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Take that back, bad news

Rocco just broke this story to me, via news.com:

TechTV lays off San Francisco staff
By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com


TechTV told 285 San Francisco employees on Thursday that their jobs are being eliminated, a move that was widely feared by workers after Comcast announced in March that it would acquire the technology cable channel.

Comcast will merge TechTV, owned by Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, with its own G4 video game network when the buyout is finalized next week. David Shone, a spokesman for G4 TV, said the company plans to hire 80 people from the San Francisco office to work at the game channel's Los Angeles headquarters. Employees were given two months' notice and various severance packages, he said.

"Today we gave notice to 285 employees that they'll be impacted by the merger," Shone said. "We wanted to give employees as much notice as possible so that they can begin to make other plans."

- Back to Dwain's voice: There's more but it isn't important. My heart goes out to the fine people of techtv and there families. They've made a lot of really great television, and hopefully some shows, like the Screensavers, X-Play, and Unscrewed will make it into the G4 lineup. I love the line above that says the employees will be "impacted", and by impacted we mean losing your f-ing jobs! That's 285 more reasons to detest Comcast, a company who loves providing terrible service for ridiculously high prices.

What we need is more competition in local markets. Where I live, Comcast is the only game in town cable-wise. Plus we aren't allowed to have satellites, so if we want TV at all, we need to pay up. That should be illegal. Competition among service providers would drive down prices and increase quality. I don't see why that's such a bad idea.