Welcome to Open Source, where you get to have a virtual sit-down with the man in charge: Neal Tiles, President of G4.
June 2009: G4’s biggest month of the year!
Summers have historically been big for G4, and this year is certainly no exception. A lot of new things to talk about…so much so that I’d like to push off answering questions this month. Also, I would like to share this month’s Open Source with a fellow G4 Executive who has a special announcement regarding G4’s website. But first some programming news:
E3 2009. The biggest point to talk about is the obvious. Simply, this year’s E3 (coverage begins this Monday, June 1st at 1PM) will be G4’s biggest yet. We’re up to a total of 23 hours of live coverage over the four days of E3, including so many hands-on demos of so many great new games. Sure, you can likely find the “trailers” elsewhere, but G4 is the place to check out live, in-game demos for the very first time. Add to this an unprecedented five press events aired on your television entirely commercial free and Steve Wiebe’s highly anticipated attempt at breaking Billy Mitchell’s World Record High Score in Donkey Kong, and, well, you can see why we’re all so excited about our multiplatform coverage. It’s a great week for the videogame industry overall and a time of year that you can see that our commitment to gaming is obvious and unrivaled. Enjoy.
Since last month’s Open Source we've announced a few new programs that will premiere this summer. 2 Months, $2 Million is one of them. Premiering August 16th, 2M2MM follows four twenty-somethings who, together, have passed up typical career paths in
favor of making a killing in the world of competitive, high stakes, online poker. More than a series about just poker, 2M2MM follows a group of young math whizzes who have decided to pool their talents and put up their own money to see if they can make “the dream” a reality…in Vegas! The mansion, the cars, the women… for them, it all won’t matter if they don’t reach their goal: to win $2 million in 2 months. Be sure to check it out this August.
We've also announced Web Soup, hosted by Chris Hardwick. I'm super excited about this show and having Chris in front of it. We think it’s the perfect show for G4, and allows us yet another place to comment on all that we adore on the World Wide Web. Check this and The International Sexy Ladies Show each Sunday beginning June 7th starting at 9PM.
Next up is Ninja Fest 4. Ninja Fest is always a highly watched day on G4, and, this time, we’ll have 5 all-new episodes of Ninja Warrior that features what everyone there said was easily the toughest, most insane course yet. While it certainly was a tough one, and without giving too much away, I will say that the fourth and final stage comes into play. Will someone (or more than one) achieve total victory? June 21st is the day to check it out. I couldn’t pass up mentioning that our very own Olivia Munn makes her second attempt on the diabolical course. How does she do? Does she make it all the way to Stage Four? You’ll have to tune in to find out, but I will tell you…Olivia goes further than she did last year. G4’s American Ninja Challenge hosted by Olivia Munn kicks off Ninja Fest 4 on June 21.
G4Rewind returns? Well, not quite…but beginning Tuesday, June 9th from 11am to 12pm we’ll start airing two back-to-back episodes of “Classic” X-Play each weekday. How long will this go on? No end date is scheduled at this point. Putting it simply, we’ll continue to schedule it so long as it performs well. I'm sure some will wonder how far back we plan to go with older episodes to keep the games/reviews featured somewhat current. We’ll only go back as far as mid-2007. Be sure to check it out.
As I mentioned at the top of this post, I wanted to share this month’s Open Source with someone else here at G4. Josh Krane is Senior Vice President of our Interactive & New Media Department. He was one of the very first G4 employees back in the beginning and is passionate about this place. Josh and his team have spent a great deal of time and effort working on the next chapter of our website. I’m proud of the work they have done and what they have accomplished, and, as I mentioned above, feel the new direction of our website is yet another sign of G4’s commitment to gaming, which, when we feel makes business sense, is unrivaled.
Take it away, Josh...
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Greetings Open Source!
We are happy to finally announce the first phase of our new G4tv.com website. Over the past year, we took a deep look at our web business and resoundingly found that while videogame content may not have proven to be viable on linear TV, it, like other more specialized interests, has found success in the “on demand” platform of the web where limited content can be consumed when and where the fans want it. Our fun, personality-driven gaming editorial seemed to resonate best with our audience. Our users (that’s you) told us you loved our videos, our personalities, our snarky slant on the news and our unabashedly honest reviews and that you wanted more of all of them. Armed with that knowledge, we set out to make G4tv.com a better destination to serve you, our users. With a slight bit of humor and humility, we feel with our new website, finally, G4 got gaming right.
This first phase of the new site, which we are calling “Beta”, introduces our new site architecture and design. You will notice from your very first visit to our new homepage that we have a clean new design that brings much more of our gaming content front and center and makes it more accessible. We are also introducing a new navigation system that not only brings our gaming content front and center but also makes it easier to find our TV shows, and get to our blowout coverage of events like E3. Our videos are now easier to access and we have dramatically improved the experience of viewing our content including HD videos, full screen video and a “dim the lights” feature so you can lean back and enjoy the show. We have even included the ability to toggle the entire site from light to dark.
Most importantly, we have vastly expanded our gaming editorial efforts and the majority of the enhancements to the site in this first phase were designed to feature that content. We have a new editorial team in place with the mission of covering gaming in the biggest way possible. Our Games section now houses all of our gaming news, videos, reviews, previews, trailers, cheats & screenshots. You can break down all of our coverage by platform and we now have platform-specific landing pages for all of the current gen gaming platforms (including PC games). Every game on the site also has a page where you can find all of the content we have to offer about that game title, regardless if it was a review from X-Play, a game trailer from a publisher, or a G4tv.com original web series. Our search is also greatly improved in this new site. You can now search through our extensive content indexes without leaving the page and our site-wide search makes it easier to find the specific gaming content you are looking for.
Of course, this is only the beginning for the new G4tv.com. With Phase 1 up and running we will be quickly moving into the second phase of our new site development. This phase will include even more gaming editorial content including game specific forums and community features, a new design to our news blog TheFeed, and all new sites for Attack of The Show and our other shows. However, I’m most excited about that fact that we plan to provide you, the users, the ability to help influence G4 in new and really cool ways. We have a lot of work left to do, but we feel confident that when we are done, G4tv.com will define an entirely new path for gaming coverage online. But for now, G4tv.com is New. Improved. Awesome.
-Josh
