3. Gamesmaster Was Made Many Months In Advance - Much To Everyone's Detriment
Channel 4Games and technology move fast. You need the latest cutting edge stuff to stay on top and so the TV shows that cover them should be new, fresh and made recently. Wrong. As my spoiler title of number four alludes to, the studio sections of Gamesmaster - the parts in the oil rig and prison and so on - were produced months and months before on air-dates. You see, again to save money, the show was shot over around a two week period so the crew would only have to paid for, well, two weeks. Then the insert pieces such as trips abroad or to tech shows like ECTS were produced and the whole thing edited together and broadcast sometime way, way down the line. This meant games and tech were at least three months out of date, in some cases as much as six months. Games were alpha or at best beta when used on the show but purported to be finished games near release when aired. A lot can change in the world of games in six months. But hey, we had Games World which was more recent and even had a live show once a week, so we could show the latest and greatest then - except we couldn't. The higher-ups didn't want their flagship show Gamesmaster to be upstaged by the red-headed stepchild that was Games World. So we were expected to use the same old tired stuff and not usurp GM by showing something on Games World that was more recent, as that would reveal how old C4's offering was. Which brings me to...