Learning from the death of G4 and VENN: TV on Twitch not working

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Over the weekend, reports emerged that Comcast was canceling G4TV less than a year after its relaunch. The former television network from the early 2000s - known for shows like Xplay and Attack of the Show! - failed to recapture the millennial audience Comcast wanted on Twitch and pay-TV providers.

My time at competitor VENN was enough to know that G4TV was living on borrowed time. Although G4TV made its fair share of mistakes, the underlying problem was the format itself.

VENN and G4TV have both brought premium television-style content to platforms such as Twitch and YouTube Gaming. This - in theory - sounds like a recipe for success. However, this style of content creates a host of problems for the companies behind it.

Let's start with the money. In a leaked statement to G4TV staff, Dave Scott, president and CEO of Comcast Spectacor, admitted that "G4TV's viewership is low and the network has not delivered sustainable financial results." The overhead to run a traditional television network — the stages, production crews, talent, and sales and support staff — is monumental. VENN spent over $40 million in 18 months to attempt this.

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These rising costs have likely caused executives to look for ways to better monetize their product. VENN and G4TV chose to sign deals with pay TV distribution companies - Roku Channel, Xumo, DistroTV, and more for VENN and Verizon FiOS, Cox, Xfinity TV and Philo for G4TV - to achieve this.

However, these agreements created a host of problems. Namely, ad breaks. While Twitch has been pushing streamers to show more ads recently, Twitch viewers often complain that ads spoil the experience. After all, Twitch has acclimated its user base to only seeing pre-roll ads for years. When VENN and G4TV tried to run traditional eight-minute-per-hour commercial breaks on a platform like Twitch, they lost viewers.

Both networks attempted to appeal to a new generation of viewers with a linear TV format presented on a streaming platform it was not designed for.

Over the past 90 days, G4TV has averaged just over 2,000 viewers on Twitch, putting the company firmly in the top 1% of streamers. But compared to the thousands of viewers reported by Nielsen for TV channels, that looks like peanuts for executives.

However, this could be a failure to see a broader trend. Same