Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And today I'm going to do the
Speaker 1: first of a couple of episodes. Actually, this one, I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about a cable television channel that was
Speaker 1: geared toward a tech savvy audience, specifically computer nerds. It
Speaker 1: was a channel that included reviews, how to guides, interactive programs,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of stuff that really geeky computer nerds
Speaker 1: like yours truly would really be interested in. It was
Speaker 1: an attempt to build out some niche programming that ultimately
Speaker 1: lasted about six years before things would change dramatically and
Speaker 1: the channel would get merged into a different niche oriented
Speaker 1: cable chan annel. So today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: tech TV, and in our next episode, I will cover
Speaker 1: the story of G four TV, the channel that tech
Speaker 1: TV would get merged into in two thousand four. So
Speaker 1: spoiler alert for that, I guess uh. I will attempt
Speaker 1: to tell all of G four's story, including what happened
Speaker 1: after the merger in one episode. We'll see if that
Speaker 1: pans out, because a lot happened in those years. So
Speaker 1: one thing I do want to mention is that these
Speaker 1: episodes were a little challenging to research simply because a
Speaker 1: lot of the information about them happened to be online
Speaker 1: on their own websites, and once those channels ceased to exist,
Speaker 1: because neither of them are around anymore, a lot of
Speaker 1: that web based material just kind of lapsed. People didn't
Speaker 1: maintain the sites, companies stopped paying for hosting fees, and
Speaker 1: a ton of information disappeared. And I our databases, and
Speaker 1: I went through the Internet archive and I looked at
Speaker 1: lots of different stuff to get a kind of a
Speaker 1: big picture of what was going on. And I should
Speaker 1: also mention that a lot of the decisions made both
Speaker 1: at tech TV and G four resulted in a lot
Speaker 1: of hurt feelings among the employees there, and as a result,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of um Vitriolic is a good word,
Speaker 1: of hashion. It is another good word. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of high emotion type texts and messages and articles
Speaker 1: that were written in blog posts that kind of thing
Speaker 1: that we're written in the wake of both Tech TV
Speaker 1: and G four. So trying to parse all that and
Speaker 1: get to the nuggets of truth that are buried in
Speaker 1: a lot of emotional baggage can sometimes be a bit challenging,
Speaker 1: and it's understandable why there was so much emotional baggage.
Speaker 1: We'll get into all of that. So the story of
Speaker 1: tech TV starts with a publishing company that was originally
Speaker 1: founded by William Ziff Sr. And Bernard Davis way back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seven, decades before there would ever be any
Speaker 1: dream of a cable television channel. Obviously, the original name
Speaker 1: for this publishing company was Popular Aviation Company, named after
Speaker 1: the magazine it published, Popular Aviation, But before very long,
Speaker 1: the founders decided to rename the company and call it
Speaker 1: the Ziff Davis Publishing Company. Now, this company largely focused
Speaker 1: on hobbyist topics. Hobbyists tend to be a passionate customer base,
Speaker 1: and they tend to have a lot of disposable income
Speaker 1: because hobbies cost money to maintain, and it was relatively
Speaker 1: easy to get companies that catered to hobbyists to advertise
Speaker 1: in those magazines, so it wasn't hard to sell ad space.
Speaker 1: So when we skip ahead a few decades, into the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Because obviously this is not an episode about
Speaker 1: Ziff Davis the publishing company, it should come as a
Speaker 1: little a little surprise to anyone really that the publishing
Speaker 1: company soon explored magazines catering to computer enthusiasts. Ziff Davis,
Speaker 1: then under the control of williams If Senior's son, clearly
Speaker 1: William Jr. Purchased the publishing rights to a magazine called
Speaker 1: PC Magazine in nineteen two. PC Magazine had just started
Speaker 1: publishing only a few months earlier. This would usher in
Speaker 1: a new era for Ziff Davis, one that was increasingly
Speaker 1: connected to the world of technology. That wasn't necessarily by choice.
Speaker 1: Zif the younger had developed cancer and he wished to
Speaker 1: simplify the magazine empire of Ziff Davis in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. By that time, the publishing company was enormous,
Speaker 1: so it would sell off two big branches of the company.
Speaker 1: One was the Consumer Group Magazines, which had sold to CBS,
Speaker 1: and the other was the Business Group Magazines, which it
Speaker 1: sold off to Rupert Murdoch. Ziff Davis, the company really
Speaker 1: only held onto the computer magazine titles. PC Magazine would
Speaker 1: go into great some might say excruciatingly great detail about
Speaker 1: computer specs and recommendations, and it really was not for
Speaker 1: the computer illiterate. It also did quite well, growing to
Speaker 1: become one of the top ten largest magazines in the
Speaker 1: US by and if Davis would complement this with other
Speaker 1: magazines such as a one called Mac User, so for
Speaker 1: the Mac users out there, not just the PC owners
Speaker 1: and others. And back in the nineteen eighties, the company
Speaker 1: had acquired the Information Access Company, which was an early
Speaker 1: electronic publishing organization. It largely oversaw lots of databases that
Speaker 1: were useful for library functions. If Davis would build upon
Speaker 1: this innovation with the development of zif net and electronic
Speaker 1: version of various magazines that the publisher offered to subscribers
Speaker 1: of online service providers like American Online or Prodigy, then
Speaker 1: the company became an online service provider of its own
Speaker 1: with the Interchange Online Network, though that would not go
Speaker 1: live before the company would get broken up. Spoiler alert now,
Speaker 1: in case you're not familiar with the termin online service
Speaker 1: provider was sort of a predecessor to the internet service
Speaker 1: providers we use today. The online service providers would offer
Speaker 1: access to a computer network and sometimes limited access to
Speaker 1: the Internet at large, and keep in mind that in
Speaker 1: the very early days there was no Worldwide Web yet,
Speaker 1: so it would usually mean things like email exchanges and
Speaker 1: uh FDP servers that kind of thing. OSPs would provide news,
Speaker 1: entertainment and communication services like email, although depending on the USP,
Speaker 1: you might be limited to sending and receiving email with
Speaker 1: other members of that same online service provider. There wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily interser of us connectivity between different online service providers
Speaker 1: in the early days. After Ziff Jr. Would retire, the
Speaker 1: Ziff Davis Publishing Company got broken up a second time.
