G4techTV is changing its name to G4 Video Game Television on Feb. 15, which helps explain its new show: Girls Gone Wired, which the network is touting as the first beauty contest involving two-dimensional video-game characters. Categories include “hottest video-game newcomer,” “character with the sexiest voice,” and “most likely to kick enemy ass.”
To promote the show, G4techTV gave critics attending its Jan. 11 TCA press tour event a Girls Gone Wired calendar, featuring scantily clad characters from video games.
But some 50 TV critics—many of whom were a tad beyond G4’s teens’n’20s demographic—seemed confounded by the show’s premise. “What’s the point?” one critic asked, after viewing clips of the show.
Others questioned whether GGW encouraged young men to develop unrealistic expectations about the way women should look.
The tone of the Q&A session surprised G4techTV CEO Charles Hirschhorn. “Attractive women,” Hirschhorn told B&C, “are the No. 1 TV attraction, so I didn’t really understand those questions.” A G4 flack points out that, for people who play video games, the characters “are just as real” as Cameron Diaz. “So let’s give them some time in the sun.” Or at least some time under the glowing eyes of slack-jawed American youth.
