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