Want more original programming? Hell no.

G4TV has some major cuts in its network. Yes it affects their two best shows.

I completely understand that a TV channel cannot survive on an hour and thirty minutes of broadcasting alone. They have to fill in 24 hours worth of time-slots across 7 days a week. After you multiple both of those numbers, a larger number is formed and that’s how many hours a TV channel has to fill.

That’s a tough challenge.

The news today is that starting March 2nd, X-Play will be cut to 3 nights per week and Attack of the Show will be 4 nights per week. This just after the fact that Morgan Webb canceled her Webb Alert web video series because doing X-Play 5 nights a week was taking up too much time. Oh and don’t forget that there were a number of layoffs behind the camera.

Last year, we viewers of X-Play were told that the show would be moving onto an hour long format. Due to the economy, G4 scrapped that plan. It’s honestly a shame. While the video game industry continues to boom in this economy, the TV journalism side isn’t doing so well.

G4 says that the money saved by restructuring these show formats will enable it to spend more money on original programming in 2009. If its programming includes more non-gaming related shows then I’ll just watch the TV channel less frequently.

G4 has a very specific target audience: gamers. We don’t need another Spike channel. We want games all the time.