G4 has a new Sherriff

agn · 09-17-2005, 04:31 PM

Just got word that yesterday was the last day G4 was operating under the direction of founder Charles Hirschhorn. I met Charles in 1999 when All Games was producing almost 12 hours of programming each week.

The call came on a hot summer afternoon in New York City. We had a team of about 12 people at AGN and when I heard the message I thought one of them was playing a joke.
"Scot Rubin, this is Charles Hirschhorn the President of Walt Disney Television and this is a totally cold call. Please give me a call back at ..."

I played the message for everyone on speaker phone and nobody fessed up. So I called the number and sure enough...

"Charles Hirschhorn's Office"

Hello? What does Charles do?

"He's the President of Walt Disney Television" she said in a Marry Poppins tone.

"Well what does he want from me?" I asked with a laugh.

He didn't tell me what he wanted that day. It wasn't until a few months later, and a couple of cryptic calls that he explained he was interested in creating a network about video games. Here I was, 4 years into my Internet TV network about games, and the President of Walt Disney Television was taking me to dinner to convince me to leave the web, and join him in building a network on television.

What followed next was a year long courtship that ended with me and members of my team moving our entire lives from NY to LA on 2 weeks notice.

The team would also bring
1 wife and 2 girlfriends with them as well.

I left G4 a year ago because I felt there was no clear vision for the channel and there were too many broken promises made to me and many others.

I believe there should be a network for the game generation, I believe that the people who live and breathe that culture should be instrumental in creating the content and I hope the future is bright for G4 and all the great people that still work there. There are a LOT of great people still there and I wish them the best as they work through this transition.

mecha_samurai14 · 09-17-2005, 04:40 PM

So, who's the new sheriff now?

Oomba · 09-17-2005, 05:21 PM

FUCK YES!

I hate that ass. I cant say im sorry to see the man behind "Video Game Vixens" leave, thats for sure.

Arandar · 09-17-2005, 05:42 PM

What I'm wondering is say if under the new leadership G4 cleans up its act and starts to go down the path you would have liked it to, would you ever, or at least consider, going back?

dcNate · 09-17-2005, 05:46 PM

Lol Leo For President

:/

MageMasher · 09-17-2005, 06:01 PM

I'm glad. The man was running the network down.

Burr · 09-17-2005, 06:10 PM

It was worth a shot. Between David Bohrman fucking over Pseudo and Charles Hirschhorn you were stuck between two suits controlling your fate really, right? Better to at least try something new and risky than go down the toilet with Pseudo. Plus I'm sure it gave you plenty of useful experience for this latest venture. I really don't think G4 will change all that much though as long as big money is behind it. They will experiment and improve some things maybe, but they'll also stick to tried and true MTV-ish formulas instead of blazing the way in interactive coverage of an interactive medium the way AGN did during the heydays of Pseudo.

Badass Penguin · 09-17-2005, 06:36 PM

There Is A God!

EvilWall · 09-17-2005, 06:43 PM

I never got into what was really behind G4 and all that.....So, it doesn't really make much sense to me anyways.

rayjay2380 · 09-17-2005, 07:08 PM

This is now on http://www.digg.com AGN you confirmed a story that Kevin rose posted there and he thinks Techtv may return because of this.