So they’re raising the G4 network —and thus Attack of the Show, X-Play, and so on— from the dead next year. And I want to be enthusiastic… I’m pretty much the core demographic for that shit, after all. (Also significant: now is probably the ideal time to capitalize on Munn’s rapidly receding visibility as one of The X-Men Most Likely To Be Re-Cast by putting her back in front of a camera every day, looking cute and talking about her inflamed asshole.) The whole thing makes a sort of sense.
I question the long-term viability, though. Who —besides me— is going to watch Attack of the Show in 2021? There are 17 year olds on Twitch with 50x the viewers that AOTS ever had, and none of those viewers will be even slightly interested in the video game and pop-culture opinions of the aging thirty- and fortysomethings at G4. Their push for diversity might help —watching the reunion show on YouTube, it’s kinda glaring how overwhelmingly white G4 was— but I suspect that will simply quiet any half-hearted criticism, rather than significantly grow an audience.
But there’s one unique service the reanimated G4 could potentially provide: the adultification of esports. People my age —even the old-school nerds— just don’t understand the appeal, and no one involved in building the fandom of the future is going to slow down long enough to explain it to us. If a zombie network for aging geeks can figure out how to frame and explain esports in a way that resonates, they might be able to justify their existence.