Promising Streaming TV Show Canceled

As is often the case in television, another promising show has been canceled after just one season. As G4TV continues to figure out its long-term strategy for covering esports, it has decided to cancel the weekly live show Boosted. Boosted featured hosts Indiana “Froskurinn” Black, Ovilee May and Alex “Goldenboy” Mendez and was one of the six shows G4 used to relaunch the network, alongside Xplay, Attack of the Show!, Attack of Show: Vibe Check, Attack of the Show: The Loop and Dungeons and Dragons Presents: Invitation to Party. Boosted aired a total of 15 episodes, all of which are available to watch on YouTube.

Like other G4 shows, Boosted aired live on Twitch and YouTube. Edited versions were later aired on G4’s cable channel, as well as G4 Select, the network’s just-launched Pluto TV channel. G4 has been fine-tuning this strategy since its soft launch in late 2020, and more changes came this week. Boosted’s cancellation came bundled with a series of tweaks to the network’s YouTube strategy, which includes the G4TV Esports channel.

“We will be saying TTFN to the beloved Boosted and welcoming even more esports content to the G4TV Esports channel,” the announcement read. “We’re taking note of your feedback (like when you say you want more Basement streams and gameplay) so you’re getting BIG tournaments every month like [March 7’s] Smash invitational, more of our hosts and the games they love, more original esports sketches, more partnered content like Facecheck, and more than a few co-streaming surprises.”

Brian Terwilliger (SVP, Programming, Creative Strategy, Development & Talent at G4) later confirmed Boosted’s cancellation in the G4 Discord community, noting the then-unaired March 9 episode would be the last, but “the creative team behind and in front of the camera is still here, cooking up new ideas, projects and partnerships.” The March 9 episode served as a “best of” clip episode with a mix of new segments where the hosts staged a Boosted episode set 10 years in the future.

Goldenboy spoke out on the cancellation via a Twitter video and ensured fans this was not a “doom and gloom” situation. “I know it may come as a surprise to a lot of you, because, honestly, it just kind of came out of the blue, but the team is actually very excited about where we go from here,” he said. “Boosted was an incredibly challenging show to make each and every week, Our team was very capable and worked incredibly hard and diligently to produce this show every single week and make it fun and entertaining.”

He added, “With Boosted being sunsetted, it gonna give us the opportunity to really flex our creative muscles, try some new things out, there are gonna be tournaments — like you saw yesterday with the Smash tournament — I would say overall it’s a net positive. Everyone’s feeling very optimistic about where we go from here. I’m not gonna act like it’ll be perfect, obviously. There’s gonna be a lot of ideas that are tried, tested, shelved, and that’s just the nature of the creative process

In a later Reddit comment, Goldenboy also noted that Boosted was also plagued by rights issues when it came to showing esports clips. “One of the challenges we had early on was actual showing esports on Boosted,” he wrote. “Unlike other sports shows the rights holder is the league (like the NFL) but in this case the rights holder is the actual creator of the ‘sport’ (or game) and that comes with its own set of challenges because it was a show that went on TV.

“It’s tough to do an esports show and not be able to show esports lol. I personally would still like to bring informative content about esports to G4 because I think it’s a fun world and there’s always something new to learn so we’ll see. Anyhoo just wanted to clear that up but even with that limitation I feel like we were really starting to find the voice of the show even if it was a challenge to create every week with our small team. Much love and let’s look forward to the next chapter.”

Frosk shared a couple of tweets on the situation, as well. She wrote, “The team behind Boosted are all exceptionally honorable and talented. And that’s the greatest compliment I can really give. I have – what I consider normal – exceptionally low threshold for bullshit: abusive work conditions, egos, or bigotry. And the industry is RIFE with promoting predators. Thankfully, everyone in our esports team are actually just respectable endemic industry professionals.”

Boosted was the latest evolution of  G4’s esports content. It started with the news update comedy The BLEEP Esports Show before splitting into a mix of standard update videos hosted by Buddy Hutton and various segments on the network’s G4 Beach House streaming series. Boosted seemed to be the final form of all this lead-up, but this cancellation proves otherwise.