Tech and Television

By Vermouth

Television about technology is an atrocious, unsalvagable heap of dung. The two fields are just not meant to be married - as sensible as the pairing would seem. If there can be a network for golf or cooking surely there can be a network devoted to the world of gaming and technology? Well the sad answer is no - what television management want and what tech enthusiasts want are completely incompatible. Fortunately for me and all us other nerds out there, just as one medium is proving unsatisfactory a new medium is on the way.

For years I was with the moderates; I thought there could be a quality gaming or tech centric television station. The straw that broke the camel’s back was relayed to me today. I was listening to a podcast, This Week in Tech, hosted by several exiles from old Tech TV. One of them mentioned that the way most TV executives like to watch the shows they put on the air is with the sound off. This is because the most important thing to them is how everyone looks, the makeup, the lighting, the set design. Content isn’t king in television. The people in charge of G4-Tech TV weren’t concerned about the fact that their personalities were morons, or that the writing was atrocious, or that by the time they got to something it was old news. Even if their opinions on tech made sense, Gamespot and Digg already relayed the story a month ago. Television is a zero minute medium, this isn’t like print where they have to produce this stuff then put it in the mail, but even weekly news magazignes like Time or Newsweek were far more on top of their respective fields than G4-Tech TV ever was.

Even now, I can tell some bean counter is preparing a counter argument. And this argument goes something like this: the viewership of even large tech sites is inconsequential for television viewership. They are probably right - there probably aren’t millions of nerds and gamers out there planning to watch a TV network. Further prime time network television is scheduled right at the same time most gamers play games - in the evening. So is all hope lost for intelligent, interesting technology and gaming programming that’s really aimed at the core-market of people who are interested by these things? No, in fact there is better video and audio programming for geeks these days than there has ever been. It’s just not on television and it’s part of a better entertainment experience than television ever could have offered as this is all handled ala carte.

Podcasting (audio and video) is really an amazing alternative media . Instead of waiting for the pin-heads at the television studios to get it, several really entertaining podcasts have sprung up that are very entertaining. I’m sure there are some amazing ones I’m missing out there that fit my interests but I love Gamespot and PC Gamer podcasts for gaming news, Diggnation, TwiT and Cranky Geeks for Tech news, and NPR & Real Time with Bill Maher for Political stories. The point is television exectutives can no longer claim soul dominion over what sort of content is available out there. While my tastes tend to be of the esoteric and geeky variety there is a developing set of more traditional content coming out like Tiki Bar. It’s true that TV isn’t likely to be going anywhere as it simply has too much inertia. But I’m happy to have some other options out there as I’ve been looking for something like this for years. I’ve seen the future; and it looks like an RSS feed.

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