G4 and WWE have been teaming up quite a bit since Xavier Woods joined the network, and they even created a true G4 WWE combo in the recently relaunched Arena series. The latest example of this ongoing partnership was a WWE-heavy takeover of Attack of the Show, which was set to feature Bayley, Tyler Breeze, Big E, and Kofi Kingston. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen today, as the episode was cancelled. G4 announced the news on their social media pages, and while they didn’t specify why it was cancelled, there was news today that G4 just suffered major layoffs, and that is likely the reason the episode was cancelled. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by today’s layoffs, and hopefully, everyone bounces back soon.
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According to a report by Kotaku, at least 20 to 30 members of the G4TV staff were laid off today, and those layoffs greeted employees as they came in for filming, with HR reps meeting individually with employees. Programming was cancelled and one source said that those affected would receive between 16 weeks and 6 months of severance, depending on how long they’ve been with G4’s parent company Comcast.
The report reveals one employee said “I truly can not imagine the company continuing to produce our slate of content without the people we lost today,” and this comes shortly after G4 announced new shows coming to its lineup, including the XPlay satire God of Work.
It is also stated in the report that three sources indicated G4’s finances have been in rough shape the past for a while, which led to an all-hands meeting a few months ago where former G4 President Russell Arons talked about the issues they were facing and set unrealistic revenue goals for the upcoming year. Arons was replaced by Joe Marsh not too long after, but sources say that Marsh’s main focus was to slash the budget.
Despite these issues, many were caught off guard by today’s layoffs, and it isn’t known how this will affect the network overall or the show lineup from day to day. G4 is expected to be back to its regular programming tomorrow, and it would be very surprising to see these layoffs not addressed in some way during the shows, so we’ll have to wait and see how things progress from here.
