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"Our timing is very good," he said of the network's debut, which came shortly before Comcast was holding talks on acquiring AT&T Broadband's cable system. Earlier this month G4 announced an agreement with Time Warner Cable that will double the number of households receiving the channel over the next two years.

Its original programming - currently 13 weekly shows - examines who plays games, how they play games and which games are good, as well as presenting histories of video game innovators over the last 30 years. A companion Web site encourages chats, polls and message boards of viewers and would-be viewers.

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"Certainly the video game industry has proven - I guess more so amidst the meltdown of other technology businesses - that it is a fantastically fundamental technology business that is so popular and growing and has real loyal support," Mr. Hirschhorn said.

It was his recognition of the video game industry's explosive growth while he was a president at Disney that moved him, he said, to approach Comcast two years ago and propose an all-video-game network. He said that to anyone looking closely at entertainment for 12- to 34-year-olds - in terms of growth and revenue, time spent on leisure activities and the penetration of home electronics - "video games always spike out." When he looked to see what television was doing to serve this growing constituency, he said, he saw nothing but opportunity.

Now, Mr. Hirschhorn said, advertisers are beginning to take note of G4 as well.

"I think they have begun to recognize gamers just like they recognize college-educated adults, or soccer moms, as just another sort of socio-demographic-economic group that they want to appeal to," he said. "The fact is that they can now find them exclusively on one programming service."

Online Incubator for Black Talent

Considering the colorful characters and comic circumstances that dominate the short films that come to life at the click of a mouse at Urban Entertainment's Web site, the company's offices on Sunset Boulevard near Beverly Hills are downright sedate. The only sounds during a recent afternoon were a business call under way in a corner office and in another, the faint scribbling of a note on a script.

"I think we have created an environment in which executives can thrive and focus," said Michael Jenkinson, 41, the founder and chief executive of Urban Entertainment, a Web-based production, exhibition and distribution company that is increasingly mixing high technology with traditional film and television production.

Mr. Jenkinson, an African-American and a former vice president at 20th Century Fox, started the company in 1999 and set about luring executives like Damon Lee, 33, a former vice president of a mainstream movie studio.

Mr. Lee, who became the company's president, said he immediately understood Mr. Jenkinson's concept. In short, it was the use of digital technology and low-cost Internet distribution to give writers and artists, many of whom would be black, a platform to develop new kinds of stories and characters that major studios were unlikely to commit large sums to produce.

The idea was to attract leading writers and film directors with urban sensibilities like John Singleton, Malcolm Lee, Cheo Hodari Coker, Reginald Hudlin, Tina Andrews and John Ridley, and render their visions into three-minute cartoons using low-cost Flash animation. Then the films, along with purchased conventional shorts, would be posted at the company's Web site with an invitation for comment.

"We thought our position in the marketplace would be to marry the experts in the technologies with the proven storytellers," Mr. Jenkinson said.

Soon Urban Entertainment's Web site (www.urbanentertainment.com) bristled with serial offerings like "Sistas 'N the City," "My Babies' Mamas" and "Driving While Black." The films - mostly loving and sometimes biting lampoons of ghetto life and of how some try to escape it - are best appreciated with a high-speed Internet connection and can be downloaded free. Then, if a film develops a vocal and loyal following, Urban Entertainment may pitch the concept to a studio like Universal as a live-action feature or television series.