Speaker 1: The publishing arm would go to an investment firm called Fortsman,
Speaker 1: Little and Company for the princely sum of one point
Speaker 1: for billion. With a B dollars, the Soft Bank Corporation
Speaker 1: from Japan would buy a division called Ziff Davis Exhibitors,
Speaker 1: which organized and managed computer trade shows, and the Information
Speaker 1: Access Company would go to the Thompson Corporation and A
Speaker 1: T and T would scoop up the Interchange Online network. Now,
Speaker 1: despite this breakup, the publishing arm continued business as usual,
Speaker 1: growing in the process. By it launched a new magazine
Speaker 1: called Yahoo Internet Life. Obviously inspired by Yahoo the web portal,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of described as the TV guide
Speaker 1: for the Internet. That same year, soft Bank, which you
Speaker 1: know I just mentioned had purchased the exhibitor part of
Speaker 1: Ziff Davis back in decided it was gonna try again
Speaker 1: because it had tried to buy the publishing branch but
Speaker 1: got outbid by Fortsman Little. So SoftBank went to Fortsman
Speaker 1: Little and said, tell you what, We'll give you two
Speaker 1: point one billion dollars for the publishing arm. Now keep
Speaker 1: in mind Fortsman had purchased this publishing arm for one
Speaker 1: point four billion dollars the year before, so this was
Speaker 1: a pretty good deal, you know, turning around and selling
Speaker 1: it for two point one billion dollars. So soft Bank
Speaker 1: then took ownership of the Ziff Davis publishing part of
Speaker 1: the business. In as part of the launch of the
Speaker 1: MSNBC cable channel, Ziff Davis dipped its corporate toe in
Speaker 1: the waters of TV programming. The company produced an hour
Speaker 1: long show called The Site s I T E. Solo.
Speaker 1: Doda Brian acted as host for the show. She would
Speaker 1: go on to do many amazing things in TV and beyond,
Speaker 1: and she had a motion capture animated sidekick named dev Null,
Speaker 1: voiced by a certain Leo Laporte, who would go on
Speaker 1: to become a host on the future tech TV. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it must have been a lot of fun seeing
Speaker 1: Leo in that motion capture suit. The site was a
Speaker 1: technology news and culture program that focused primarily on the Internet.
Speaker 1: It also had a companion website that complimented the programming
Speaker 1: on the television show. Now. Sadly, the site the TV
Speaker 1: show didn't last very long. MSNBC would preempt episodes of
Speaker 1: the show in in the wake of Princess Diana's death,
Speaker 1: and the show never returned to air. Instead, in MSNBC
Speaker 1: changed formats to become a twenty four hour news channel
Speaker 1: and Ziff Davis would hire back all the staff of
Speaker 1: the show with a new goal. They decided that they
Speaker 1: were going to launch a dedicated television channel, a cable
Speaker 1: channel of its very own, and it was going to
Speaker 1: leverage the expertise it had with its print and web
Speaker 1: content and adapted for the medium of television. Now, the
Speaker 1: ownership of the channel, which was originally not called tech TV.
Speaker 1: The original name was z d TV gets a bit confusing,
Speaker 1: so originally it was not the Ziff Davis division of
Speaker 1: soft Bank that would own this channel. Instead, a soft
Speaker 1: Bank affiliate holding company called MAC owned the channel. And
Speaker 1: maybe it pays to talk about that a bit, because
Speaker 1: I think the corporate ownership of Ziff Davis gives us
Speaker 1: a little bit of insight into how much or how
Speaker 1: little support initiatives like z d t V would get
Speaker 1: from its corporate overlords. Okay, So soft Bank is an
Speaker 1: investment company and it's it's headquartered in Japan. It's publicly
Speaker 1: traded and was and still is led by a guy
Speaker 1: named Masa Yoshi. San San owns a large stake of
Speaker 1: soft Bank, and he did it through this holding company
Speaker 1: MAC M a C. And he used companies kind of
Speaker 1: like how a magician uses cups and balls. So to
Speaker 1: avoid affecting soft Bank's bottom line and thus the value
Speaker 1: of its shares, he used the MAC company to purchase
Speaker 1: some of the more risky divisions for acquisitions like Ziff Davis. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if it was part of a company
Speaker 1: that made money, it could go to soft Bank because
Speaker 1: that would help boost SoftBank's numbers and it would improve
Speaker 1: the price on the shares. But if it was a
Speaker 1: loss making business, if it was something there's a little
Speaker 1: more risky, MAC would scoop it up because it was
Speaker 1: a private company, and as a private company it could
Speaker 1: sort of eyed those losses. So in other words, all
Speaker 1: the hits would go to soft Bank, all the strikes
Speaker 1: would go to MAC, which could just sort of absorb
Speaker 1: it as divisions stabilized. Sun would oversee soft Bank purchasing
Speaker 1: those divisions back from Mac, frequently at cost. So essentially
Speaker 1: he was transferring ownership from one company, a private company,
Speaker 1: to another, a public company. So z d t V
Speaker 1: would initially fall under MAC Holdings. That was essentially the
Speaker 1: American version of the Mac company that Saun was using
Speaker 1: in Japan, and about a year after that things would change. MAC,
Speaker 1: the Japanese one would get merged into soft Bank, ostensibly
Speaker 1: to improve transparency, and if Davis would buy z d
Speaker 1: t V from Mac Holdings in late n But a
Speaker 1: little bit of other stuff happened in between the launch
Speaker 1: of z d t V in early nine d eight
Speaker 1: and z if David's purchasing the rights over from MAC Holdings. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason that all of this is important, apart from
Speaker 1: the fact that it illustrates how extremely rich people manipulate systems.
