couple tech-gaming guests from the tech news of the day or past week, and let the funny come out on its own! Even if it doesn't, at worse your viewers will be better-informed. Icons needs to be done once every few weeks and be an hour long. There are so many stories in gaming to be told, just look at a book like Phoenix or Kent's book, and this would likely draw in both the gaming and tech crowds, esp. for some of the older topics. Finally, and most importantly, don't make 75% of your shows cater to 12-year-olds who can barely read and need their parents to plug in their PSones. It's insulting and it's useless. If people have your fucking channel on chances are they have some very basic tech/gaming knowledge. The old TSS worked really well b/c it operated on this premise and didn't alienate people the way nearly all the other shows do.
As shitty as Filter is, too, I think a Top 10 show would work, once a week; look back at some of Seanbaby's or GameSpy's Top 10 lists and you can see this is a goldmine of great material. Who wouldn't want to see Seanbaby's
20 Worst Nintendo Games of All-Time on one show? The problem was Filter was executed in literally the worst way anyone could think up. Put a "hot" host who doesn't know/care about the shit she's talking about in cosplay and have people who visit the Filter website (who the fuck does this, anyway, like 10 people... maybe?) vote on fucking ridiculous and boring categories like "Top 10 Extreme Sports Games" and "Top 10 Skateboard Games" while dragging out the same five people to give commentary all the time. Just basically do the opposite of Filter and you'll be fine.
At this point, it's just a matter of who's smart, able, and dedicated enough to tap into this potential cash cow that G4TTV has absolutely and completely fucked up.
