TechTV is dead
I used to watch TechTV all the time during the summer and some of my favorite hosts of the The Screen Savers and Call for Help were Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Cat Schwartz, et al. have pretty much left. TechTv was bought by Comcast and since then, G4 and Comcast have destroyed the last bastion of geekiness on TV. If my parents had a computer problem, I’d have them watch Leo on Call for Help or TSS. Why, because they could understand him. He connected with every age group, young and old.
My dad and I would actually fight over which news program to watch, NBC nightly news or Tech Live, Tech TV’s version of nightly news involving technology, etc. They gave the stock reports which my dad was interested in but they also explanded on the technology angle a lot more. The entire idea of me getting my own blog and website are due to the Tech TV crowd. Granted I know I can never have as big of an audience as they do. But Leo and the gang all showed everyone the same thing everyday since I watched the channel, Help those who don’t understand or know. Case in point, I recently did some pro bono computer work. Yes I could have charged them an arm and a leg but that would not have been right of me to do so. Granted I still need to work on two computers, one just needs a firewall and the other one needs some work of getting the wifi card to read signals correctly and get Norton working, as its not at the moment.
Leo and Pat have always made the tech world less frightening for the newbies. I remember Leo’s last episode on CFH (well the last one I saw) and how he showed a mom of 4 who didn’t know anything about computers, how to set up parental controls, set up a system to protect her kids online, and how to block websites. I taped that episode for a friend because they didn’t understand why I loved TechTv. After he watched that episode, he stuck around onthe CFH forums until that show was cancelled. He found so many solutions to fixing his mom’s computer, I don’t think he’s had to do anything to her computer since this fall.
Update: In lastest news from Leo, “Incidentally, I’m very happy to report that another Screen Saver alumna, Megan Morrone, delivered twin boys on Friday, Huck and Milo weigh in at over seven pounds each. All are doing well, but don’t expect Megan to make an appearance on ROTSS any time soon!” Congrats Megan Morrone!