I don't like twit.tv, the shows feel like they are intended to old people.
hear hear.
They cater to an audience that would never buy, read or even look twice at CAH. Twit was the wrong home for a show with great potential. Sucks when things get shutdown like this, but at the same time, what the hell were they thinking having that in the lineup to begin with. "YouTube (Twitch) money!" haha.
The person you're replying to could be dead by now.
@Landon: @notdavid: The topic is relevant again since the topic came up on last week's episode of This Week In Google. It's was great seeing Leo squirm awkwardly as he had to talk about it through gritted teeth as his two co-hosts talked about how good it is.
@Landon: @notdavid: The topic is relevant again since the topic came up on last week's episode of This Week In Google. It's was great seeing Leo squirm awkwardly as he had to talk about it through gritted teeth as his two co-hosts talked about how good it is.
Hm. Looks like people are more sensitive than I thought.
Well, to each their own. If people find CAH offensive and don't want to watch, hell that's their decision. You can't force them to watch.
And as it turns out, the shows were probably not that popular to begin with. And that's the grim reality of entertainment folks - if you don't appeal to a wide enough audience to fulfill your needs, then you get the axe. You live and die by what audience you attract. If you fail to get the audience you need, well, that's sad, but not much you can do about it.
TWIT is aimed at the lowest common denominator of viewer (ie: the most mainstream), plain and simple. They are trying to make a television channel about tech that ends up being broadcast on the internet. They want a broad, paying audience but the problem is that they will only get a lowest common denominator audience. I used to listen to TWIT from 2008 (sophomore in design college, listening to podcasts while designing) to mid 2010, progressively dropping more and more shows from my podcast list. Eventually I just stopped altogether, because I was no longer the audience. At the time I left, they were rehashing the same Gizmodo & Engadget front-page tech stories on every show, in language that my parents could understand. Whenever a guest host would attempt to have a deeper, more interesting discussion, Leo would be dismissive and cut them off because actual deep discussion about technology would alienate the CNN-style general audience. Usually he would use the endless Audible sponsorships to really pump the brakes on decent trains of thought.
Funny enough, the Giant Bombcast has been around the whole time and has been getting better and better! (Although those first crazy Tokyo Game Show episodes were where I started, and damn those are still amazing. The RAID needs to happen you guys!)
As for tech news, I eventually ended up listening to podcasts on the 5by5 network. I think 5by5 is doing a good job of focusing on interesting discussions around the current events of technology. The discussions are deeper and more nuanced than many podcasts, and many times have insights from guests who are actively in the industry. I like to equate it to those great Bombcast episodes where the guys discuss the industry itself and not just the games. (The recent Dead-Eyed Keighley/Mountain Dew/Doritos/Journalism discussion is an example of that. Nuanced, mature, detailed, serious opinion, no B.S.)
Anyways, it's not surprising that Leo and the TWIT audience is offended by CAH. They're not the intended audience and trying to push that mainstream audience out of their comfort zone just means people are going to get all uppity. But hey I'm glad that CAH got mentioned again recently in a positive light (see Max Temkin's tweet) despite Leo's trying to talk it down (ugh he's just a creep isn't he?). I bet quite a few people sought CAH out though. Here's to more CAH!
Well this got re-linked from Max Temkin's Twitter account. Necrothread!
So Leo Laporte ended up being sort of a creep, eh? Makes sense, I guess.
I hadn't watched the show, but here's the tweet you're talking about and the commentary seems to be at the very start of the show he links from his tweet.
I'm not sure what you mean about being a creep, though? All he said in the intro was that someone played it on the show late one night (the gang playing it during the post-GameOn show). There's literally nothing more than that (except for the guests mentioning having played it before and liking the game). As I'm pretty sure the last half dozen pages above here covers, the whole GameOn thing just came down to being canceled for costing too much for the audience it was able to pull and TWiT running into some money-crunch issues for a bit. I'm sure the incidents of that night didn't do anything to favor the game-related show and stream, but it was pretty clear that wasn't the reason it was axed. And it had no impact on the people who were there that night, because Justin and Brian still host TWiT shows for Leo.
