TechTV: Where are they now?
Posted: March 13, 2008 at 10:45 pm | Tags: Becky Worley, Chris Pirillo, CNET, Erica Hill, Jim Louderback, John Dvorak, Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte, Martin Sargent, Morgan Webb, Patrick Norton, Revision3, TechTV
It has been almost 4 years since the demise of TechTV, the place where all the computer geeks in the world came together to drink, dance, and be merry. But since Comcast purchased the network and purged it into it’s awful G4TV network, most of us stopped watching, almost the entire TechTV cast was fired, and they all dispersed into world. So, what are they up to?
Leo Laporte
Who He Was
Back in my young and noobish days, The Screen Savers and Call for Help were some of the biggest sources of finding out good solid information from people who knew what they were talking about. Leo created and co-hosted The Screen Savers and also hosted Call for Help. He was a great example of how you can be a total computer geek without having to resport to the glasses with the scotch tape on them and that twitchy nerdiness. Leo was just another guy…who happened to know how to program and troubleshoot and could explain things in layman’s terms good enough for most anybody.
Who He Is
Leo left in 2004 after a dispute with the owners of the network on stock ownership. He has gone on to further his life in media, with a syndicated radio show The Tech Guy that airs on Premiere Radio Networks. He’s also still writing tons of books and is involved with numerous “netcasts” including his own netcast network TWIT: This Week in Tech. Most of the people he works with on TWIT are former TechTV people as well, his shows include Security Now, MacBreak Weekly, The Daily Giz Wiz and Windows Weekly. All can be downloaded through iTunes. He has also been involved in numerous other TV, radio, and internet podcasts.
He currently lives over at http://www.leoville.com
Patrick Norton
Who He Was
Patrick Co-Hosted and edited The Screen Savers, where you could occasionally see him wearing a kilt. Always a pretty righteous dude, he fit in well with Leo on the show.
Who He Is
After the TechTV employee purge, Patrick was given the option to stay on with G4TV network, but he would have to move to LA. He said screw that, at the time he had planned on doing some freelance writing and then figuring out what he wanted to do. He got involved with DL.tv and become a co-host on there until 2007 where he decided it was time to prepare for fatherhood. He was also involved with a podcast called What’s New Now with Jim Louderback. He now works’ at Revision3 as a managing editor and host of Systm and Tekzilla. He is also a regular on Leo’s TWIT netcasts and you may see a column of his popping up in any PC magazine at any time.
Kevin Rose
Who He Was
Kevin was originally a production assistant (AKA nobody) on The Screen Savers. After he got some air time they started giving him a fairly common segment where he would share random, little known things about computing. It was mostly hit or miss kinda stuff, sometimes it was awesome, sometimes it sucked. Kevin’s segments weren’t usually something that we looked forward to. Kevin was one of the few to stick with G4 after the merger and moved down to LA with them where they put him on as the host of The Screen Savers. I don’t know how well he did because, like many others, I refused to watch the network after Comcast bastardized it.
Who He Is
Apparently he wasn’t good enough. The show evolved into Attack of the Show! and Rose was released from his contact in 2005. He founded Revision3 along with a few other fellows in April 2005. Things took off from there. He got the idea for Digg.com and it proved so awesome that within a few months the value of Digg had skyrocketed. He does the video podcast Diggnation with former Screen Savers (G4) co-host Alex Albrecht where his internet celebrity status is currently at record heights. He also founded Pownce, what has been called “Twitter on Steroids” with the ability to share pictures and other files through microblogging. While many from TechTV have faded off into the sunset, Kevin has taken it upon himself to go from the guy with a segment nobody cares about to one of the coolest net celebs out there.
He can be found appearing on random podcasts, on the covers of random magazines, or over at his blog.
Becky Worley
Who She Was
Most of us will remember her for filling in on Call For Help as the girl who couldn’t really match up to Leo. She started as a ZDTV producer in 1998 where she would occasionally fill in on other random shows, she also did a 1-hour newscast on random technology. She later did reporting for TechTVon their daily evening news. In total, she produced 3 shows on TechTV
Who She Is
Becky is one of those people who is a lot smarter than she lets on. She is still working in television as an on-air tech contributor for ABC news and hosts a show on the Travel Channel called Best Places to Find Cash and Treasures. Sure. She also writes for yahoo’s tech blog hook me up.
Side note, she has a masters from Stanford and was featured in Sports Illustrated Women as a badass rugby player. Read about it all at Becky Worley dot com.
John C. Dvorak
Who He Was
John Dvorak has always had a reputation as a miserable old man, which is something I’m sure dates back to his days in kindergarden. On TechTV, he hosted Silicon Spin, one of the few tech shows that I found too boring to usually sit through. It was like watching mainstream news with a small panel of people talking about something, but it didn’t matter what they were talking about as their mono toned monotony was just too much to stand.
Who He Is
More or less, the same person. Except instead of Silicon Spin he hosts ZDNet network podcast Cranky Geeks. Which much like Silicon Spin, I can’t really stand. He’s also the VP and Managing Editor for PodShow TECH channel and is occasionally found on MarketwatchTV.You can read his articles on tech everywhere from PC world to Croatia’s Bug Magazine. Despite his apathetic attitude towards life, he’s still a smart guy. He’s just one of those guys that’s easier to tolerate in a newspaper than on TV. He lives all over mainstream media and over at his blog.
Martin Sargent
Who He Was
Martin was a former fill-in co-host on Call for Help, but he was more widely known for his stuff on The Screen Savers. Leo and Patrick started calling him “The Twisted Lister” for compiling weird top 5 lists (even weirder than Letterman’s top 10) and had a “Site of the Night”, which was some other weird random website. In 2003 he opted out of that to start his own show, Unscrewed. It was a bizarre, late night talk show with a tech theme.