Speaker 1: In order to get even more rich is that for
Speaker 1: a time it hid z d t vs financial performance,
Speaker 1: and I'll get to that in a second. The channel
Speaker 1: would launch on May tenth or May eleventh. Really was
Speaker 1: announced on the tenth and really launched on the eleventh,
Speaker 1: but it also launched in a very limited distribution. Larry Weinberg,
Speaker 1: who had previously served as president and CEO of a
Speaker 1: cable television company, would sign on as president and CEO
Speaker 1: of z d t V, and originally z d TV
Speaker 1: was only available on a few smaller cable providers like
Speaker 1: clear Vision Cable or Helicon Cable, and Georgia, where I'm from,
Speaker 1: there was a little carrier called Teleview that offered it.
Speaker 1: I was not a tele of View customer, so I
Speaker 1: actually remained completely ignorant of zd TV and later tech
Speaker 1: tv for quite some time. A bit later in the summer,
Speaker 1: of Direct TV and z d TV would put together
Speaker 1: a carriage deal that would put the new programming on
Speaker 1: channel two hundred seventy three of the satellite TV service.
Speaker 1: That would also mark the first time that certain people
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, that being Direct TV customers where z
Speaker 1: d t V was actually shot, could finally watch the channel.
Speaker 1: In fact, for a very long time in the z
Speaker 1: d TV tech TV history. Despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: was shot and produced in San Francisco, most people in
Speaker 1: San Francisco had no access to the show. They couldn't
Speaker 1: watch it. The company decided not to publish how many
Speaker 1: households it would reach on its debut, but analysts estimated
Speaker 1: that was likely fewer than a million households. Now, keep
Speaker 1: in mind that meant that the channel would be available
Speaker 1: for fewer than one million households. Presumably, even on the
Speaker 1: households that got the channel, not all of them were
Speaker 1: going to be glued to the television to watch tech
Speaker 1: related contents. So we're talking about significantly fewer than one
Speaker 1: million viewers. But you gotta start somewhere. Now. I'll get
Speaker 1: to some of the programs that the channel carried in
Speaker 1: the next section of this episode. But first I want
Speaker 1: to mention that in November of just half a year
Speaker 1: after the channel had debuted, a company called Vulcan Ventures
Speaker 1: would invest more than fifty million dollars into z d
Speaker 1: t V in exchange for one third ownership of the company. Now,
Speaker 1: Vulcan Ventures had a famous founder Paul Allen, co founder
Speaker 1: of a little company called Microsoft. This is also around
Speaker 1: the time when Ziff Davis would exercise its options to
Speaker 1: buy z d t V from Mac Holdings. Now I
Speaker 1: mentioned the financial performance a second ago by The Times.
Speaker 1: If Davis would buy z d t V from Mac Holdings,
Speaker 1: the Ziff Dave subsidiary overall had an operating profit of
Speaker 1: thirty one point one million dollars, and because z d
Speaker 1: t V wasn't organized under Zif Davis, the channels operating
Speaker 1: losses would not affect that company's budget sheets, which is
Speaker 1: a good thing, because it turned out that z d
Speaker 1: t V had operated at a loss of forty seven
Speaker 1: point five million dollars, which means the channel's losses were
Speaker 1: more than ten million dollars greater than the operating profit
Speaker 1: of the entire Ziff Davis company, including all the magazine publishing,
Speaker 1: which is scary. Now. Granted, the launch was at best
Speaker 1: a modest one, and the startup costs of launching a
Speaker 1: cable channel are incredibly high. You could say they're pretty substantial,
Speaker 1: so it would have been remarkable if z d TV
Speaker 1: had turned a profit in its first year. But this
Speaker 1: would create a pretty hefty burden on the little channel
Speaker 1: and for Ziff Davis in general. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: Paul Allen had also made another significant purchase that could
Speaker 1: give the fledgling channel a little bit of a boost.
Speaker 1: He had purchased Charter Communications, a cable TV operator, for
Speaker 1: four and a half billion With a B dollars. In
Speaker 1: November of Vulcan Ventures would strike a deal to acquire
Speaker 1: the rest of the shares of z d TV, buying
Speaker 1: it from Ziff Davis. So now it would become wholly
Speaker 1: owned by Vulcan Ventures. The channel would continue with its
Speaker 1: original name for nearly a year more until September two thousand,
Speaker 1: when it would rebrand itself as tech TV. Now. I'll
Speaker 1: have more to say about this in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. So one thing
Speaker 1: I want to mention before I go into the sorts
Speaker 1: of shows that were on z d t V and
Speaker 1: then tech TV, is a bit of confusion regarding the
Speaker 1: channel and then the company c Net, which is today
Speaker 1: part of CBS. I've seen some videos and read some
Speaker 1: news reports even some articles that conflated c nets purchase
Speaker 1: of z d net, which was a family of websites
Speaker 1: that were operated by Ziff Davis and z d t
Speaker 1: V the television channel. So to clear this up, c
Speaker 1: NET purchased z d net and these two things were competitors.
Speaker 1: Zd net actually for a while was out performing c
Speaker 1: NET back in those days, but it did not include
Speaker 1: the television channel that remained under Paul Allen's general ownership
Speaker 1: through Vulcan Ventures. This did complicate things a little bit
Speaker 1: because up until the acquisition, some of the content from
Speaker 1: z d t V would then be featured on the
Speaker 1: z d net sites, so maybe that's where the confusion
Speaker 1: stems from. Also, Vulcan Ventures, Paul Allen's investment company, at
Speaker 1: one time nearly owned twenty percent of all the shares
Speaker 1: of c NET, but the company, the investment company, had
Speaker 1: begun divesting itself of those shares leading up to the
Speaker 1: purchase of z d TV. That also makes it all confusing.
