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The Screen Savers Reunited
HABITcky writes "Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, and Robert Heron have gotten together and recorded their first podcast of The Return Of The Screen Savers (ROTSS) It's a 56kbps MP3Pro file weighing in at around 14MB. Join them for 34 minutes of Skyping fun as they discuss driving in the dust, cell phones, Kevin's new webcast, Systm, and the demise of TechTV. They plan to make this a weekly broadcast."
Sounds like it might be cool. But not as cool as Slashdot Radio was.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
US stations have such a knack for taking great channels (or TV shows), and totally foobar them in a vain attempt to 'improve' them.
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....being that they can get Kate Botello to make a few guest appearances. Then it will be a true reunion.
He was what made that show watchable. And, as far as I know, he was the only one with any previous experience in that field. Kevin and the new batch are kinda' out of their element on Live TV, in my opinion.
Leo knew when the guest was becoming uninteresting, and would switch the subject - fast. The new breed kinda' drag on, and commit the most cardinal sin of Live Broadcast: stand in silence.
But, they're prettier than the old ones, I guess. Have to keep the eyecandy on display for their new audience...
What's the point of reuniting the Screen Savers if I can't ogle Patrick Norton?
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
...first podcast of The Return Of The Screen Savers (ROTSS)...
In TFA it's called Revenge of the Screen Savers.
Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.
- Archimedes
I used to watch it during 2000-2002. After that, I only watched during sweapstake answers live hour:08 - hour:15 (I still didn't watch the show). After that, as you all know, it went down hill. The marketing geniuses that come from the same pool that keep bringing us crappy movies thought that they'll be able to teach us what quality is, and that they will make a few dollars at the same time. They were wrong, and a good show was destroyed. A little more time passed and the entire station was destroyed. Maybe Leo and Patrick they will make a video show like The Broken if the audio show is successful.
Pretty much the only interesting information show TechTV had, and G4 wished it had.
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MP3Pro??
WTF?
Yeah, I know it is backwards compatible with regular mp3 players, but who just about nobody uses it, or has the "pro" decoder part installed. They should have gone with regular mp3 for backwards compatibility and a second copy with a completely different, more efficient low-bitrate codec like wma.
(Now, who thought I was going to say vorbis?)
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I loved The Site, I watched it almost every weekday for about two years. They canceled it after preempting it with the Princess Diana death broadcasts.
The Site was the perfect blend of high tech news and tech-related interest stories. I never cared much for ZDTV/TechTV/G4, they were actually "too geeky" in a bad sort of way.
Leo Laporte was the voice and actor (motion caption) for the tech gossip character "DevNull" (Laporte's old radio handle). He was also "Technical Managing Producer" of the hour-long show, so he did most of his work behind the scenes. The show was actually recorded in the same studio where all of the TechTV shows were, except they had just one huge room, a "working set" where segments were recorded all day while researchers, TV show webmasters, and others were hard at work in the background. These people were often featured in their own segments. It was very cool to hear from the show's own tech people (the show's site was originally hosted on a SPARCstation 20 running Apache and connected to a single T1). I loved the little details like that. And yet they really didn't dwell on the really technical aspects.
Soledad O'Brian was a great host, I think that job fit her better than the current news gigs she does these days. There was also a really good band of reporters for the show, Craig Miller was awesome, I wonder what he's up to these days? Lots of people from the old science show days from KRON/Discovery Channel.
Cliff Stoll ended each weekday show with about 5 minutes of insight, rants, and stories from his home in Berkeley.
TheSite was a nice grounded "magazine" look into the dotcom world. They interviewed a lot of visionaries and up-and-coming people in the industry. Lots of cool viewpoints and persepctives. Too bad their budget didn't allow for travel beyond the SF Bay / Silicon Valley area.
I really miss TheSite, but there won't even be anything like it. Even in it's best days, The Screen Savers was just a bunch of unwashed geeks hanging around Leo Laporte. Lots of geek details, flash, and no substance. *sigh*
Laporte and Ziff Davis started their TV venture in 1995 with "TheSite" on MSNBC. Awesome hour long daily show hosted by Soledad O'Brian and a bunch of over very talented folks. MSNBC canceled the show during a big programming change in 1997. I really miss that show.
In 1998 ZD started their own TV channel. The Screen Savers started out as a very crappy replacement for TheSite. I still enjoyed it, but you could tell that the company was now using the same resources to make about 5 hours of TV a day rather than 1 hour.
The Screen Savers was really starting to suck by the time ZDTV became TechTV.
Soon G4 got involved and totally ruined what little was left of the original ZD venture. Thankfully they finally changed the name of the show.
Patrick, also a print journalist, had a bit of geek in him, but was bitter enough about technology to question things rather than drool over the latest new gadget.
Jessica, of course, eye candy with a brain... what else could you ask for???
Kevin Rose was always better doing his little bit pieces than he ever was a host.
Sarah just annoys me (and I hear from a friend of mine who was a set painter for the LA version of TSS that when they first got down here, little Sarah was stomping around bitching about how their set wasn't nearly as cool looking as Martin Sargent's--of course look where he is now.)
G4 is now using that lovely Hollywood idea of creating programming by looking at the marketing numbers... "Well, my Excel sheet says that if we change TSS to 'Attack of the Show' blah, blah, blah." Merely the fact that they have wardrobe people should tell you something. Do you think Patrick Norton could've gotten away with wearing his utility kilt on G4?
Yep... Everything that made TechTV semi-interesting to watch has gone away. Why did G4 even bother to buy TechTV?? Oh, yeah, that's right, TechTV actually had dial space on many cable and satellite systems. G4 didn't because who would actually want to watch a network who's programming was pretty much exclusively gaming?
Here's an example of the brilliant G4 programming: "Cinematech"
From G4's website
Yep... nothing like watching the screen of someone playing a video game for a half hour. Why, it's so in depth it gives me chills. The creator of that program must be cut from the cloth of the finest tapestry.
Anyway... listen to the Podcast. It's interesting to hear Kevin Rose and Robert Heron talk about the TV by marketing numbers that G4 is using. Hopefully the podcast will continue on and eventually become a video cast of some sort.
BTW, here's the direct link to the podcast if you're using some sort of podcast receiving software:
http://leoville.tv/podcasts/tlr
--J
Web hosting that doesn't suck!Dreamhost
When I first saw TechTV, I was very impressed. I especially like how one of the policies that Leo implemented on TSS was to go live and if the computer crashed, show it on TV, and using Windows, many times their OS would crash in the middle of demos. They felt it was important to let people know that this happens to everybody and not just neophytes, and that ideally it should be avoidable and that was their way of sending a message to the software developers that if their products weren't stable, at least TSS wouldn't cover it up.
One problem these days with product reviews is that the line between editorial and advertising is to narrow, you don't know who to trust. TSS and some of the other shows on the early TechTV were very good about calling attention to products that, well, sucked and didn't live up to their claims. This probably alienated potential advertisers but it generated hardcore loyalty among viewers like me who felt that many of the personalities on TechTV were honorable and trustworthy.
When the network started running all kinds of weird fluff/syndicated crap, things started to decline. More emphasis was put on gaming and less on technology, more on goofy gadgets and less on core applications and utilities. When G4 took over the network, it was nearly dead and I haven't watched since.
I agree with others that Leo has a good personality for television, but sometimes I felt he was a little too animated and "fatherly". In contrast, Patrick and Kevin and others were more peer-like in the manner in which they presented information and news. Leo had more of a slightly patronizing hyper-exagerated-enthusiasm that I felt was over the top and annoying at times. But I can't deny that he was very knowledgable and capable. I would love to see the old crew back together again.