Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and love all Things tech. And I had a
Speaker 1: listener send me a message via Twitter to handle for
Speaker 1: the show. Is tech Stuff h s W in case
Speaker 1: you ever want to do this? And they asked if
Speaker 1: I thought perhaps tech TV, a once keybole channel that
Speaker 1: is no more, if it could have survived in the
Speaker 1: realm of streaming, And I thought this was a great
Speaker 1: opportunity for me to bring on Tom Merritt onto the show.
Speaker 1: Tom is um He's a podcaster extraordinaire. He's been a
Speaker 1: voice in tech for a couple of decades. I first
Speaker 1: became aware of his work when I started listening to
Speaker 1: the Buzz out Loud podcast from c Net. This was
Speaker 1: before I was ever a podcasters, before I even worked
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot com. So uh, that's when
Speaker 1: I first became a fan of of his work. And
Speaker 1: it was a pleasure having him on to talk about
Speaker 1: tech TV and his insight. So let's listen to that
Speaker 1: conversation right now. I am pleased to welcome longtime friend
Speaker 1: of the show that's putting it lightly. Tom Merritt, whose
Speaker 1: work was actually a lot of the work that that
Speaker 1: inspired me before I got into podcasting. Uh so, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Tom's been doing this for a while. He's
Speaker 1: been working in not just what we used to call
Speaker 1: new media, which is just media now, but also old media.
Speaker 1: So you know, Tom's Tom's done at all. Tom, welcome
Speaker 1: back to tech stuff. Ah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: It's it's good to be back. For those who don't know. Uh,
Speaker 1: I often joke that I heart media publishes about half
Speaker 1: of all the podcasts that are out there. Tom hosts
Speaker 1: or co hosts. The other hand, I do probably too many.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's quite that many, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I do a lot, that's true. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: would never describe it as too many. Tom. I just
Speaker 1: say that, first of all, your time management skills have
Speaker 1: got to be worlds better than my own. But the
Speaker 1: reason why I asked you here obviously is that we
Speaker 1: had this listener who wrote in and asked, in the
Speaker 1: world of streaming, would something like tech TV be able
Speaker 1: to have continued? Now. I've done an episode about tech
Speaker 1: TV in the past, but it's great to talk to
Speaker 1: someone who is actually there, at least for a while. So, Tom,
Speaker 1: can you kind of for people who might not have
Speaker 1: known about tech TV because maybe they're just never got
Speaker 1: that channel, or perhaps they're on the younger side of
Speaker 1: my listeners, can you kind of fillis in on what
Speaker 1: that was all about. Tech TV, or z d t
Speaker 1: V as it originally was called because it was owned
Speaker 1: by Ziff Davis, the publisher of computer magazines, tech magazines
Speaker 1: and websites UH as a cable television network that began
Speaker 1: in the late nineties on cable to be devoted to
Speaker 1: technology topics. Ziff's idea was, let's take the topics that
Speaker 1: we cover in our publications and our websites UH and
Speaker 1: put them on television. Let's make television versions of that UH.
Speaker 1: In fact, it has its roots in a show called
Speaker 1: the Site that was on MSNBC, which people may not
Speaker 1: realize was originally Microsoft NBC. It was. It was a
Speaker 1: combination of Microsoft and NBC that NBC eventually just took
Speaker 1: over and never changed the name. Tech TV had shows
Speaker 1: about helping how to, It had shows about technology news.
Speaker 1: It had shows about technology finance, video games, uh MP
Speaker 1: three's and audio came along and a show about audio
Speaker 1: was started. So all the tech topics you can think
Speaker 1: of were there in two thousand. Uh, this is in
Speaker 1: the earliest days. So the joke is that tech TV
Speaker 1: covered the dot com boom and the dot com bust
Speaker 1: and then got busted because it went away when it
Speaker 1: was bought by Comcast, which merged it into the G
Speaker 1: four network. And then of course we all know that,
Speaker 1: uh the G four network had its own roller coaster story.
Speaker 1: That the kind of roller coaster where you have one
Speaker 1: big hill and then a real long flow down until
Speaker 1: you just end up with cops three runs, yeah, towards
Speaker 1: the end, although they're back trying to do a streaming version.
