TechTV Lays Off San Francisco Staff

7 May, 2004 at 11:04am ET Article published in Tech

TechTV told 285 San Francisco employees on Thursday that their jobs are being eliminated, a move that was widely feared by workers after Comcast announced in March that it would acquire the technology cable channel.

Comcast will merge TechTV, owned by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures, with its own G4 video game network when the buyout is finalized next week. David Shone, a spokesman for G4 TV, said the company plans to hire 80 people from the San Francisco office to work at the game channel’s Los Angeles headquarters. Employees were given two months notice and various severance packages, he said.

Source: CNet

Comments

7 May 2004 ~ 11:15am Cyclonite They're merging TechTV with G4?! But... but... I like TechTV the way it is.

/me runs off unhappily...
7 May 2004 ~ 11:20am KingFish I wholeheartedly agree with you Trekky. I hope Comcast doesn't make a mess of this.

KingFish
7 May 2004 ~ 1:26pm Jengo No more morgan?
7 May 2004 ~ 1:36pm Cyclonite They better not freakin get rid of XPlay! I love that show!
7 May 2004 ~ 2:38pm KingFish Since G4 is gamer heavy they prolly will. I hope they don't get rid of sara on the screensavers.

KingFish
7 May 2004 ~ 3:52pm TheSmJ Damnit! It's one of my fav channels on TV, and they had to go and change it?!
7 May 2004 ~ 4:01pm Wired I wouldn't be surprised if they keep a lot of the shows. Yeah, XPlay is probably gone (or else it'll be mutated into another show with some of the G4 shows) and they'll probably snip some of the G4 shows. Of course, that's IF they're truly combining the programming on the channels. Theoretically, they could do both at the same time, with an overworked film crew in the background.

FYI, TSS should be safe since they hired leo back, it shows good hopes about the show.
7 May 2004 ~ 5:40pm Wired Uh oh, looks worse:
http://leo.typepad.com/tlr/2004/05/comcast_fires_t.html
7 May 2004 ~ 8:38pm RADA No more Sara!!! (Screen Savers)

*RADA stumbles around all woozy-like.

Sara has to be one of the most beautiful woman-tech-geeks I have ever seen.

*RADA quicky posts this entry before his wife see the last comment!!!
7 May 2004 ~ 10:51pm mcwc Ah great, ComCast better not f**k this one up. They better hire back all the hosts, and keep the current shows. It's only good tech channnel that I watch and have on cable. They better keep The Screen Savers and XPlay cause I watch that during dinner.
7 May 2004 ~ 11:20pm Medlock Holy crap that sucks!! I used to watch G4 and TechTV all the time when we had comcast cable, but we recently switched to Directv. Then I was reduced to Techtv alone. Will I still be able to watch this channel? (Or this new channel?)

Trekky8472 wrote:

They better not freakin get rid of XPlay! I love that show!

I liked G4's show better. Ummm.... what was it called again? Electric Playground i think... Something else before that. Dammit I wish we still had comcast! (From all those damn commercials I think I'm the only person who liked digital cable better than satellite!)