I don't blame the guy for being cautious about what he airs on his network. Its his lifeblood and he has to protect it and he hasn't set a standard of chastising people for their language. He uses foul language on the stream, himself. However, it's entirely reasonable to say that having stuff go out over the stream (that often is watched by grandparents, soccer-moms, people at work, etc) that talk about jizz and hitler abortions or whatever went on that night (it was so long ago, I've forgotten precisely what some of the worst phrases were) is probably too much.
........
On the other hand, that chat room of theirs. Boy, does that suck. I was on there for a bit, one day, and there was a discussion on-air about the kid who play's Walter Junior on Breaking Bad. They were talking about whether or not he really has cerebral palsy or whatever. I said "whether he does or not, he scores really hot Hollywood chicks".
After several moments, their asshole moderator (Dan, the guy who runs the entire IRC server and is known to be a bit of a prig) tells me something like "Grow up and stop acting like a twelve year old". Since I hadn't said anything questionable, I said "are you sure you have the right person?". I assumed he meant to send the message to someone else, but accidentally auto-completed to my name. I mean, I hadn't said ANYTHING that was REMOTELY outside of the TWIT IRC policy. I sincerely thought he saw someone say something awful and mistook the person for me. Especially since I'd been in and out of that IRC server/channel frequently for a couple years (there are a few people I follow who either do shows no the stream or show up in IRC a lot). As soon as I questioned if he was sure he had the right person, he said "yep" and banned me with the reason "grow up". Apparently, using the words "chicks" was disrespectful. Even though I wasn't applying it toward anyone on the show or in the channel, but toward hollywood starlets. (Mind you, this is in the chat for the same stream where the hosts and guests made double entendres about tampon strings).
I mean, even their own guests and guest-hosts talk shit about their crappy IRC channel (guests frequently talk about how they have been kicked or banned from the chat, while on the air doing a show).
Of course, that's not really Laporte's fault, so whatever. (Though I guess, even though he isn't paying the guy who runs the chat server, he should maybe not let the guy run roughshod all over guests and viewers and bully them, as he's known to do -- volunteer or not, that represents the whole group poorly).
Anyways, it's not surprising that Leo and the TWIT audience is offended by CAH. They're not the intended audience and trying to push that mainstream audience out of their comfort zone just means people are going to get all uppity. But hey I'm glad that CAH got mentioned again recently in a positive light (see Max Temkin's tweet) despite Leo's trying to talk it down (ugh he's just a creep isn't he?). I bet quite a few people sought CAH out though. Here's to more CAH!
To be fair, the phrases that came out of that game of Cards Against Humanity that they played in the middle of the night on the live stream were easily the most offensive thing that has been on that stream in its six or seven years. I mean, I like Cards Against Humanity and the hilarious phrases it results in, but it is entirely reasonable for someone to not want that broadcast over the same stream that they teach soccer-moms and grandparents to use an iPad over and that they want to be (generally) family friendly. It was poor (but funny) judgement to play it on the stream and he's entirely right to be mad that they did it -- and any negative comments about it seem kind of fair, when his only exposure to it was the emails from old busy-bodies the next day writing to tell him about the flying-cum and hitler-abortions or whatever the next day.
Also, I've happened to pass by the stream before (the week it happened, I think?) when he talked about the incident in more depth than this. I guess I just don't see how the guy is in the wrong, here or what people are upset about? That network has a different audience and a different tone than one where CAH would be more fitting, like here on GB. :)
This is like the Fallout 3 ad debacle all over again. So one random person had an opinion. WHO CARES!? If some dude can just send in a complaint and get something taken down you just look like the most weak-ass business shill ever.
Well this got re-linked from Max Temkin's Twitter account. Necrothread!
So Leo Laporte ended up being sort of a creep, eh? Makes sense, I guess.
I hadn't watched the show, but here's the tweet you're talking about and the commentary seems to be at the very start of the show he links from his tweet.
