Friday, May 9, 2008
Former "Star Trek" star Wil Wheaton was the main attraction on G4, the fast-rising video-game TV network. Until he quit, embroiling the network in a 21st century "Quiz Show" scandal.
May 8, 2003 | With a programming schedule ranging from gossip to game shows, all of it devoted to the video game industry, cable giant Comcast's G4 Media Network was launched with the promise of becoming the Playstation generation's answer to the E! network. Just as the popular game shows of the 1950s were rocked by a scandal over the rigging of "The $64,000 Question," however, the fledgling gamers' network now faces its own "Quiz Show" scandal, surrounding the video game show "Arena."
Wil Wheaton, the show's original host -- best known for playing Ensign Wesley Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" -- left "Arena" last December, alleging a web of deceptions perpetrated on both him and the viewing audience as well as mistreatment of the show's contestants by its producers. "There is a culture of dishonesty and hubris at G4 that would make an ambulance-chasing lawyer cringe," Wheaton wrote in a recent Slashdot.org journal entry explaining his reasons for leaving "Arena" despite being G4's most popular personality.
Launched in May 2002 after a full week of broadcasting a continuous game of Pong, G4 is the first 24-hour network devoted to video games and the people who play them. The channel is currently available in 9 million homes, but its market share continues to expand as its parent company, Comcast, consolidates its place as America's largest cable provider after the recent purchase of AT&T's broadband division.
Comcast also owns and operates E!, and has patterned G4 after the celeb-gossip channel. While the audience for true Hollywood stories may be content to ogle a drug-addled Anna Nicole or absorb a Joan Rivers rant about Grammy fashions, G4's viewers are connected, in-tune and online. This has caused problems for the network, which has never seemed to grasp how important the free flow of information and instant feedback is to its target audience.
"There's a big intersection between the gamer and the 'Star Trek' community," Wil Wheaton says during a recent telephone interview as he prepares for a Southern California Trek convention. "I know from being a part of 'Star Trek' for 15 years that these people know everything about this subculture that they're a part of. They resent it tremendously when some group comes in and tries to exploit their passion. I've always been a geek. I still am. I play the games that they buy."
Travis Oates was Wheaton's co-host on the show "Arena." "One of the biggest problems at the network," Oates says, "was that you had people who knew computer games or video games but knew nothing about television and people who knew about television but knew nothing about computer games. The two worlds never met up with each other. I think what you're seeing with this is that Hollywood mentality that the viewing audience is stupid and nothing that they could do really has any effect.
"The cable channel has got a slew of problems," Oates continues, "because there are really terrible people that are in some key positions there."
Wheaton and Oates are both members of the Acme Comedy Theatre, a Los Angeles improv group. Oates started at G4 as a writer and recommended Wheaton to some producers at the network when he learned they were looking for a celebrity to serve as a game-show host.
Oates described the show's concept to Wheaton and got his attention. "I was actually more interested in being a writer than the on-camera stuff," says Wheaton. "I had a couple of meetings with [G4 executives] and I was hired in the first couple of weeks of January 2002."
Oates was originally a writer and host of the video game secrets show "Cheats," but moved to "Arena" to join Wheaton as his co-host due to their shared experience as improv performers. The duo provided tongue-in-cheek play-by-play commentary as teams of gamers in the relative safety of LAN networks and leather office chairs blew the bejesus out of each other across the simulated landscapes of such shooter games as "Unreal Tournament" and "Counter Strike."
Wheaton and Oates' humorous approach to the material rapidly won G4's biggest fan following. But their honeymoon was practically nonexistent as they realized that everything wasn't as it seemed at the network.
"The first two episodes were completely faked," Wheaton admits. "That didn't bother us because we all knew that this was just proof of concept." He says he and Oates believed viewers would never see the staged episodes. "They were going to be pulled out of rotation, but they still show them today."
"We knew that the first two episodes were going to be faked," Oates confirms, "but I didn't know that they were going to air and that we were going to treat them as if they were real episodes, which they did."
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