Nolife was a French TV network. It described itself as TV "for geeks, nerds and otakus". Its main programming focused on videogames, Japanese culture, technology and various other topics. Its slogan was"Y a pas que la vraie vie dans la vie !" (There's not only real life in life!).
Nolife was originally created as an independent TV network by Sébastien Ruchet and Alexandre Pilot, both of them having previously worked for other French TV channels through their production companyPocket Shami. Later, Pilot said that they wanted to create Nolife because a lot of their projects were refused by other TV networks. They took advantage of the possibility to launch a TV channel at a lower cost (a few hundred Euros per month) on theFree IPTV network.
In 2008, despite being well known in the videogame and anime/manga French audience, Nolife went through major financial difficulties and looked for new investors. Then a company they previously worked with,Ankama Games, offered to massively invest into Nolife without taking control over the company. This was announced during a fake farewell show on 13 June 2008, less than two weeks after the first birthday of the channel (the audience were not aware it was fake).
As of September 2009 the audience share is unknown, but an officialMédiamétrie survey said that 12% of the people receiving TV by cable and satellite was interested in receiving this channel.[1]
Despite those results, Nolife announced in June of the same year that the channel won't be broadcast onCanalSat (which holds a near monopoly in the French satellite market) due to huge transmission costs, nor on the French cable networkNumericable (also almost monopolistic) for "technical reasons". A member of Nolife explained that this actually cut off advertising incomes for Nolife because of a market lock-down:[2]Médiamétrie is the only recognized source for audience figures but it doesn't evaluate DSL IPTV audience despite the fact that at least as much French households receive IPTV as Satellite TV.[3]
Consequently, following abusiness model used inopen source software, a paycatch-up TV service namedNolife Online was launched on 26 August 2009 on the main site of Nolife. It hosts the archive of most of the shows of Nolife except TV series,anime andJ-music-related shows. It is available worldwide while the French IPTV channel remains free of charge.
During the following year, Médiamétrie started to include IPTV in their measurements. Thanks to official audience figures, Nolife was finally able to enter the advertising market on equal footing with other niche channels.
The situation was stable until mid-2014; the advertising market being at an historical low meant the income of the channel suddenly dropped, making it more dependent on its still-existing catch-up service.
On April 1, 2018, after a special edition of 101% where new projects were announced like live events or a brand newesports channel, Sébastien Ruchet announced that it was a joke: Nolife failed to find new investors and was going to close 7 days later.[4][5]
On April 8, after 10 years and 10 months of broadcasting, the final farewell show named "the end of [N]olife" was shown live on TV and onTwitch.[6] It was followed by days of re-runs of the best shows produced since 2007, while the signal was being cut off by the various broadcasters.
Big Bug Hunter – Made by French Nerd, the hoster is Slim (Slimane-Baptiste Berhoun), and showsgame bugs and glitches and how to do them.
Les oubliés de la playhistoire – In this show which takes place in an animated classroom, Florent Gorges (writer/translator/book publisher) plays the role of a teacher who shows current game consoles such as thePS4 or the3DS (which are the students), video games somewhat forgotten from 70's to today by highlighting their qualities even if they have not made history.
Classés 18+ – Previews, reviews and news about games that arerated 18+. By law, such games cannot be shown or discussed before 22:30 on French TV, soClassés 18+ is broadcast only by night and is advertised for viewers aged 16+. (2 hours)
Superplay Ultimate – A superplayer comes to the show and comments a record of one of his play on the game of his choice, like a score attack or aspeedrun
OTO EX – extended version of OTO
OTO Play – Reviews of original soundtracks of videogames
Format Court – Short films and interviews of their creators
The Incredible Horror Show – Reviews of horror movies and reports
Weekly results of the J-Top are sent back to Japanese labels and producers.
Having worked as a video game journalist in Japan several years before creating Nolife, Alexandre Pilot and his wife Suzuka Asaoka were in touch with a lot of people of the Japanese video-game industry, so some well-known Japanese game creators appeared as guests on Nolife. This also resulted in airing some little-known or unknown material before, like a video clip ofUmJammer Lammy.
The main theme of Nolife was composed byYuzo Koshiro and was released on the albumTamiuta
The theme of 101% was composed byAkira Yamaoka. he composed a new theme in 2010.
The theme of Tokyo Café was composed byNobuyoshi Sano, an episode showed the composer making the song.
The theme of Big Bug Hunter is composed byAural Vampire.
The video clip ofTwinkle Star byHalcali was shown on Nolife before its first air in Japan.
The bottom bar of the on-air "Nolife" logo acts as a progress bar for each video clip, show or any other kind of sequence.
The name "Nolife" is often perceived negatively by English-speaking people. The original staff stated that the name was also perceived negatively by them when they found it, but that after one week of thinking they couldn't came with a name describing more accurately the channel.
According to Alexandre Pilot, dubbing is often used to trick translations and make quick video editing, so the choice was made to broadcast series and reports with subtitles in order to respect the creators, the guests and the audience.
Disappointed by the payEPG systems that don't allow to advertise shows in realtime with accurate precision, Nolife launched its own system namedNoAir, which consists of posting program information on their website in XML, letting theiraudience writing clients.
Test videos before the official launch displayed an old arcade game-like title screen, with the Nolife logo, a high score on the top left corner, "Credits: 0" at the bottom and "Insert coins" below the Nolife logo, in alternance with an MS-DOS prompt.
One hour before the official launch, ahexadecimal countdown started to run. A real bug then crashed the video, but it came back half an hour later. Near the end it morphed into an oldschooldemo and crashed with aGuru Meditation, followed by anAmiga-like reboot. Then Nolife launched with aGame Boy-like opening.
During the fake farewell show, the original arcade-like title screen appeared again after a "Game Over" screen. After several seconds, a coin insertion sound was heard, and 1 credit was added.
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