Speaker 1: But the important thing to remember here is that c
Speaker 1: NET did not at any time acquire z d t
Speaker 1: V and thus tech TV. Now, when the channel went
Speaker 1: on the air, there was a mixture of excitement and
Speaker 1: skepticism about its fate. It's a cliche and it's obvious,
Speaker 1: but was a very different landscape from today. Back in
Speaker 1: less than half of all American homes even owned a computer,
Speaker 1: and only about a quarter of all American households had
Speaker 1: Internet access. So there was a question, and it seemed
Speaker 1: a legitimate one, was there even enough demand to support
Speaker 1: a tech oriented computer NERD targeted twenty for our cable channel,
Speaker 1: particularly one that was going to focus heavily on the Internet. Now,
Speaker 1: on the flip side of that, the Internet was considered
Speaker 1: virgin territory, wide open landscape, just ripe for making your fortune.
Speaker 1: It was like a gold rush, So there was a
Speaker 1: lot of optimism about how important the Internet was going
Speaker 1: to be in the very near future. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: they were kind of taking a gamble, but they felt
Speaker 1: like it was a gamble that was pretty sure it
Speaker 1: was going to pay off. But let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the programming on the channel. When z DTV
Speaker 1: launched in it had around six hours of programming a
Speaker 1: day that would repeat to create the twenty four hour
Speaker 1: cable TV channel. The programming, most of which was live.
Speaker 1: By the way, they would actually broadcast live for the
Speaker 1: initial uh airing of the shows ran across a pretty
Speaker 1: decent spectrum of the computer experience. There was an on
Speaker 1: air tech advice show called Call for Help, and that
Speaker 1: one was aimed at people who are either new to
Speaker 1: computers or only had a little experience with them, hosted
Speaker 1: famously by Leo Laporte. One thing the channel did early
Speaker 1: on was to offer free net cameras or web cameras
Speaker 1: to users who registered on the show's online forums. If
Speaker 1: they wanted to ask a question, they could register, they
Speaker 1: could get a camera sent to them. They would hook
Speaker 1: up the camera and then their web camera footage would
Speaker 1: actually be used in the show. So you do a
Speaker 1: live call, your video would be up on screen as
Speaker 1: you're asking people for computer advice. Let's say that you're
Speaker 1: having an issue with your computer crashing and you're calling
Speaker 1: them to find out what you can do to solve
Speaker 1: this problem. It was a really neat idea and it
Speaker 1: really built a sense of community among the viewers. The
Speaker 1: channel also had a half hour show that focused on
Speaker 1: new tech called Fresh Gear UH. There was also a
Speaker 1: money oriented computer show called The the Machine that gave
Speaker 1: users advice on how to leverage computers to do stuff
Speaker 1: like make financial investments. UH. There was also the entertainment
Speaker 1: and news segment that was mostly covered in a show
Speaker 1: called Internet Tonight that featured segments about Internet trends, rumors, news,
Speaker 1: They had segments on music, They had segments on memes
Speaker 1: before we called them memes. Funny little side note. While
Speaker 1: I was researching this episode, I happened to read an
Speaker 1: article that had a fully embedded episode of Internet Tonight
Speaker 1: on it. I believe it was for July, so I
Speaker 1: watched a good good amount of it just to kind
Speaker 1: of get a feel for what it was like. And
Speaker 1: you know, it was a fairly slick production that was
Speaker 1: covering tech news, and I thought it was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: I scrubbed through it and just around nineteen minutes and
Speaker 1: thirty seconds or so, it goes into a segment about
Speaker 1: a website that was pretty useful. That website turned out
Speaker 1: to how stuff works dot com, which I found really amusing. Obviously,
Speaker 1: being someone who had worked for how Stuff Works since
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, h seeing a feature from about the
Speaker 1: website really tickled me. Also, boy, the website has come
Speaker 1: a long way since those days, but it did make
Speaker 1: me chuckle. There was another show called Silicon Spin, hosted
Speaker 1: by John C. Dvorak, who was an editor for PC magazine,
Speaker 1: which she will remember, was a magazine published by Ziff Davis. Uh.
Speaker 1: He kind of gave an opinion show about technology and
Speaker 1: tech news and developments. One of the big shows to
Speaker 1: come out of this debut was called The Screen Savers,
Speaker 1: another computer oriented show that included reviews, advice, and news.
Speaker 1: This one also was hosted by Leo Laporte and Kate Botello.
Speaker 1: This show, like Call for Help, often include questions from
Speaker 1: viewers to help solve issues they were having with their
Speaker 1: computer systems, and also would include net camera footage. This
Speaker 1: show was more are for intermediate to advanced computer users.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't really pussy foot around talking about
Speaker 1: you know, computer terminology and and and tech terms, and
Speaker 1: if you didn't know your stuff at least the basics,
Speaker 1: you can very quickly get lost. So this was something
Speaker 1: that appealed to a lot of the tech savvy audience
Speaker 1: because they felt like they weren't being patronized, they weren't
Speaker 1: being talked down to. This show would undergo massive changes
Speaker 1: over the following years, usually involving it being dialed back
Speaker 1: from being quite so tech heavy to the point where
Speaker 1: by the time it was in its final incarnation, you
Speaker 1: could argue it was unrecognizable. Now, it was a pretty
Speaker 1: bold move to put out this kind of niche oriented
Speaker 1: programming out on the air. Now at this time, we're
Speaker 1: we're also seeing a lot of other channels that were
Speaker 1: catering to specific interests. Channels like MTV had paved the
Speaker 1: way for other cable channels that would focus on specific
Speaker 1: subject matter, though by this time MTV had already drifted
Speaker 1: far away from its origins as music television that is
Speaker 1: what MTV used to stand for. Channels like the Learning Channel,
Speaker 1: which would later become TLC, and Sci Fi which would
Speaker 1: later become SIFFY, and American Movie Classics which would later
Speaker 1: become a MC, we're all attempting to build audiences using
Speaker 1: a sort of laser like focus on subject matter. The
Speaker 1: idea was, if you focus on a specific topic, you
Speaker 1: can dominate for that topic and you can become the
Speaker 1: go to source. Now, as we'll see when we talk
Speaker 1: about G four in our next episode, the strategy would
Speaker 1: shift away from catering to that core audience over time
Speaker 1: in an effort to build out a larger viewership, something
Speaker 1: we've seen time and time again, not just with tech
Speaker 1: TV and G four, but MTV is a great example.
