The End of An Era

In the early 2010s, G4 was seemingly on its last legs. Kevin Pereira and Adam Sessler, who, along with Morgan Webb, were the on-air remnants of G4 and TechTV respectively. Pereira and Sessler left the network with Webb being the sole survivor from TechTV that was still hosting a show on the channel. Pereira had been with G4 since the early days of the network while Adam Sessler was part of the TechTV group that survived the various firings along with people like Ryan Vance, Blair Butler, Matt Keil, and others.

Once Pereira and Sessler left over a decade ago, I lost interest in the network at its current point in time and was instead looking more and more into its past. Later in 2012, the news made the rounds that G4 had canceled X-Play and Attack of the Show and they would end in December of 2012. As I was displaced from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy from October to November of 2012, I had no access to a television and therefore couldn’t join fellow G4 fans in saying farewell to G4. The initial plan was to reportedly have G4 fully replaced by Esquire as The Esquire Network. Thankfully that plan was reversed and G4 limped along from 2013 to 2014 in a vegetative state until G4 ceased broadcasting fittingly enough with a game of Pong as it had started with a decade prior.

The Dark Times

Once G4 fully disappeared from the cultural zeitgeist two of the bigger names that left the network, Adam Sessler and Kevin Pereira didn’t disappear as G4 did. Sessler went on to join Revision 3 or as I like to remember it: TechTV: Part Deux as part of the “Rev3 Games” brand while Pereira had a TruTV series by the name of “Hack my Life” which was about life hacks as the name implies. He also started “The Attack,” which was a Twitch series in the style of Attack of the Show minus the budget.

I remember quite vividly listening to Pereira’s podcast and just going nuts whenever he had someone that was connected to G4 in any way. His Pointless Podcast episodes featured Sessler and Charles Hirschhorn who was the executive in charge of G4 during its early years. Sessler would ultimately end up leaving Rev3 Games and was a consultant on the IllFonic/Gun Media Friday the 13^th game before resurfacing in 2020.

The Return

It was 2020, more accurately it was Comic-Con of 2020 when Emmett tagged me in the VGU Staff chat and dropped a link to a video announcing the return of G4 with a new tagline: “We Never Stopped Playing”. To say I was enthused is a bit of an understatement as I dedicated segments of WiN towards G4, rebranded ‘Remembering G4’ to ‘Celebrating G4’, and recorded a special episode of Player’s Club with Emmett and Javon giving our hopes and concerns with the revival of the network.

In November of 2020, there was a G4 Thanksgiving Reunion featuring most of the main cast of G4 circa 2007. It was at the end of this special that WWE Superstar Xavier Woods aka Austin Creed, who had been campaigning for a role with the new G4 on Twitter, became the first big cast hire for the returning network. As 2020 ended and 2021 began, ‘B4G4’ which was a soft build-up to the launch of the network started airing on YouTube and Twitch. Following this, the launch of G4 was delayed due to what can only be assumed to be the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regardless, G4 officially returned on November 16^th of 2021 to both streaming platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and linear platforms such as Pluto TV, Philo, and Cable as well.

G4: The New Class

Over the course of 2021, while B4G4 was airing, more cast members for the new G4 were revealed and while most of the faces are new to the G4 brand, they are accomplished content creators. Kevin Pereira and Adam Sessler are the only on-air talent from the old regime to return to the new G4. Austin Creed, Froskurinn, Ovilee May, Goldenboy, Kassem G, Code Miko, Gina Darling, The Completionist, Will Neff, Fiona Nova, The Black Hokage, and Austin Show rounded out the G4 on-air talent.

G4’s TV Presence

During G4’s road to revival, two of the shows that put G4 on the map; Attack of the Show and XPlay were the first shows that were announced as returning due to “overwhelming demand”. Along the way, G4 acquired the broadcast rights for Sasuke or as it’s better known here in the states: Ninja Warrior. Another show from G4’s past: Unbeatable Banzuke returned as well.

A show that was announced once XPlay and Attack of the Show were confirmed to return was “Boosted”, an e-sports show featuring Ovilee May, Froskurinn, and Goldenboy with guest appearances from the other G4 cast members. Sadly, the show was put on the shelf in order to focus on more e-sports content. To be honest, I was enjoying the show and it was growing on me and then *BAM* it’s gone.

Perhaps the biggest surprise (to me at least), was Invitation to Party which is G4’s D&D show featuring B. David Walters, Frosk, Fiona, Kassem, and many more. “Name Your Price”, which is a throwback to “The Price is Right” circa the 1970s features Austin Show, Will Neff, along with the rest of the extended G4 cast. I’m not really that big a fan of it as I was for Invitation or Boosted but then again, this type of show isn’t really my interest.

Ironically, two “shows” that are featured on G4 have given me what I call the “IT Crowd Effect”. Back in late 2008, and early 2009 I stumbled across an episode of The Lab with Leo and a part of the episode was a commercial for a G4TechTV (Canada) series called “The IT Crowd” and I fell hard for it and became a huge fan. The two programs that seemed to have had that effect on me were “Viva La Dirt League” which is a sketch comedy series based on nerd cultures such as MMOs, Battle Royales, and other various video games. The other is a YouTube channel I’ve gotten in my recommended videos for a long while and that’s Scott the Woz. Once I started watching I couldn’t stop and honestly it led me to look up more of his content.

As far as guests go with G4 2.0 across the various shows, I’ve really enjoyed it. On Attack of the Show, they’ve brought in people from the WWE on occasion, former G4 producer and all-around cool dude Bruce Greene, and are set to have some AEW wrestlers on the show. Meanwhile, on XPlay they’ve had some serious heavy hitters such as Reggie Fils-Aime, Peter Moore, as well as Tim Schaefer.

 Send-Off

As of writing this, it is prior to the Summer Games Fest season of reveals and G4 is still riding high, and as I was completely wrong about VENN in my piece about it being an opportunity to right what G4 1.0 got wrong. However, as VENN managed to be one of the biggest blunders of the past decade it seems G4 2.0 could be a relaunch redemption arc. Here’s hoping the network stays around much longer than VENN did.

G4 2.0 *UPDATE*

As I write this, one of the core shows back from 2002, “Arena” has been officially announced as returning. My only concern with this is the involvement and affiliation with WWE as they are currently under investigation for some less than “questionable” recent activity of Vince McMahon. If you would like to know and potentially learn about the original run of Arena check out my written article on it here.