I'm not sure what you mean about being a creep, though? All he said in the intro was that someone played it on the show late one night (the gang playing it during the post-GameOn show). There's literally nothing more than that (except for the guests mentioning having played it before and liking the game). As I'm pretty sure the last half dozen pages above here covers, the whole GameOn thing just came down to being canceled for costing too much for the audience it was able to pull and TWiT running into some money-crunch issues for a bit. I'm sure the incidents of that night didn't do anything to favor the game-related show and stream, but it was pretty clear that wasn't the reason it was axed. And it had no impact on the people who were there that night, because Justin and Brian still host TWiT shows for Leo.
I don't blame the guy for being cautious about what he airs on his network. Its his lifeblood and he has to protect it and he hasn't set a standard of chastising people for their language. He uses foul language on the stream, himself. However, it's entirely reasonable to say that having stuff go out over the stream (that often is watched by grandparents, soccer-moms, people at work, etc) that talk about jizz and hitler abortions or whatever went on that night (it was so long ago, I've forgotten precisely what some of the worst phrases were) is probably too much.
........
On the other hand, that chat room of theirs. Boy, does that suck. I was on there for a bit, one day, and there was a discussion on-air about the kid who play's Walter Junior on Breaking Bad. They were talking about whether or not he really has cerebral palsy or whatever. I said "whether he does or not, he scores really hot Hollywood chicks".
After several moments, their asshole moderator (Dan, the guy who runs the entire IRC server and is known to be a bit of a prig) tells me something like "Grow up and stop acting like a twelve year old". Since I hadn't said anything questionable, I said "are you sure you have the right person?". I assumed he meant to send the message to someone else, but accidentally auto-completed to my name. I mean, I hadn't said ANYTHING that was REMOTELY outside of the TWIT IRC policy. I sincerely thought he saw someone say something awful and mistook the person for me. Especially since I'd been in and out of that IRC server/channel frequently for a couple years (there are a few people I follow who either do shows no the stream or show up in IRC a lot). As soon as I questioned if he was sure he had the right person, he said "yep" and banned me with the reason "grow up". Apparently, using the words "chicks" was disrespectful. Even though I wasn't applying it toward anyone on the show or in the channel, but toward hollywood starlets. (Mind you, this is in the chat for the same stream where the hosts and guests made double entendres about tampon strings).
I mean, even their own guests and guest-hosts talk shit about their crappy IRC channel (guests frequently talk about how they have been kicked or banned from the chat, while on the air doing a show).
Of course, that's not really Laporte's fault, so whatever. (Though I guess, even though he isn't paying the guy who runs the chat server, he should maybe not let the guy run roughshod all over guests and viewers and bully them, as he's known to do -- volunteer or not, that represents the whole group poorly).
The creep thing was just me going down a Laporte internet rabbit hole. He was banging the CEO of his company or something. He led a smear campaign against his former protege. He also said he'd never have Adam Sessler or Kevin Pereira on TWIT because they were tainted by G4, even though he employs Sarah Lane.
Well this got re-linked from Max Temkin's Twitter account. Necrothread!
So Leo Laporte ended up being sort of a creep, eh? Makes sense, I guess.
I hadn't watched the show, but here's the tweet you're talking about and the commentary seems to be at the very start of the show he links from his tweet.
I'm not sure what you mean about being a creep, though? All he said in the intro was that someone played it on the show late one night (the gang playing it during the post-GameOn show). There's literally nothing more than that (except for the guests mentioning having played it before and liking the game). As I'm pretty sure the last half dozen pages above here covers, the whole GameOn thing just came down to being canceled for costing too much for the audience it was able to pull and TWiT running into some money-crunch issues for a bit. I'm sure the incidents of that night didn't do anything to favor the game-related show and stream, but it was pretty clear that wasn't the reason it was axed. And it had no impact on the people who were there that night, because Justin and Brian still host TWiT shows for Leo.
