G4Tech TV, MTV - Kevin Rose and Adam Curry
I follow a couple of different blogs in the Popular
Tech Realm. One is Kevin Rose (http://www.kevinrose.com) who was a
host on The Screen Savers (back in the better not so old days) and tech guy in
the much better good old days before G4 bought TechTV... but I've ranted about
that elsewhere. The other is a podcast (audio blog) by Adam Curry (http://www.curry.com
) WARNING - Adam Curry's podcasts are quite often not office safe nor family
listening.
Keven posted an article about how he is starting up
a "The Broken Again " He will be working with Dan Huard (also
once-upon-a-time with TechTV), Robert (ditto) and others I don't recognize.
They are doing webcasts of tech tipper stuff. Here is the interesting part -
that's what The Screen Savers used to be about but then they became fluff (Dan
had this article on screening phone calls - filtering out the people who have
questions that are too technical in favor of guy's with girlfriend trouble). So
G4 sucked the brains out of The Screen Savers. The Screen Savers staff takes
off, buys $5000 worth of audio and video equipment and sets up a web show to fill the
void . People who used to watch TechTV quit watching and start
downloading instead. The switch to fluff pushes the tech to new technology and
drives the customers to free content - if they have a fat pipe leading to their
computer.
In Adam Curry's Daily Source Code for January 27, 2005 ; he was talking with Ken Clark about their old MTV days. They came back to a common theme - MTV VJs no longer say fun, witty, intelligent stuff. MTV went corporate and fluffy and the VJs had to be corporate and non-threatening (hey, Adam, I'm expanding on what you were hinting at in your podcast. Let me know if I've got this all wrong). Here comes podcasting and people are doing their own mixes of music and talking about music. Here is another opportunity for upstarts to start up with new technology and displace the corporate fluff.
I hope that Adam and podcasting can bring back the interesting, non-Clear Channel homogenous "Wacky Morning Show" crap that is the sorry excuse of broadcast radio today. Once upon a time, DJs went to California and heard "the California sound" and they brought back records and played them on their local station. Music and radio was heterogeneous. Let's hope that technology can bring back some of that mix.
I have high hopes for Kevin and The Broken and others like them. Let them bring back intelligent tech news and video.
- jjp
In Adam Curry's Daily Source Code for January 27, 2005 ; he was talking with Ken Clark about their old MTV days. They came back to a common theme - MTV VJs no longer say fun, witty, intelligent stuff. MTV went corporate and fluffy and the VJs had to be corporate and non-threatening (hey, Adam, I'm expanding on what you were hinting at in your podcast. Let me know if I've got this all wrong). Here comes podcasting and people are doing their own mixes of music and talking about music. Here is another opportunity for upstarts to start up with new technology and displace the corporate fluff.
I hope that Adam and podcasting can bring back the interesting, non-Clear Channel homogenous "Wacky Morning Show" crap that is the sorry excuse of broadcast radio today. Once upon a time, DJs went to California and heard "the California sound" and they brought back records and played them on their local station. Music and radio was heterogeneous. Let's hope that technology can bring back some of that mix.
I have high hopes for Kevin and The Broken and others like them. Let them bring back intelligent tech news and video.
- jjp
Posted: Thu - January 27, 2005 at 09:02 PM
