yes dan the man huard blows lid on g4s business practases! excerpt from http://www.danhuard.com To get back on track, even with an extra few hours to work on live calls, the execution of the calls were still suffering. Getting geeks to ‘come out of their shell’ is very hard. Rehearsing the question with them ahead of time always helped but as soon as they were on live television it usually went to hell. Nonetheless, I kept plugging away. After the next couple weeks of pre-producing the first live caller, I started to get some heat from my Executive Producer, Paul Block. Even with the callers I found from viewer mail, they still weren’t interesting enough for him. People get nervous on TV. Hell, I would get nervous on TV, it’s not easy. I explained to Paul Block and Joshua Brentano (the new Series Producer) that the demographic we’re using for the live calls isn’t working. Most of the TSS fans are geeks, they’re introverts. This is where The Screen Savers as you once knew them changed completely. I was ordered by Paul Block and Joshua Brentano to generate questions for live callers. But these weren’t any live callers. They wanted me to use G4 employees, friends, family, whomever. Basically, I would think of a question and give that question to a designated caller. So now, the A block callers were manufactured questions and callers. I used TSS producer’s friends and family, Peter Green’s assistant (Sr. VP of Programming & Production - this was done with his OK, btw), my girlfriend, and countless other people to create the ruse that these were genuine questions coming from our viewing audience. At this point my work suffered exponentially because my heart just wasn’t in my job anymore. The live aspect of the show just died, and I stopped believing in the most unique show on television. I was called into Paul Block’s office two other times this time I was threatened to lose my job. Here’s a quote from that meeting, “Dan, if I didn’t like you, I’d fire you right now.” Was Paul correct in saying that? Maybe, but I was forced to go against what four years of college told me not to do: lose my ethics. I fought them every chance I could, I tried my best to uphold the dignity and the ethics of The Screen Savers. From what I gather, this is why I was part of the lay-offs. i guess he didnt want an exposee but he got one you can read the news on this at http://slashdot.org/articles/05/01/01/1725230.shtml?tid=129 or at http://www.digg.com/technology/The_Screen_Savers_faked_their_calls_at_G4 if you want my opinion G4's pr department better say something fast or G4 is going to have a lot of angery computer nerds at there front door!!!!!!!!!!!