Speaker 1: That was an early example of how we would see
Speaker 1: that at and show channels like the Learning Channel or
Speaker 1: TLC as another great example, and sci Fi as another one,
Speaker 1: and even Cartoon Network that's another one. Well. According to
Speaker 1: Russ Pitts, who served as a line producer on the
Speaker 1: Screen Savers, employees were not told how many people were
Speaker 1: actually watching the programs. The best and employee could hope
Speaker 1: for at the time was an estimate of how many
Speaker 1: people could potentially watch a show based on the number
Speaker 1: of households that z d t V was reaching, like
Speaker 1: how many how many cable companies were actually carrying z
Speaker 1: d t V By the middle of that was around
Speaker 1: eleven million households, and four million of those were through
Speaker 1: cable providers and the other seven million were through satellite
Speaker 1: television providers. Two years after the channel went on the air,
Speaker 1: the bottom fell out under the dot com industry the
Speaker 1: dot com investment bubble burst, as the same year the
Speaker 1: channel would undergo its transformation into tech TV. Several months after,
Speaker 1: Vulcan Ventures had purchased the remaining ownership from zip Davis
Speaker 1: for somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: a princely Some keep in mind they had already spent
Speaker 1: another fifty million dollars just to get that first third
Speaker 1: of the ownership. So it's a bit hard to remember
Speaker 1: exactly how big an impact this dot com bubble collapse
Speaker 1: had on the world in general and San Francisco in particular.
Speaker 1: During the boom years, San Francisco was doing incredibly well.
Speaker 1: The city was really turning around. There were all sorts
Speaker 1: of innovative startups and more than a few ventures built
Speaker 1: on little more than wishful thinking, and as we all know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't something that would go on forever. The collapse
Speaker 1: hit those companies hard, and it also delivered a big
Speaker 1: blow to the advertising industry. Companies that had survived the
Speaker 1: dot com crash and the economic fallout that fought that
Speaker 1: went behind that were becoming much more careful with their
Speaker 1: money and they would spend less on advertising and marketing.
Speaker 1: So for a television channel that drew its revenue from
Speaker 1: selling ad space, this was really bad news and it
Speaker 1: was a big ripple effects. So think of it like
Speaker 1: a bull's eye. Target at the very center of this
Speaker 1: bull's eye, we have the companies that went under when
Speaker 1: the dot com bubble collapsed around that the circle just
Speaker 1: outside of the core were the companies that survived. They
Speaker 1: had enough money, they were able to pivot, they were
Speaker 1: able to weather the storm, but they took a big
Speaker 1: hit further out from them, where companies like tech TV
Speaker 1: that depended upon these entities further inside the circles to survive,
Speaker 1: they were getting ad revenue from those companies. Wasn't just
Speaker 1: tech TV, I mean, obviously websites were also deeply affected,
Speaker 1: including how Stuff Works. That one was really hit hard
Speaker 1: as well, when the advertising industry as a whole took
Speaker 1: a big step backward in the wake of the dot
Speaker 1: com collapse. To make things even more complicated, tech TV
Speaker 1: also had a large complementary web presence that ran in
Speaker 1: parallel with the television station. So the company had two
Speaker 1: sets of staff. You had one on the table TV
Speaker 1: production side and you had one on the website development
Speaker 1: production side. And as the belts began to tighten in
Speaker 1: the wake of the dot com crash, it became clear
Speaker 1: that there just wasn't enough money to support everyone. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure many of you have been through a situation
Speaker 1: in which there was a major change of the company
Speaker 1: you worked for and you felt the effects of that
Speaker 1: ripple through the organization. That was definitely the case with
Speaker 1: z d t V slash tech TV. Paul Allen had
Speaker 1: some ideas about programming, and one of those was that
Speaker 1: the channel should launch a television show dedicated to music
Speaker 1: called Audio File f I l E. Which had a
Speaker 1: higher budget than most of the other shows on the channel,
Speaker 1: including the two best performing shows on the channel, which
Speaker 1: were Called for Help and This Green Savers. So that
Speaker 1: raised some hackles over at tech TV. You saw producers
Speaker 1: get a little upset when they saw how much money
Speaker 1: and care was being poured into this this pet project
Speaker 1: of Paul Allen's. And meanwhile, the shows that were consistently
Speaker 1: performing well with their audiences weren't getting much love from
Speaker 1: the executives. But the first really big change that would
Speaker 1: have a disastrous effect for the channel would start in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, and in March of two thousand one,
Speaker 1: the company would have its first round of layoffs. Now
Speaker 1: this was a very small round of layoffs, but it
Speaker 1: was something that would set a tone for the next
Speaker 1: couple of years. They laid off about a dozen employees,
Speaker 1: so in the grand scheme of things, not a huge
Speaker 1: number of people. These were all employees who worked on
Speaker 1: the website side of the business. That also started to
Speaker 1: build a further divide within the company. You had people
Speaker 1: who were working very hard on the website side to
Speaker 1: support the television shows and to build out more information
Speaker 1: about actual tech and they were seeing this start to
Speaker 1: transform where the focus, at least from the TV executive side,
Speaker 1: was more on pushing the channel toward an entertainment path
Speaker 1: rather than on the very tech focused path that was
Speaker 1: the original purpose of tech TV. This is also when
Speaker 1: tech TV would launch a nine and a half hour
Speaker 1: block of programming called Tech Live. This was essentially a
Speaker 1: very long cable news show dedicated to all things tech,
Speaker 1: and it was largely geared towards business professionals like day traders,
Speaker 1: things like that investors, which was a tough sell in
Speaker 1: those days. The behind the scenes leader for this show
Speaker 1: was Jim Lauderback, who had also served as host of
Speaker 1: Fresh Gear And in the interest of full disclosure, I
Speaker 1: used to work with Jim lauder Back, but briefly back
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and Revision three were both part of
Speaker 1: Discovery Communications. We technically worked in the same departments, but
Speaker 1: our path didn't really cross that much, so I never
Speaker 1: really got much of a strong sense of of who
Speaker 1: he is as a leader. But there were several problems
Speaker 1: that were later connected to this big push of tech Live.
