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Post-Merger, Comcast Gamer Still Seeks a Hit
In a scant two years, Comcast took its video game channel G4 from a business proposal to 50 million households via a major acquisition and about $450 million in capital. Yet so far, executive turnover, network name changes and a TechTV viewer backlash have stymied the network's potential to recoup its investment.
The inside story of the channel's transition from G4 to G4techTV and-on Feb. 15-back to G4 reveals the growing pains endured by a channel whose distribution has expanded faster than its audience and illustrates the programming ambitions of its corporate parent.
Unlike Comcast's better-known and more established cable properties (it has controlling stakes in E!, Style, Outdoor Life and The Golf Channel), G4 has been treated to a privileged fast-track upbringing that may be a precursor to how the multiple system operator will launch future channels.
"For a pure start-up, it's been one of the most expensive so far," said Larry Gerbrandt, a television analyst at the consulting firm Alix Partners. "They've chosen the single toughest demographic [young men] to go after [and] G4 has failed to come up with a signature show that's a must-watch."
Yet Comcast simultaneously has taken a characteristic hands-off approach to the internal management of the network, a stance the MSO says will not change with last week's long-awaited appointment of programming czar Jeff Shell.
"Comcast are financial investors rather than operational investors," Mr. Gerbrandt said.
And industry critics say G4 has yet to get lucky.
On one hand,...