Second Initial

R.I.P. T.S.S.

The first airing of the overhauled version of The Screen Savers was last night. BLEAGH!

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and continue watching for a little while, but G4 is going to have to bend over backwards to improve the show over the next week or two, or I’ll likely join the droves of people who’ve already abandoned them.

Some time early- to mid-November, G4 fired a good many of the TSS personalities, including Yoshi, Dan “Foo” Huard, and Alex Albrecht who was only just brought in as the new host when TSS moved to L.A. That was September 8. Very short gig for him.

Kevin Rose and Sarah Lane are still there. Kevin was offered the choice of continuing as host or stepping aside to a role of providing more Dark Tips and other information—something I think he’ll do better with. This may be the sole redeeming factor of the new show. Sarah’s role is unchanged.

Kevin Pereira and Chi-Lan Lieu are the new hosts and are as dull and uncolorful as a saltine cracker—quite the shift from the crazy and colorful Leo Laporte. I even enjoyed the antics of Kevin and Alex working together the past couple months. But Pereira had the nerve to run a video sketch of his reception as the new TSS host, capitalizing on the knowledge he wouldn’t be widely embraced by the faithful TSS viewers right away. He even offered several pre-masked/pre-layered Photoshop files of himself in various “incriminating” poses for people to manipulate and send back in.

Don’t even let me get started on the wisdom of having a former host named Kevin still on the show, a new host named Kevin, and a first episode of the overhauled show with Kevin Mitnick as a guest. That’s just way too many Kevins to absorb in one evening.

I better stop now. I invite you to check out what Alex, Kevin R., and Sarah have to say. (These links are just their most recent entries, and only Alex’s is post-new show. There is more revealing info if you back up from those permalinks and check out some of the preceding entries and stay tuned for future punditry.)

» Posted by ALBj at 05:44 AM (ET)
Category: Rant

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