g4tv posts

One of the major game industry awards has found a new TV network to broadcast the event. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced that it has partnered with the G4 cable TV network to broadcast the 2011 edition of its Interactive Achievement Awards. The awards had been shown for the past two years on the IFC cable TV network.

This year's award ceremony will be held on February 10 during the AIAS's annual DICE Summit in Las Vegas. Actor and comedian Jay Mohr will be the host of the ceremony for the sixth year in a row. G4 will stream the awards ceremony live in its entirely on its G4TV.com web site along with online content from the DICE Summit session and its Indie Game Challenge. G4 will broadcast the awards on its network on February 12 at 4 pm Eastern time.

While the G4TV cable TV network has always aired a lot of live footage from E3 in years past, the network is planning to expand that coverage even more in the next few years. Today G4 announced that it has signed a deal making it the official broadcaster of E3 in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

G4 states it will broadcast over 24 hours of live coverage of E3 (and even more streaming video at G4tv.com) in 2011. Officially next year's show be held on June 7-9 but there will likely be pre-E3 press conference from various publishers beforehand.. As always E3 will be centered at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

A cable TV network with big ties to the game industry could find itself without a large chuck of its total audience when Monday rolls in. On G4s Attack of the Show broadcast on Thursday host Keven Pereira stated that the DirecTV satellite TV service was planning to remove G4 from its channel line up and it could happen as early as Monday, November 1.

Pereira claimed G4 offered the same deal this year to DirecTV to keep the channel on the company's line up as it has for the past three years. However he said that DirecTV rejected the offer, claiming, "They don't see the value of G4." A 1-888 number flashed on the screen for DirecTV subscribers to vote their support for keeping G4 on DirectTV's line up. You can check out Pereira's full statement after the jump:

Well we can finally breath easy; E3 2009 will indeed be bringing back booth babes for its larger and revamped event in June. How do we know this? Because the G4 cable TV network is asking folks to pick which lady will get the honor for being their booth babe at their E3 2009 exhibit booth.

Their web site has posted up 10 potential E3 booth models for G4 Each lady gets a sexy picture and a biography which we predict will go unread. You are asked to rate each each model and presumably the one with the highest rating gets the "lucky break" of being G4's E3 booth model for three days in June. By the way the cable network plans to offer 22 hours of coverage of events at the show during E3 week.

The cable TV network G4 has moved somewhat away from its all games format in recent years but it still generates a ton of game related content. That will continue with the announcement this week that the network will broadcast the ninth annual Game Developers Choice Awards.

The awards themselves will be given out this coming Wednesday during the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco but G4 will wait until April 10 to actually show the awards ceremony on its network. Yep, that's over two weeks away from the actual ceremony. Hey, at least it will be hosted by TIM FREAKIN' SCHAFER. That's something.

If the cable network G4 has its way you will be seeing a lot more of that guy on the right very soon. That's Adam Sessler, the co-host (with Morgan Webb) and managing editor of their half-hour daily gaming show X-play. Now the only daily TV show in the US devoted solely to games will be getting a trial boost in air time.

According to the latest blog post from G4's president Neil Tiles, "I'm excited to announce that X-play will expand to one full hour each weeknight for the month of December as we take a look at all the holiday releases and look forward to 2009 titles...this is a trial as well with the hope that if X-play experiences marked growth during the month we will seek to expand the show permanently later on in early 2009." Tiles also announced that G4 will finally be broadcast in high-definition in December but X-play and its other major daily program Attack of the Show won't be going high-def until the summer of 2009.

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment debuted its first trailer for the upcoming MMO Stargate Worlds several months ago on an episode of the TV series Stargate Atlantis. That first trailer, however, didn't actually show gameplay from the MMO. Tonight, the first actual publicly seen gameplay trailer from Stargate Worlds will be shown at 8 pm ET on G4TV's X-Play series.

In related news, the developer has teamed up with PC maker Alienware for a contest where the winner will get an Alienware Area-51 PC with a Dell 30 inch monitor and an advanced copy of Stargate Worlds.

Satellite TV company DirecTV is a co-founder of the pro gaming tournament organization the Championship Gaming Series and while DirectTV has shown coverage of events in the series on their own channels the CGS hasn't had much media exposure beyond that (we are guessing that the actual viewing audience for the CGS coverage is somewhere around 12 people). That will be changing, however, thanks to a new agreement with cable TV channel G4TV.

The new agreement will have the pop culture (with some gaming) cable TV network broadcast four 90 minute specials that cover various CGS events, including this year's North American and World Finals. The first such special is due to air on July 16 and will likely add a ton more actual viewers to the CGS coverage. Financial terms were not disclosed.