I don't blame the guy for being cautious about what he airs on his network. Its his lifeblood and he has to protect it and he hasn't set a standard of chastising people for their language. He uses foul language on the stream, himself. However, it's entirely reasonable to say that having stuff go out over the stream (that often is watched by grandparents, soccer-moms, people at work, etc) that talk about jizz and hitler abortions or whatever went on that night (it was so long ago, I've forgotten precisely what some of the worst phrases were) is probably too much.
........
On the other hand, that chat room of theirs. Boy, does that suck. I was on there for a bit, one day, and there was a discussion on-air about the kid who play's Walter Junior on Breaking Bad. They were talking about whether or not he really has cerebral palsy or whatever. I said "whether he does or not, he scores really hot Hollywood chicks".
After several moments, their asshole moderator (Dan, the guy who runs the entire IRC server and is known to be a bit of a prig) tells me something like "Grow up and stop acting like a twelve year old". Since I hadn't said anything questionable, I said "are you sure you have the right person?". I assumed he meant to send the message to someone else, but accidentally auto-completed to my name. I mean, I hadn't said ANYTHING that was REMOTELY outside of the TWIT IRC policy. I sincerely thought he saw someone say something awful and mistook the person for me. Especially since I'd been in and out of that IRC server/channel frequently for a couple years (there are a few people I follow who either do shows no the stream or show up in IRC a lot). As soon as I questioned if he was sure he had the right person, he said "yep" and banned me with the reason "grow up". Apparently, using the words "chicks" was disrespectful. Even though I wasn't applying it toward anyone on the show or in the channel, but toward hollywood starlets. (Mind you, this is in the chat for the same stream where the hosts and guests made double entendres about tampon strings).
I mean, even their own guests and guest-hosts talk shit about their crappy IRC channel (guests frequently talk about how they have been kicked or banned from the chat, while on the air doing a show).
Of course, that's not really Laporte's fault, so whatever. (Though I guess, even though he isn't paying the guy who runs the chat server, he should maybe not let the guy run roughshod all over guests and viewers and bully them, as he's known to do -- volunteer or not, that represents the whole group poorly).
The creep thing was just me going down a Laporte internet rabbit hole. He was banging the CEO of his company or something. He led a smear campaign against his former protege. He also said he'd never have Adam Sessler or Kevin Pereira on TWIT because they were tainted by G4, even though he employs Sarah Lane.
Fair enough. Regarding those incidents, though (and this is only from what I've heard/seen -- which doesn't necessarily mean it's the truth, either):
Laporte has been with his CEO since (after, I believe) separating from his wife. They're pretty open about it on the show. The whole tabloid thing was just over a feed of his laptop going out over the air that included the two of them having some intimate discussions via IM. Nothing most of us haven't done, ourselves, but just a slip of judgement considering the context of being in a spot where you may be streaming your monitor to the rest of the world.
The whole Sessler and Pereira thing was resolved rather quickly. Kevin sent him a message on twitter and they had a conversation, which led to Kevin doing an episode of their big weekend show, shortly after (and it was really good). Laporte explained that after talking with Kevin, he felt awful about how he had phrased his off-the-cuff twitter remark (just made in passing to someone on twitter asking about having a G4 person as a guest sometime). He explained that he had no ill will toward the people who continued to work there, but that he and many he worked with had been so fucked by the merger (basically cutting everyone who was either "too old" or "sounded too smart") that it left an awful taste in his mouth, so he just didn't want any part of that -- seeing much of the future cast of the network as "tainted" (by the network; not anything directly). I liken it to dating a totally crazy bitch that ruined your life, then breaking up, then not wanting her to come to any of your gatherings or dinners after that. Because of the baggage you associate with her presence. And it's not just Sarah Lane that is part of his network from the old days. Most of his staff is (or at some point, was) from the old network -- including a lot of the production staff.
