It finally happened. G4TV has crashed and burned, marking the second time the network has been forced to ease operations.
According to Variety, the network couldn’t generate enough interest from viewers to stay afloat, and as a result, G4 will once again return from the grave it rose from:
Comcast Spectacor, the cable and entertainment giant’s sports and esports division, told G4 TV employees Sunday that the gaming network was shutting down effective immediately. The decision has resulted in 45 staff members of G4 TV losing their jobs.
In a memo, obtained by Variety, Comcast Spectacor chairman and CEO Dave Scott cited low viewership and said the network had not achieved “sustainable financial results.”
“Over the past several months, we worked hard to generate that interest in G4, but viewership is low and the network has not achieved sustainable financial results,” Scott wrote. “This is certainly not what we hoped for, and, as a result, we have made the very difficult decision to discontinue G4’s operations, effective immediately.”
This comes after massive layoffs to the company due to low viewership across its platforms. This is hardly a surprising turn of events. The network had been heading downhill for months. While Comcast isn’t forthcoming about why the root cause of the shutdown is easy to see.
It’s definitely because of low viewership but it’s not like G4 didn’t have an audience. In fact, its demographic was there and ready to see the network come back to life after its shutdown years ago. The problem came when some of its “talent” decided that the network that was there for the sole purpose of covering escapism and e-sports should be used as a soapbox for social justice politics.
This reared its ugly head when Indiana “Frosk” Black went on a tired rant about “sexism in gaming” where she effectively attacked G4’s audience as being sexist and misogynistic and ending the wildly feminist rant by advising viewers that if they don’t like her they can go watch something else.
Viewers proceeded to take her up on the offer, and over the course of the following months, G4 bled viewers heavily. No matter what they did, they couldn’t staunch the loss.
First, this lead to mass layoffs at the company in September but it was who wasn’t among those layoffs that made the network look even worse. Black, the source of the departure of G4’s audience, kept her job. Her reaction of bragging that she didn’t lose her job while others did only made the network look worse. At that point, people were rooting for G4’s failure.
(READ: G4TV Just Proved It Deserves to Go Under)
A very short time later, Black was let go, but it was too late. The network was a failure, and now its doors are shut.
What corporations need to understand is that this wasn’t a lack of interest that was the problem. The gaming industry, in particular, is the blue whale of subcultures and it consumes news, reviews, and related content greedily. It’s a vast community that loves forming smaller communities and hubs. G4 had all the tools it needed for success, but it failed to learn the lesson that should have been more than apparent by now.
You get woke, and you go broke.
Social justice ideology is divisive as a rule. It creates victims and oppressors and it demands fealty and obedience. Black made it clear that she was oppressed and the audience was the oppressor despite the fact that the vast majority of them had done nothing wrong. She had effectively made G4’s official stance that of every professional victim that had come before her; gamer culture is bad, gamers are bad, and they aren’t our audience.
So be it. Gamers won’t be your audience on a network meant for gamers.
This is the pattern for every social justice takeover of any company no matter what the product is; “the consumer is not our consumer.” From the largest corporation to the small company, if you alienate the people you’re trying to sell things to, then you’ll have no one to sell anything to. This is the essence of the “get woke, go broke” lesson.
Social justice is not there to sell anything but an idea, and a bad one to boot. Any business tempted to begin using its platform to preach the divisive message should never be surprised to find its audience divided away from it. It’s that simple.