Who He Is
After the merger, Martin stayed the course, only to have his show Unscrewed unplugged by Comcast. He was fired as was pretty much the entire staff. He laid low for a while before popping up with Revision3 in a comedy podcast called Infected. He currently does Web Drifter on Revision3, which they picked up after comedy central (I’m sure unanimously) passed on deciding to pick it up. He also does Internet Superstar for Revision 3, which is substantially more worthwhile. He also does Why Today Sucked for GoTV.
Martin plays on Myspace.
Chris Pirillo AKA “The Gnome”
Who He Was
This guy used to bug the living piss out of me when he was on TV, as one of the nerdiest looking and acting people ever to grace the airwaves. He did some Call for Help hosting for a while.
Who He Is
Somehow, the networks have stayed away from picking him up all these years. Chris can be found today all over the internet, mostly blogging and video chatting. He has gone into the realm of Internet Celeb, with a pretty good general tech support forum, chatting, and his twitter postings (which are pretty entertaining). I’m assuming he’s just writing for a living, as he’s written a few books and shows up in columns every now and then. Much like John Dvorak, Chris is much easier to stand when he’s on the other side of your computer screen instead of your TV, and his stuff nowadays is actually pretty worthwhile.
Uncover all of his madness at pirillo dot com.
Erica Hill
Who She Was
Having an entire news show devoted to tech news was enough by itself to get me to watch it. But to have it hosted by one of the most gorgeous women ever to be on TV was just the kind of treat that’s usually too good to be true. Erica made TechLive worth watching even if it was on mute. In addition, she’s also incredibly smart (summa cum laude from Boston University) and speaks french.
Who She Is
Moving on. After leaving TechLive, Erica went on to work for CNN, doing stuff for Headline News where she eventually got her own show, Prime News With Erica Hill. She recently moved up to be a sub-anchor on CNN for Anderson Cooper’s 360 and in 2006 she got her due, being named people magazine’s #35 most beautiful person. I’m sure she’ll be around for years to come, I always felt that she deserved better than TechLive.
You can find her contributing to the AC360 blogs.
Jim Louderback
Who He Was
Jim was a big behind the scenes guy at TechTV, being the VP and Editorial Director, he had full control over the networ’s content. What stayed and what went was ultimately his decision. He developed TechLive, granting happiness to geeks everywhere and when he wasn’t doing that, he woud randomly appear on shows for commentary and news segments and had his own show, Fresh Gear. Jim was Mr. TechTV
Who He Is
Jim went on to keep working for Ziff Davis Media, including being Editor-In-Chief for PC Magazine. He’s also managed DL.TV and Extreme Tech. Currently he’s been pimping himself as the CEO of Kevin Rose’s company Revision3and runs the most bland looking website ever here.
Morgan Webb
Who She Was
She is remembered as the pretty nerdy video game girl on TechTV’s XPlay, where her and Adam Sessler reviewed video games and gave their weird and quirky commentary. She was also doing stuff on The Screen Savers and Call for Help.
Who She Is
Well, the same. X-Play is the only show to survive the merger, with the hosts intact! If you get G4 you can still see here and Adam on there. She has been featured in FHM, Maxim, and various other places. She was offered a playboy spread, but refused on personal reasons. Dammit.You can find her on Webb Alert.
What about Everyone else?
Lets not kid ourselves. Most of the familiar faces are covered here. But what about everyone else?
Kate Botello, former Extended Play and Screensavers co-host tried her hand at Broadway before moving to Traverse City, Michigan to start her own web design company.
Roger Chang made all sorts of appearances on TechTV, being an associate producer for Call For Help and The Screen Savers. Roger left after the merger and did some work with the site ScopeTech, succeeded Patrick Norton on DL.tv, and recently became a senoir producer at Revision3.
News personality Jessica Corbin anchored for TechLive, hosted Fresh Gear, and made random appearances on other shows. She has done work with Headline News and hosted Love’s a Trip on the Style network. She currently will drop in from time to time on TWIT and works at Revision3 doing the Digg Reel podcast.
Former Fresh Gear co-host Sumi Das is freelancing at local Fox news in San Francisco, KTVU.
Megan Merrone left TechTV to start a family. She is still in California and writing for a Microsoft website in addition to her own website and podcast (which she does with Leo Laporte) on parenting. (Thank you farkers for reminding me of her)
Yoshi, the McGuyver of computing is a CAD Engineer for Gentle Giant studios, where he has worked on Pirates3, Spider-Man3, and the new Indiana Jones movie.
Geeky lab rat Robert Heron emerged from The Screen Savers to be a HDTV analyst for PC Magazine and appears on DL.TV and random TWIT podcasts.
Screen Savers contributor and Internet Tonight host Scott Herriott is apparently now a Bigfoot enthusiast. His myspace lists TechTV has his last recent job, although he’s doing tips on comedy writing now.
James Kim was a product reviewer before coming on to be the senior editor of all digital audio for CNET. James passed away in December of 2006of hypothermia after braving the freezing winter cold to save his family, stranded roadside after being snowed in.
Sarah Lane was a familiar face on The Screen Savers and stayed as a segment producer on Attack of the Show!, but she quit that in 2006. She now works (can you guess?) as a production director at Revision3.
After Unscrewed got axed, Laura Swisher moved on to co-host podcasts and now works for CNET doing programs for them. She lives on blogspot.
I’m sure there’s a few I’ve missed, but mostly, these guys are either doing their own thing, working for CNET, or Working for Revision3.
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