Speaker 1: So but G four devoted to gaming, not technology. Tech
Speaker 1: TV was devoted to broad technology. They had a gaming
Speaker 1: show called x Play that was the only one of
Speaker 1: the only things that survived over into the G four merger.
Speaker 1: But but everything else was about various topics were right
Speaker 1: and and you know, I watched tech TV back in
Speaker 1: the day, and one of the things that really struck
Speaker 1: me is that that was a channel that I mean
Speaker 1: they were talking to like a lot of the shows,
Speaker 1: we're talking to people who knew their stuff right. It
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't necessarily like the kinds of things you
Speaker 1: would see on say local news, where they might cover
Speaker 1: a tech story where it's very superficial you don't really
Speaker 1: dive into it. We were talking about shows where people
Speaker 1: were calling in live or asking live questions about very
Speaker 1: particular issues that they might be running into and like
Speaker 1: solving them in real time. And I remember watching and
Speaker 1: thinking like I can't, I can't imagine how much you
Speaker 1: would need to know about these subjects in order to
Speaker 1: be able to to do this effectively and still be
Speaker 1: also personable on camera. Like that's that was the other
Speaker 1: side of it is that obviously, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: just want to have the ben Stein kind of approach
Speaker 1: to delivery, or no one's gonna bother watching unless they
Speaker 1: just happen to have a blue screen of death they
Speaker 1: can't get rid of. Yeah. The most watched shows on
Speaker 1: the network through most of its run were the live
Speaker 1: call in shows hosted by Leolaporte, Call for Help and
Speaker 1: the screensavers. Uh. Internally we referred to them as the
Speaker 1: Tools and the Toys show. Call for Help was the
Speaker 1: Tool show is very much focused on practicality. I need
Speaker 1: help doing x, uh, you know, because I need to
Speaker 1: get something done. Screensavers was more of the Toys show.
Speaker 1: That's where you had more of the hacking and they're like,
Speaker 1: what can I make things do? I I want to
Speaker 1: try this, you know, help me out with that. And
Speaker 1: they were live, which was unusual in many respects, including
Speaker 1: the fact that it was, if not the first, certainly
Speaker 1: one of the first television shows to have chat rooms
Speaker 1: running on screen, so as you chatted uh during during
Speaker 1: the show, your chats could show up on screen. There
Speaker 1: was a slight delay for moderation just in case, but
Speaker 1: but chat with screens was streamed onto the television and
Speaker 1: you could call in on the net Cam network uh
Speaker 1: in in seven when it launched, you could call in
Speaker 1: with a netcam uh using see you see me uh,
Speaker 1: and they would set you up and you could appear
Speaker 1: on the show. Uh. And that was definitely something new
Speaker 1: where the audience not only not just could call in
Speaker 1: on the phone, which they could, but could actually have
Speaker 1: a camera uh and and appear on the show with
Speaker 1: a camera, something that even now is not done a lot.
Speaker 1: But now you're like, oh yeah, you could totally do
Speaker 1: that it's all a matter of screening and and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Back then, you you had to walk
Speaker 1: people through it. So to your point about needing a
Speaker 1: sophisticated audience, you needed an audience who was sophisticated enough
Speaker 1: to be able to run software and set up a
Speaker 1: web camera and all of that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I remember, you know, the heavily pixelated net cams
Speaker 1: of the past dial up. That's right. It's pretty incredible
Speaker 1: actually when you really think about it, that it was
Speaker 1: even you guys even managed to do it that uh,
Speaker 1: and that the audience was was a thriving part of it.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would argue that a lot of that work.
Speaker 1: I mean clearly we see that play out in other
Speaker 1: platforms today. Right. Twitch would not be Twitch if it
Speaker 1: were not for some of the things that were prototyped
Speaker 1: and tested and proven to work with tech TV, where
Speaker 1: you see things like audience engagement and that builds a community,
Speaker 1: and that that's the sort of thing that ends up
Speaker 1: giving a show life beyond you know, whatever the content
Speaker 1: is that's on the screen. It's a thing that it
Speaker 1: becomes a collaborative effort with the people on the show
Speaker 1: and the audience. I mean, if you're doing a help show,
Speaker 1: then you really don't have content unless you have an
Speaker 1: audience to write in and ask for things or to
Speaker 1: call in and ask for things. So I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of things on tech TV that we're kind of
Speaker 1: I would say, with presage, the the various elements that
Speaker 1: we kind of take for granted in a lot of
Speaker 1: online streaming UH services now, whether it's you know, YouTube
Speaker 1: streaming or twitch streaming, things of that nature, a lot
Speaker 1: of those have I think, kind of taken lessons that
Speaker 1: were first learned back in the late nineties and early
Speaker 1: two thousand's. Yeah, I often wonder what would have happened
Speaker 1: if they had not sold tech TV to Comcast. UH.