Speaker 1: One of those was that it was really expensive and
Speaker 1: the channel wasn't exactly a huge cash cow. According to
Speaker 1: a Wired magazine article from two thousand two, expenses included
Speaker 1: opening up news bureaus in Seattle, New York City, and Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Also, they built out a broadcast center in
Speaker 1: the San Francisco headquarters, and meanwhile, the channel was still
Speaker 1: fighting to gain more purchase on cable networks, so recapturing
Speaker 1: those costs was a big challenge. Another problem with tech
Speaker 1: Live was that the move began to alienate some of
Speaker 1: the channel's most faithful audience, so viewership number is actually
Speaker 1: went into decline. They were wanting to see the programs
Speaker 1: that they had loved from the very beginning of z
Speaker 1: d t V, and more of those were getting kind
Speaker 1: of pushed off to the side because of this enormous
Speaker 1: block of programming with tech Live. Another issue was that
Speaker 1: it's really really hard to fill that many hours with
Speaker 1: content without retreading the same stuff on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: So within six months, executives decided to pair back tech
Speaker 1: Live into three separate programs. One was a ninety minute
Speaker 1: morning show, another was an hour long afternoon show, and
Speaker 1: the third was a half hour nightly program. A former
Speaker 1: tech TV employee named Josh Green wrote a post on
Speaker 1: Leo Laporte's site, his blog site that laid out a
Speaker 1: bunch of complaints about tech TV around this time, and
Speaker 1: it's a heck of a read. Green is, let's say,
Speaker 1: acidic in his uh. In his criticism, he argued that
Speaker 1: the top leadership, both at the channel side of tech
Speaker 1: TV and the website side was unqualified. He even went
Speaker 1: so far as to call them incompetent. He also argued
Speaker 1: that tech TV launched tech Live at precisely the worst
Speaker 1: time because it was the aftermath of the dot com bubble,
Speaker 1: so there was not a whole lot of consumer interest
Speaker 1: for technology in general, and certainly not a lot of
Speaker 1: enthusiasm about investing in tech companies mere months after the
Speaker 1: entire market had had such a massive collapse. It does
Speaker 1: seem odd that a channel would pour resources into a
Speaker 1: huge commitment revolving around the tech financial industry when the
Speaker 1: desire to invest in that industry was less than ideal.
Speaker 1: Green's post again is really vitriolic, and that's an understatement.
Speaker 1: He clearly held a lot of contempt for many on
Speaker 1: the television side of tech TV. He also was a
Speaker 1: little prophetic. He wrote in two thousand one that much
Speaker 1: of the content on the channel was being created for
Speaker 1: quote an audience of one end quote, and by that
Speaker 1: he meant that the creative decisions guiding the executives for
Speaker 1: creating programming for tech TV all seemed to be geared
Speaker 1: as an effort to please Paul Allen, because ultimately it
Speaker 1: was Alan who was kind of floating the company through
Speaker 1: the Vulcan Ventures investment firm, and Green stated correctly as
Speaker 1: it would turn out that Alan would only do that
Speaker 1: for a certain amount of time before he would want
Speaker 1: to dump the venture, and it would take a couple
Speaker 1: of years. But that's pretty much what would happen. I'll
Speaker 1: explain more in just a moment, but first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. So something else that happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand one that would have a lot of consequences for
Speaker 1: not just tech TV, but obviously the entire world, where
Speaker 1: the terrorist attacks on September eleven, two thousand one. It
Speaker 1: had repercussions around the world, and tech TV was not excluded.
Speaker 1: The channel would go dark for a couple of days.
Speaker 1: San Francisco was viewed as a possible target for further attacks,
Speaker 1: so much of the staff didn't come into work following
Speaker 1: September eleven. Also was a very tough psychological challenge for
Speaker 1: the writers and the hosts and the producers to produce
Speaker 1: shows and talk about something that was seemingly inconsequential. Technology
Speaker 1: news and goofy gadgets just didn't seem important or valid
Speaker 1: in the wake of such an enormous tragedy. The tech
Speaker 1: industry as a whole, which was still unsteady after the
Speaker 1: dot com bust, was knocked off balance again, but the
Speaker 1: shows eventually started coming back. The channel came back with
Speaker 1: with new programming. People soldiered on, and then two months
Speaker 1: later a large round of layoffs would follow. It happened
Speaker 1: on November six and one. The company let go of
Speaker 1: one hundred thirty employees. That was about twenty of the
Speaker 1: entire staff, according to Leo Report on his blog. This
Speaker 1: was around when tech Live was first cut back from
Speaker 1: its gargantuan nine and a half hours to three programs.
