An Intern Speaks Out...

From the website link http://themacmind.com/ :

The Death of TechTV.
Nov 29, 2004 - 09:15 PM - Editorial - dark_lotus

DISCLAIMER: The following is a personal account of what happened during the final months of working at TechTV. Any opinions expressed are my own, and everything stated is true to the best of my knowledge.

As some of you may be aware, I was an intern for TechTV for the last 5 months of its San Francisco Operations. However long before that I was friends with Kevin Rose, and Dan Huard during the creation of the online show thebroken.

Here is the true story of the end of TechTV. Many employees were/are not able to discuss this due to their contracts and termination agreements, which is why you haven't heard a lot.

X-Play was the highest rating show on TechTV, and we were setting new records for the company every month. Call for Help, along with all the other shows were doing splendidly. It was a great time for TechTV. Comcast had just announced that it had bought TechTV from Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen. There were vicious rumors spreading around, but everyone was confident that TechTV would continue, the way it had been. At various X-Play meetings, we were told that it was financially more viable to maintain operations in San Francisco, rather than move operations to Los Angeles. Considering the production pipeline, TechTV was very efficient at what it did. It's shows also had personality, people you could relate too. Unlike G4's shallow programming, there was a personal side to TechTV, which I speculate is why fans of TechTV are so loyal.

One Friday morning when I got to work, to my horror, the offices were empty. Adam Sessler was the only one at the X-Play area, and needless to say he was not happy. He directed me down to the Conference room, where I saw most of the TechTV staff crammed into what was a large room. Comcast had just announced that they were firing all the staff at TechTV. They also announced that people had until May 14th to re-apply for jobs in LA. As was pointed out by one member of the audience, this was the week of the largest gaming conference in the US, E3. That's right, G4 were blissfully unaware that the deadline they had set was right in the middle of E3. At this point I wanted to go and punch the new CEO (G4's CEO). Fortunately for him, I left. I heard later that G4 had extended the deadline to the following week. As Becky Worley said "Chalk that up to CEO Charles Hirschorn. I've met with Chuck, the guy has the leadership abilities of a clam, and about the same personality."

My first thought was that Comcast were never interested in the content of our shows, rather they where after the 45 million households where TechTV was being shown. That works out roughly to be $5 per household. Over the following weeks, it seemed that a great cloud had set over TechTV, the jovial, exciting place I had come to know and love was slowly being swallowed by the horror that everyones days were numbered. A couple of weeks later, the last episode of Call for Help aired. The next day that I came into work, it scared me. The lack of Call for Help staff generated a deafening silence throughout the office.

During June, the crew from X-Play began signing their contracts to move to LA, along with The ScreenSavers crew, Unscrewed and the other shows moving down to LA. One particular person, whom had acted as a mentor for me during my internship, sat at the round table, staring blankly at the contract. It was 3:00pm when he signed it, he said to me "I can't believe I'm doing this". Those who didn't sign a contract had to sign an agreement in order to get their Severance package (a significant sum of money). The severance package stipulated that the person could not say ANYTHING negative about G4, even if it was true, and it was also stipulated that the person could not discuss the severance package agreement with anyone. I must also add that no single person at TechTV told me this, and that my knowledge came from reading the document itself. It sounded like G4 knew exactly what it was doing from day one.

I will remember Thursday July 15th 2004 as one of the saddest days of my life. It was the filming day of the last episode of X-Play in San Francisco. Afterwards, the crew went to a bar, however they were carding, so me along with 2 of the other interns were not allowed in. Adam came out and said "It's been f***ing awesome working with you guys". We shook hands and left to In and Out Burger at Fishermans Wharf. After being dropped off I went home. The next day was the last day of TechTV operations, and I went in to see the final episode of The Screensavers, and went to the after party. I said goodbye to everyone I knew there.

Kevin and I had discussed doing another episode of thebroken after everyone moved and got settled in. The coming months passed insanely quickly. I went to the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, and had attempted to take some time to go and see Kevin, however my schedule was incredibly packed and i didn't get to see anyone. I ran into one of the old interns down there, and after I got back called Adam to say hello. Summer quarter finals drew in, and at the end of September I moved from Daly City into San Francisco. Sadly enough, I could see the old offices where I used to work from my balcony. October came and went as I settled into my new place and got everything underway.

I saw one of the other old interns at the premier of The Incredibles, and we reminisced a bit. Then on the following Thursday night, I received a call from Kevin. I missed the call and called him back, he had left a message saying he wanted to catch up as it had been a while since we last spoke. I had read just prior to the phonecall that the staff from The ScreenSavers (except Kevin and Sarah) had been fired, and that Unscrewed had been cancelled, and all their staff fired. I spoke to Kevin, and it was all sadly true. On top of that, Fresh Gear had been shelved.

Comcast and G4 have officially killed the techTV we all knew and loved, they're even changing the name back to G4 in January. That's six years of hard work down the toilet. So, where will people go for technically orientated programming? Leo Laporte stipulates that the Internet will be the new broadcast medium, allowing for even more focused programming.

"As for the rest of the folks let go, I am actually excited for them. They had their moving expenses partially paid for, and now they are looking for TV work in LA, not San Francisco. Employment options in production are much better in SoCal, and trust me, no one's happy to be at G4 right now." - Becky Worley.

Tonight G4 aired the new version of TSS. And the fan's aren't happy.

man i can feel his pain ot almost brought a tear to my eye
i've away's wanted to work for G4techtv and o could pretty much feel what it must have been like :(
they need to pay now!

I've often said I wanted Morgan Webb to become more famous and maybe get her own acting career, but she's all that G4's got at this point. They better pray that she stays with the network, or else they're as good as finished.

And I agree, TSS isn't the same show it used to be. Kevin Pereira ruined it :angry: Why, G4, why?!? :(

Tim (aka the Slipperman)

morgan famous....that's like a bad nightmare
could you imange her dateing brad pit :(

Well, that would be bad considering that Brad Pitt is married to Jennifer Aniston, Morgan would be committing adultery.

Robert Padbury was a guest on The Screen Savers today. He was speaking about the rendering he did of the iPod Flash, a supposed new Apple product to be introduced at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I know it was the same guy who was a former X-Play intern because he is Australian (it said so in his Tech TV biography) as was the caller.