Speaker 1: Tech TV was sold by Ziff Davis to Paul Allen,
Speaker 1: the co founder of Microsoft. His Vulcan Ventures ran it.
Speaker 1: Then the dot com bust came along. Also, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: both Vulcan's UH financial folks and Paul Allen got board
Speaker 1: with tech TV because as of the day it was
Speaker 1: sold to Comcast by Paul Allen, they were making money
Speaker 1: internationally because they had international versions of the network UH
Speaker 1: and syndication agreements. They were break even on the web,
Speaker 1: which which I was was a part of, and they
Speaker 1: were getting close to profitability on broadcast. It was the
Speaker 1: wrong time to sell, in my opinion and a few
Speaker 1: other people's opinion, because the show, the network was becoming viable.
Speaker 1: What was valuable of it about it at the time
Speaker 1: of the sale was that it was in fifty million homes.
Speaker 1: Back then, you needed to be in at least sixty
Speaker 1: seventy million homes to really make a go of it.
Speaker 1: Uh So part of the theory behind selling was, well,
Speaker 1: if you sell the Comcast, you get better distribution. But
Speaker 1: one of the reasons Comcast wanted it was for those
Speaker 1: fifty million homes that G four wasn't in. G four
Speaker 1: was in thirteen million homes. Uh And so you merge
Speaker 1: those two networks, which is what they did, and overnight
Speaker 1: you're getting close to that viability number. Uh That number
Speaker 1: is smaller now because there's a smaller number of homes,
Speaker 1: but back then you you needed you needed to really
Speaker 1: get in as many homes as possible. The other problem
Speaker 1: with tech TV it was solo, so every other almost
Speaker 1: every other cable network out there was on there because
Speaker 1: it was part of a package. Right There was ESPN,
Speaker 1: News because well, if you want ESPN, you gotta take
Speaker 1: ESPN News. There was Bravo because well if you want MSNBC,
Speaker 1: you gotta take Bravo. Uh. And and all of the
Speaker 1: big companies had those kinds of arrangements. Even the h
Speaker 1: G t V s were like, well, you want HDTV,
Speaker 1: you gotta take d I Y Tech TV was it.
Speaker 1: They were on their own, so they kind of needed
Speaker 1: something to get past that fifty million mark. If they
Speaker 1: had stuck around, though, I wonder if they would have
Speaker 1: gone the way of most cable networks, which is you
Speaker 1: you keep broadening out your base until you're really no
Speaker 1: longer about what you were originally about. We see that
Speaker 1: with the History Channel, we see that with sci Fi, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Or would they have split into multiple networks? Would would
Speaker 1: they have been able to launch secondary networks maybe broaden
Speaker 1: out the main network, but but have more specific networks
Speaker 1: the way an h G t V, A, d I
Speaker 1: Y food uh. And all of that happened as it was,
Speaker 1: it got merged into G four, the tech went away.
Speaker 1: And to to your original viewer question, I don't think
Speaker 1: you could do it now because so much has changed.
Speaker 1: You would you are doing it. Uh, and you kind
Speaker 1: of alluded to that, like there's a YouTube or a
Speaker 1: Twitch show for everything tech TV was doing, and the
Speaker 1: entire internet is essentially tech TV in a way. There
Speaker 1: are people doing help shows, there are people doing podcasts,
Speaker 1: there are people doing uh streaming of games. All these
Speaker 1: things that the tech TV was pioneering are just deragur right.
