LOL: The Life of Leo

TechTV Reunion?

nobody@vox.com(Leo Laporte) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 20:55:43 -0700

I don't want to be a tease, but there's some interest in putting together a TechTV reunion show for the net. Many of the TechTV hosts have said they'd participate, including Kate Botello. Kris Kosach, Chris Pirillo, and Jim Louderback. Martin Sargent has offered to host it. I know we could get all the TWiTs involved.

There are quite a few more people I'd love to see again. And I think there are a few people who would watch. I'm thinking that May 7, 2007, the ninth anniversary of the channel, would be a nice date.

We need to find a sponsor and a host. Is there someone with deep pockets out there who would like to help us put this together?

I almost hate to say it but the best people to do this would be G4 - they own the rights to all the clips, and frankly I think it would get better ratings than anything they've run in the last two years. Hmm. There goes that idea.

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The Guy in the Suit - Ten Years After

nobody@vox.com(Leo Laporte) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 14:30:39 -0700

Interesting article in The TVNewser at MediaBistro.com

Dev Null

on the 10th Anniversary of the launch of The Site. That's the TV show I helped create for Ziff-Davis many moons ago.

I'll never forget pitching it to NBC at 30 Rock just before Christmas 1995. Then NBC News Director Andrew Lack came in in a three-piece suit and cowboy boots. He propped his booted feet up on the table and said, "ok, let's hear it." It was like something out of Seinfeld.

I wish I were a better packrat. I have the 90-page treatment on a disc somewhere. If I can find it I'll post a couple of pages.

I had hoped to be the lead reporter on the show, but the NBC executives told me I had no chance of getting on camera so they stuck me in a VR suit and the character Dev Null was born. I won an Emmy for it but the only other competition was a sock puppet character on the local Spanish language station, so it wasn't exactly a competitve category.

The show was cancelled after 18 months. Our anchor, Soledad O'Brien went back to NBC. She's now the anchor of CNN's American Morning. Most of the rest of us stuck around to found ZDTV six months later.

And it all started ten years ago tomorrow. The Site was a major network's idea of what a technology TV show should look like: big on production values, light on content, but it was an important moment in the mainstreaming of the Internet. I still run into people now and then who remember me as "the guy in the suit."

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From the Photo Vault

nobody@vox.com(Leo Laporte) — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 17:45:49 -0700

Hair, Makeup, and Emmy

I was going through some old photos and stumbled across this picture. That's Scott Herriott and Michaela Pereira of the old Internet Tonight show on ZDTV (which later became TechTV) mugging with their shiny new Emmy.

The picture was taken on May 22, 2000. That's sometime before ZDTV fired all the makeup artists and made us do it ourselves. It was a magic time.

Gosh I miss those days.

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