Speaker 1: The live programming in general shrank from eleven hours to
Speaker 1: six and a half hours a day. A half year
Speaker 1: later and the company did another round of layoffs. This time,
Speaker 1: it laid off about fifty people, and Tech Live shrank again.
Speaker 1: At this point, it was just a half hour nightly program.
Speaker 1: Gone was the morning program, gone was the afternoon program,
Speaker 1: and most of the folks who were laid off had
Speaker 1: worked on the morning edition of the show. Both the
Speaker 1: Paul Allen Pet Project audio File and the opinion show
Speaker 1: Silicon Spin were canceled around this time as well. At
Speaker 1: this point, in the spring of two thousand two, there
Speaker 1: was a new push from the executives of tech TV.
Speaker 1: The goal was to transform the channel into a lifestyle channel.
Speaker 1: This would mean less of an emphasis on the tech
Speaker 1: e stuff like you know, fewer talks about hard drives,
Speaker 1: fewer talks about ram. It was, fewer episodes or or
Speaker 1: or segments dedicated to helping people with computer problems. If
Speaker 1: you research tech TV, you'll likely come across many accounts
Speaker 1: that lament these changes, and in fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: people have posted about how upset they were leading up
Speaker 1: to this point in the first place. Generally speaking, the
Speaker 1: original writers and hosts for shows on the network felt
Speaker 1: that it was kind of a mistake to move away
Speaker 1: from the core content the channel had been built around,
Speaker 1: and many of the more faithful viewers felt the same way.
Speaker 1: Shows like Call for Help in the Screensavers remains some
Speaker 1: of the most popular programs on the channel, and advocates
Speaker 1: for those shows point to how those remained more anchored
Speaker 1: in the original philosophy of tech TV compared to programs
Speaker 1: that were either are changed dramatically or had been introduced
Speaker 1: later on. So people were saying, why do you keep
Speaker 1: changing away from your core focus when the shows that
Speaker 1: do best are the ones that are closest to that
Speaker 1: core focus. Still, while people in the channel might have
Speaker 1: been upset at the time at those changes, the channel
Speaker 1: as a whole was starting to reach more households. Tech
Speaker 1: TV landed more carriage deals with cable companies and increased
Speaker 1: its range to somewhere between forty five and fifty seven
Speaker 1: million homes. The numbers for how large tech TVs reach
Speaker 1: was are kind of all over the place, but the
Speaker 1: range I encounter was essentially forty five to fifty seven
Speaker 1: million households in America. It's made more complicated because Comcast,
Speaker 1: which had been carrying the channel in several markets, began
Speaker 1: to drop Tech TV from its lineup around two thousand
Speaker 1: one and two thousand two. More on that in just
Speaker 1: a second. The channel began to run more non original work,
Speaker 1: stuff that had been produced independently, such as reruns of
Speaker 1: old Max Headroom TV series and films like Forbidden Planet,
Speaker 1: an anime series from Japan. Some shows stuck around but
Speaker 1: changed a bit in branding. What used to be called
Speaker 1: Game Spot TV would transform into Extended Play before then
Speaker 1: turning into the video game review series x Play, which
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite shows when I finally got
Speaker 1: a chance to watch some Tech TV programming, and one
Speaker 1: of just a couple of shows that would survive the
Speaker 1: transition that would happen in two thousand four. It was
Speaker 1: back in two thousand three that x Play would pair
Speaker 1: the original host, Adam Sessler, who had been with the
Speaker 1: show since the beginning, back when it was Game Spot TV,
Speaker 1: with Morgan Webb, who had previously hosted the Screen Savers
Speaker 1: and Call for Help, and then they would take that
Speaker 1: show to new heights. So remember a minute ago when
Speaker 1: I mentioned that Comcast had been dropping tech TV from
Speaker 1: some of its markets. Well, here's where things get a
Speaker 1: little juicy. Comcast had its own tech oriented cable channel
Speaker 1: called G four that was specifically focusing on video games
Speaker 1: and video game culture, but not many cable companies outside
Speaker 1: of Comcast would carry the channel. Danielle Levitas and an
Speaker 1: analyst at the time, estimated that tech TV reached probably
Speaker 1: about four times as many households as G four did,
Speaker 1: so in two thousand four, Comcast had a proposition, which
Speaker 1: was to acquire tech TV. In fact, some people suggest
Speaker 1: that the real reason Comcast started dropping tech TV wasn't
Speaker 1: so much to eliminate the competition from its channel G four,
Speaker 1: but rather in an effort to perhaps decrease the value
Speaker 1: of tech TV because the company had anticipated making a
Speaker 1: move to acquire it a couple of years later. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: by that time, Paul Allen must have been a bit
Speaker 1: disenchanted with his tech reented cable channel. Much of the
Speaker 1: programming had failed to get a huge audience. Many who
Speaker 1: worked on the flagship shows were frustrated with changes in
Speaker 1: the company and seeing a lot of their coworkers let
Speaker 1: go over the past year and a half. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: it was an agonizing decision on Allen's part to agree
Speaker 1: with the sale, and it was set for an unreported sum,
Speaker 1: but most of the guests, as I saw, there were
Speaker 1: around three hundred million dollars, which means that Paul Allen
Speaker 1: would have seen a little bit of a loss because remember,
Speaker 1: the company originally spent almost three hundred sixty million dollars
Speaker 1: just buying you know, tech TV back when it was
Speaker 1: z d TV, let alone how much money they must
Speaker 1: have poured into the channel to keep it floating over
Speaker 1: the following years. But the pitch was Comcast was going
Speaker 1: to merge tech TV with G four and there would
Speaker 1: be a brand new channel, G four tech TV, and
Speaker 1: it would combine the best of tech TVs programming with
Speaker 1: the best of G four's programming. It would also mean
Speaker 1: that anyone who wanted to continue their employment was going
Speaker 1: to have to pick up stakes. Technically, what Comcast would
Speaker 1: do when they finally completed this merger was fire everybody
Speaker 1: at tech TV, but several of them would be offered
Speaker 1: the opportunity to take on a job at the new company,
Speaker 1: G four tech TV. The folks at G four, by
Speaker 1: the way, did not go through this process. This also
Speaker 1: would mean that you would have to move from San
Speaker 1: Francisco to Los Angeles, because that's where G four's headquarters were,
Speaker 1: and most of the tech TV staff really didn't have
Speaker 1: that option. The new channel would cancel nearly all the
Speaker 1: shows produced by the older tech TV, and about two
Speaker 1: five people were fired when this merger process was completed.