Speaker 1: Twitch talks to its chat as as you stream all
Speaker 1: the time. Uh. We had tech TV Radio where we
Speaker 1: would uh, in addition to news, do sort of behind
Speaker 1: the scenes shows about the shows on tech TV. Every
Speaker 1: show has a behind the scenes podcast. Now. Uh, It's
Speaker 1: it's just everything now. So I don't know if it
Speaker 1: would make sense to try to bottle it all back
Speaker 1: up into a niche network anymore because it's just so pervasive.
Speaker 1: Tom and I have more to say about the tech
Speaker 1: TV story and and streaming, but first let's take this
Speaker 1: quick break. You've touched on a ton of things, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I used to work you know this, I
Speaker 1: used to work for Discovery Communications. Uh, I've worked for
Speaker 1: the same company for you know, fourteen years. It's just
Speaker 1: been owned by different people. So but when I was
Speaker 1: working for Discovery, you know, we got to see the
Speaker 1: full side of the whole carriage agreements, those agreements where
Speaker 1: a cable company has like multiple channels in its network
Speaker 1: and the there'll be one or two jewels that they
Speaker 1: have that everyone wants, but because you know they have
Speaker 1: the stuff that the customers want, they say, well, you
Speaker 1: also have to take these other channels as well. I
Speaker 1: think that that would have been probably the evolution we
Speaker 1: would have seen with tech TV had it stuck around,
Speaker 1: Because I was also going to bring up the point
Speaker 1: about how you would start off with these cable channels
Speaker 1: that would have very uh focused uh subject matter or topics,
Speaker 1: or they would cater to a very specific audience, and
Speaker 1: over time, because there's this need and old media to
Speaker 1: continue to grow, Like that's how success is shown by
Speaker 1: growth year over year. It's not it's not it's not
Speaker 1: really revenue so much as how much did you grow
Speaker 1: compared to last year. Uh. You can't continue to grow
Speaker 1: if you are incredibly focused, something that tech stuff has
Speaker 1: seen over the past, because like I have a great audience,
Speaker 1: a wonderful audience, but it's not like you know, maybe
Speaker 1: someone will tune into a specific episode if they think
Speaker 1: it sounds interesting, but it's not the sort of thing
Speaker 1: where I'm going to see explosive growth. Um at this stage,
Speaker 1: it would be great if that happened. But that's the
Speaker 1: sort of thing that I think a lot of cable
Speaker 1: companies we're looking at and they said, let's broaden this out.
Speaker 1: I mean, the one the flagship that I always think
Speaker 1: of as MTV, because there's the cliche joke of do
Speaker 1: you remember when they used to show music videos? Um,
Speaker 1: which you know, and I make that joke, and meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman's my boss. I should be real careful about
Speaker 1: jokes about MTV. But yeah, it's it's but that's that's
Speaker 1: the sort of that's the sort of train. And now
Speaker 1: that we have these these streaming services that allow for
Speaker 1: much more narrowly focused content where you can find your
Speaker 1: audience and you can have that level of engagement, I
Speaker 1: think that ends up making up a lot for the
Speaker 1: fact that it doesn't necessarily work as well in the
Speaker 1: cable world because it is really hard to build that
Speaker 1: sort of structure that supports the community. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of cable companies have tried that, where they try
Speaker 1: to marry whatever cable content is up on screen with
Speaker 1: a website that's built out, but that doesn't it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily uh, something that that works organically, and it's really
Speaker 1: hard to drive people to a different screen when you
Speaker 1: have them on one. Um. So I think I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, to the listeners question, Yeah, we're we're seeing
Speaker 1: plenty of programming out there that is touching on all
Speaker 1: the elements that tech tv touched on, but it's just
Speaker 1: not it's just not tech tv. UM. I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: was probably the resurgence of G four that really brought
Speaker 1: that question up, and that in case that case is
Speaker 1: a little bit different too. It's again it's um, it's
Speaker 1: again catering to the gaming community, but with the exception
Speaker 1: of stuff like x play, you're not seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of the classic G four properties come back in full swing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. It does delight me that x play is
Speaker 1: still around in some form. It was originally called game
Speaker 1: Spot TV because If Davis owned a magazine called game Spot,
Speaker 1: but it was hosted by Adam Sessler uh, and then
Speaker 1: it became extended Play once as IF sold the company
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to use the ZIF name anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then at one point they decided to try to
Speaker 1: make it edgier. So they dropped the tended and just
Speaker 1: made it explay. Uh and and it's been that ever said,
Speaker 1: So that is a launch show from z D t
Speaker 1: V that under three different names has survived, which I
Speaker 1: kind of love. But yeah, when you think about starting
Speaker 1: a cable network now, well who would start a cable
Speaker 1: network now? Like, who wants a cable network? What you
Speaker 1: see now are uh packages of content? Right. I think
Speaker 1: the future of ESPN will be a slow uh moving
Speaker 1: from ESPN the cable network first to e s p
Speaker 1: N the app. ESPN plus is their their their back
Speaker 1: door to escape and survive into. You'll see more and
Speaker 1: more things go there. You see all the networks doing this,
Speaker 1: Paramount plus, Peacock, Disney plus. Uh. Instead of launching channels,
Speaker 1: they're launching services that package all their content together. So
Speaker 1: kind of going back to that idea that Ziff Davis
Speaker 1: originally launched the network as a companion to their magazines
Speaker 1: and websites. I wonder if there is a company that
Speaker 1: could create some kind of streaming service, might have to
Speaker 1: be free ad supported rather than subscription based, but could
Speaker 1: a c net could as if Davis could, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a vox UH create an app that has the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a tech TV in it, where it's got shows
Speaker 1: that you can tap into, and then the resources of
Speaker 1: of the publications involved in there. If there were a
Speaker 1: return of a tech TV kind of thing, that that's
Speaker 1: the only way I can imagine it taking place, I think.
Speaker 1: And one of the other reasons why I'm so glad
Speaker 1: you're on the show, Tom is that I knew that
Speaker 1: you would be the perfect person to talk to about this,
Speaker 1: not just because of your tech TV history, but of
Speaker 1: course you also co hosted a show called Chord Killers
Speaker 1: where you talk about stuff like the cable industry and
Speaker 1: streaming services, and I mean, you'll go into all sorts
Speaker 1: of different uh stories on those topics. But you know
Speaker 1: you've I remember listening to Chord Killers ages ago where
Speaker 1: we were just starting to have those conversations of um,
Speaker 1: you know, cord cutting becoming like a trend and UH
Speaker 1: and now that you have this era of all these
Speaker 1: different streaming platforms that are available, UH, now the conversation
Speaker 1: tends to revolve around which ones do I subscribe to
Speaker 1: and which ones can I afford to? Not to what
Speaker 1: content am I willing to miss? Out on that's what
Speaker 1: the conversation becomes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh. We used to
Speaker 1: joke Brian Brushwood, my my co host on Court Killers,
Speaker 1: and I used to joke that we started to show
Speaker 1: about tablets before the iPad came out, basically uh, and
Speaker 1: but we we stuck around long enough that it paid off,
Speaker 1: because Yeah, we have shifted over the years from how
Speaker 1: could you possibly do this? To uh, what do you
Speaker 1: watch and how do you decide? Yeah, no, it's that's
Speaker 1: that's the conversation I end up having. I have another
Speaker 1: show called Large nerd Dron Collider with a friend of
Speaker 1: mine and that ends up being our conversation all the
Speaker 1: time where she'll say, oh, did you see this new
Speaker 1: show on Hulu? And I said, oh, that's it's one
Speaker 1: of the ones I canceled. So it's because it's just
Speaker 1: hard to keep up with them all. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think this was exactly what my listener
Speaker 1: was really looking for, was to kind of get that
Speaker 1: insight and um, yeah, it's a totally different world now
Speaker 1: with the different ways of approaching I think the fact
Speaker 1: that you know that there are these platforms out there
Speaker 1: finding an audience still continues to be one of the
Speaker 1: most challenging aspects for any content creator out there. But
Speaker 1: if you are someone who wants to do something where
Speaker 1: you're you know, you launch a Twitch channel where you're
Speaker 1: helping people with tech problems, I think there are opportunities
Speaker 1: out there. The question you need to be able to
Speaker 1: define what success is to you and maybe set some expectations,
Speaker 1: because it's not like you're necessarily going to see uh,
Speaker 1: monumental success right out of the gate, or even you know,
Speaker 1: you may not see monumental success at all. But if
Speaker 1: it's something that you derive pleasure from and and it's
Speaker 1: not pulling too much of your attention away from other
Speaker 1: things that you need to do, I think it's a
Speaker 1: great thing to pursue. Um and and to your point,
Speaker 1: well with court killers, if you stick around long enough,
Speaker 1: you might become relevant. Yeah, right, just just stang in there.