Speaker 1: Shows that were canceled included a Call for Help, the
Speaker 1: show that was hosted by Leo Laporte. Laporte himself decided
Speaker 1: to leave the company he did not go with the
Speaker 1: transformation for G four tech TV. He would get a
Speaker 1: chance to host Call for Help for G four tech
Speaker 1: TV Canada, but the American version of the channel would
Speaker 1: not carry the program, so he did continue to host
Speaker 1: the show for a while, but it wasn't shown in
Speaker 1: the US. In fact, it's actually more efficient for us
Speaker 1: to talk about the shows that successfully transferred over to
Speaker 1: G four tech TV rather than list out all the
Speaker 1: ones that disappeared. Once G four merged with tech TV,
Speaker 1: the screen savers would make the transition, though after a
Speaker 1: short while it would get rebranded as a new show
Speaker 1: called Attack of the Show, and it would change significantly
Speaker 1: in the process. Anime Unleashed, which was a block of
Speaker 1: anime programming that I mentioned earlier that tech TV had
Speaker 1: added to the lineup in late two thousand to early
Speaker 1: two thousand three, That one made the transition over to
Speaker 1: G four tech TV. That show would stick arounduntil two
Speaker 1: thousand six, and then it kind of quietly faded away.
Speaker 1: There was never any official notification of cancelation as far
Speaker 1: as I could tell, but it just got dropped from
Speaker 1: the lineup, possibly because of licensing expiration for the various
Speaker 1: anime programs that was showing, and it never came back.
Speaker 1: The other show that made the transition was ex playing
Speaker 1: The Video Game Review Show, which is no big surprise
Speaker 1: since G four's whole identity was, at least in theory,
Speaker 1: wrapped up in the world of video games. Everything else
Speaker 1: pretty much got the ax once the move to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles was complete. The list of folks who worked at
Speaker 1: tech TV in its six years before being merged with
Speaker 1: G four is effectively a who's whose list of of technology,
Speaker 1: and not just in tech news. So I mentioned Leo
Speaker 1: Laporte several times. He would later go on to create
Speaker 1: This Week in Tech or Twit, which is a phenomenally
Speaker 1: successful tech news podcast Empire. John C. Dvorak, the host
Speaker 1: of The Silicon Spin Show, would become a frequent guest
Speaker 1: on Laport's shows, though the two had a bit of
Speaker 1: a public falling out in two thousand fifteen that eventually
Speaker 1: got patched up by Kevin Rose, another former tech TV
Speaker 1: producer and personality, would go on to found the Revision
Speaker 1: three network and be joined by several other former tech
Speaker 1: TV personalities and hosts and producers, and the website dig
Speaker 1: was also founded by Kevin Rose. The Dig was essentially
Speaker 1: read it before there was read It, and then of
Speaker 1: course dig would sort of fall apart. That's another story
Speaker 1: for another day. Martin Sargent, who had worked as a
Speaker 1: segment producer on the Screen Savers, would go on to
Speaker 1: host or co host several other shows, both online video
Speaker 1: and podcasts. Tom Merritt, who had worked as a producer
Speaker 1: on tech TV shows, would go on to join c Net,
Speaker 1: then he joined twit, and ultimately he would launch his
Speaker 1: own independent podcast, The Daily Tech News Show, and used
Speaker 1: the Patreon support model. He's brilliant and The Daily Tech
Speaker 1: News Show is a great show. He also tends to
Speaker 1: host about a billion other shows at any given time.
Speaker 1: Patrick Norton, who was co host of The Screensavers with Leolport,
Speaker 1: would join Revision three and he would co host a
Speaker 1: show called tech Zilla with my buddy Shannon Morse. Roger Chang,
Speaker 1: who was also a producer over at tech TV, would
Speaker 1: similarly joined Revision three, and the list goes on and on.
Speaker 1: There was Becky Warley, who hosted The Screensavers for a while.
Speaker 1: She went on to become a tech contributor for Good
Speaker 1: Morning America. Chris Parrello, who hosted Call for Help for
Speaker 1: a few years, would go on to do a lot
Speaker 1: of other web related endeavors, and some folks like Sarah Lane,
Speaker 1: Adam Sessler, Morgan Webb, and for a short while Kevin
Speaker 1: Rose would actually make the transition over to G four
Speaker 1: tech TV. Now our story doesn't really end here, even
Speaker 1: though tech Tv had essentially come to an end at
Speaker 1: this point. In our next episode, I will talk about
Speaker 1: G four and how it was founded, so it will
Speaker 1: involve a little bit of backtracking, But then also what
Speaker 1: happened following this merger and the ultimate fate of both channels,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure most of you are aware of, is
Speaker 1: not a happy one. But that leads me to the
Speaker 1: end of this episode. If you guys have any suggestions,
Speaker 1: you can email me the addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You can drop me a line
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff hs W. Head on over to our
Speaker 1: website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You can find
Speaker 1: an archive of all of our past episodes. There. You
Speaker 1: will also find a link to our online store, where
Speaker 1: every purchase you make goes to help the show. We
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate it, and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.