Speaker 1: The good news is you don't need to be in
Speaker 1: eight million homes to to be successful. Right that It's
Speaker 1: it's hard to get an audience, but at least you
Speaker 1: don't have to get as big of an audience as
Speaker 1: you used to have to do to to have some success. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to. You don't have to find the
Speaker 1: money people, right, the people who will put forward whatever
Speaker 1: the capital is in order for you to have all
Speaker 1: the stuff and and the the equipment you need to
Speaker 1: be able to get into something like that is not
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's still an expense. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of computers that are coming out now that
Speaker 1: have the basic stuff that you would need right away
Speaker 1: that can produce good enough results where if you're if
Speaker 1: the content you put out is really good, people will
Speaker 1: watch it. Obviously, you know, it's it's hard to judge
Speaker 1: that because you always think about the standouts that have
Speaker 1: the super high quality webcam or or they're using a
Speaker 1: you know, a very expensive camera and lighting set up
Speaker 1: and green screen, and they have the mixers and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But you know, those are those
Speaker 1: are things that you can worry about later on down
Speaker 1: the road. Um, Tom, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: the show and and having a little walk down memory
Speaker 1: lane with me. Is been a real pleasure. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the things I try not
Speaker 1: to bore my friends with is is endless stories about
Speaker 1: tech TV. So I appreciate your giving me a chance
Speaker 1: to have a purpose to bore people about tech TV.
Speaker 1: It wasn't boring at all. And I mean, if you
Speaker 1: ever find yourself with like thirty seconds of extra time
Speaker 1: in the day, I mean you could always just launch
Speaker 1: another old Stories from Tech TV podcast, right have would
Speaker 1: be like a Patreon only thing. Sure, sure, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: an idea there. I would like to apologize everyone in
Speaker 1: Tom's life who was just saying we're just trying to
Speaker 1: have but again, I really appreciate it. And if you
Speaker 1: out there listening to this, if you haven't gone to
Speaker 1: explore all the different podcasts that Tom does, I highly
Speaker 1: recommend you check them out. Tom, which ones would you
Speaker 1: suggest people listen to besides all of them? Yeah, folks
Speaker 1: who listen to tech stuff probably would appreciate Daily Tech
Speaker 1: News show, which is all about technology news. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: also Sort and Laser, which is about science fiction and
Speaker 1: fantasy books. There's Cord Killers. As you mentioned. All my
Speaker 1: shows are at tom Erett dot com. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: I want to put in a plug for for some
Speaker 1: shows that I just sort of help get going. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's one called Barbecue and Tech Chris Ashley and Rod
Speaker 1: Simmons just to to tech executives talking about how much
Speaker 1: they love barbecue in the intersection of the two worlds
Speaker 1: and the tech John, Rob Dunwood and and friends. Uh,
Speaker 1: talking about tech from a black perspective. Look for those
Speaker 1: as well. That's fantastic. Yeah, And if you listen to
Speaker 1: Tom shows, you're gonna hear other voices that you'll be
Speaker 1: familiar with. People I've had on on tech stuff in
Speaker 1: the past. Shannon Morse has been on your shows many times. UM,
Speaker 1: wonderful friend of the podcast as well. So thanks again, Tom.
Speaker 1: Let's not let's not make it like, you know, two
Speaker 1: or three more years before we talk again. Agreed. We
Speaker 1: have a bit more to say, or at least I
Speaker 1: have a bit more to say after we take this
Speaker 1: quick break. Okay, let's talk a bit about G four
Speaker 1: TV and by lett sounds just me because Tom's already
Speaker 1: he's gone. Thanks Tom, that's great for him to be
Speaker 1: on the show. Yeah, let's talk about G four TV
Speaker 1: for a second. So in the episode I did where
Speaker 1: I mentioned G four TV was coming back, that was
Speaker 1: back when the group of people trying to resuscitate G
Speaker 1: four TV were mainly focusing on streaming events, specials, a
Speaker 1: lot of retrospectives, that kind of thing. But after more
Speaker 1: than the year of that kind of stuff going on,
Speaker 1: G four was actually able to establish itself as a
Speaker 1: linear television channel. That happened on November six of this year.
Speaker 1: And uh, linear TV, in case you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: that term, it essentially just is old school television. It
Speaker 1: means that programming is running on its schedule and you
Speaker 1: see whatever is playing when you tune in. It's what
Speaker 1: Tom was talking about when you mentioned the paramount plus stuff.
Speaker 1: Linear TV is uh that just that unbroken stream of programming.
Speaker 1: So it's not on demand. It's not the way like
Speaker 1: a lot of streaming services are typically set up today. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's uh, we're getting some stuff back again,
Speaker 1: attack of the Show and ex play, uh and other
Speaker 1: stuff as well. So it shows that G four, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that it had that kind of painful uh decline,
Speaker 1: which ultimately uh meant that it turned into the Esquire Channel,
Speaker 1: has managed to Claude's way back. And Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: mean to to say that in a way that's you know,
Speaker 1: uh talking down what they've done. I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: phenomenal and I think it's fantastic that gamers can have
Speaker 1: this kind of content available to them, still not tech TV.
Speaker 1: That part has not returned along with the G four
Speaker 1: TV stuff. However, as Tom was saying, a lot of
Speaker 1: the content that you would find on tech TV, a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff has been distributed across thousands of channels.
Speaker 1: You know, you have everything from people doing deep dives
Speaker 1: into technology where they're getting really technical. They just assume
Speaker 1: from the get go that you have a strong based
Speaker 1: understanding of technology before they even get started to stuff
Speaker 1: more like what my podcast is, where I would say
Speaker 1: I I take a more general knowledge approach where I'm
Speaker 1: not assuming anyone has that deep level of understanding, largely
Speaker 1: because that's where I come from. I'm I've tell people
Speaker 1: all the time. I studied English literature in college. I
Speaker 1: had no intention of becoming a tech podcaster out of college,
Speaker 1: but kind of fortunately gravitated toward it after after more
Speaker 1: than a decade of flailing around in the uh in
Speaker 1: the real world. And so I go at this from
Speaker 1: the perspective of, let me do this as if I
Speaker 1: were listening the idea of, all right, let's establish the
Speaker 1: foundation before we start diving into the nitty gritty. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the tech TV model as it stood would probably be
Speaker 1: very different in streaming, I would say, but because we
Speaker 1: do have lots of stuff out there that is similar
Speaker 1: to tech TV. In fact, you know, you've got Leo
Speaker 1: Report's Twitter network, you've got the Daily Tech News show
Speaker 1: with Tom Merritt, You've got stuff like tech stuff, You've
Speaker 1: got numerous podcasts and video streams. I think that it's
Speaker 1: actually a much more rich world when it comes to
Speaker 1: that sort of content, Um, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: endeavors can survive on a much smaller audience base than
Speaker 1: what you would see with a cable channel, right, like
Speaker 1: you have to hit certain big, big numbers with cable
Speaker 1: channels in order for that cable channel to be profitable
Speaker 1: because it's expensive to run those. The operations that we
Speaker 1: see on the Internet tend to be slightly smaller in scale,
Speaker 1: sometimes dramatically smaller in scale, so they don't have the
Speaker 1: same overhead costs that a cable channel would have. So
Speaker 1: in that sense, Um, you know, it may be that
Speaker 1: the output isn't as flashy as it could be if
Speaker 1: it were a cable channel, but I think it's just
Speaker 1: as relevant. So thanks again for sending in that question
Speaker 1: about tech TV and whether it would survive on streaming.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic to be able to catch up with
Speaker 1: tom uh. It sounds like I might be popping onto
Speaker 1: daily tech news show sometime in the new year, so
Speaker 1: if you listen to that show you might hear my
Speaker 1: voice on it. I apologize ahead of time for that.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if any of you out there have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should cover on episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: maybe you've got a company I would you would like
Speaker 1: me to talk about, or a specific technology, or maybe
Speaker 1: a trend in tech um maybe sort of a perspective
Speaker 1: on historical aspects of technology, any of those things. Let
Speaker 1: me know. Send me a message via Twitter again. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H