Anyway, he discussed it on the air with the audience, then discussed it in length with Kevin when he was on the show. It was pretty interesting (except for the part where Kevin whipped out a Flesh Light on camera). Kevin explained how he had been such a fan of TechTV and Laporte, since before he ever thought of having a career in TV and that he felt bad when he said Kevin and everyone left at G4 were "tainted", because he was such a big fan of Laporte's (and he was also concerned with the idea that some sort of unfair G4 funk would taint him for life, which would suck). Kevin made some really great comments about how, as far as he was concerned, he was just this young kid who got this awesome job doing something he wanted to do at the place that the people he sort of idolized when he was a kid were working, so he'd be dumb to turn that gig down and once he had it, dumb to just jump out and be unemployed . . .
It seems to me that most of the criticism about Leo tends to be very blown out of proportion. His content isn't really my cup of tea (though I do tune in sometimes because it has always given me this sort of tutorial of how to talk to people and explain concepts to them, when they aren't techies -- because my day to day is spent with people who live and breath the tech career and I don't have that experience of educating people that he does). He may be a total jerkwad in his personal life, for all I know (hey, none of us are perfect and even less so when we have the spotlight constantly on us) . . . but I really think most of the things I've heard around the rumor mill tends to feel very blown-up. If nothing else, I do really kind of appreciate the situation he puts himself in, where almost every minute of his day is broadcast live to thousands on the internet and his life is a pretty open book. I think anyone would be hard pressed to remain a flawless human being in everyone's eyes with as much time as he is on the air (both during and between shows). I guess maybe I give him a lot more slack, because of that context.
Man, I know way too much inside baseball about a network I don't really watch that much of. (I put in a lot of eyeball time for awhile, though, because I've helped get a couple live streaming internet networks off the ground over the last several years and this was sort of a template for how to do it).
WARNING! This is a super long post about what (really) happened. While nothing of this is official, I have fair confidence in info I've collected.
(Disclaimer: I moderated the subreddit for game on, now produce a minecraft show hosted by the director of game on and recorded live at the twit brickhouse and a friend of various levels to people who made the show happen)
Saying that CAH caused the show to get canceled is mostly* wrong. The show got canceled because it cost a lot (mainly talent, flying is small compared to that, also as a touring magician Brian flies a lot. A LOT), didn't get the views needed and most importantly, advertisers.
So first part, the money. According to a few sources it cost $7k per episode (For those still saying flying is too costly, you can find tickets between SFO and AUS $~200. So about 5% for roundtrip. Not that big of a saving). I wrote a longer comment in the subreddit about the real staff costs (tl;dr: Talent isn't cheap, and so isn't the 2 producers who worked on the show)
Originally the plan was to have it run for 12 weeks and see if it sinks or floats, then there were talks of extending it to 18 and then suddenly the 13th was the last week. What caused the sudden decision of cancellation? Well note the * at mostly wrong.
[WARNING: Long background story ahead]
The "TWiT Army" is a bunch of.... old farts. Now note that I mention the twit army, there's actually a little split in the community that I'll talk about later. Going back to the twit army they're the kind who would say "Well see the flux capacitator in the bcd section of the motherboard has been blown up by..."yeahyeahyeahyougettheidea. They like the talking head format of the shows and would rather keep changes to a minimum. However this has a problem of leaving the community stagnant and not many younger people get interested in those kind of shows. That is also the group of people most of the infamous chat mods are in (obviously). Now the highest concentration of twit army can be found around shows that include Leo. Pretty sure the peak is in security now. Seriously that show is like a sleeping pill. Even Leo roams around the studio while Steve goes on and on....
Ahem back to it. So now there's some shows that don't have Leo as the main host. However most of the shows (exceptions being iFive and NSFW) are basically the same talking heads covering news format just more energetic people. Once again, comfort zone for the twit army, guaranteed viewerbase. However that doesn't guarantee the viewers as seen by the cancellation of Current Geek Weekly and Fourcast (Btw for anyone into more geek culture podcasts check out Frogpants. Especially The Morning Stream. It's pretty good).
The Sims 3 - Now on consoles.... Oh wait I'm getting my memes mixed up here
So twit's pretty much a network of shows that are just a slight change of topic to make a new show? Well not 100%. Above I mentioned NSFW. It's a comedy show. It has fans who are known as chatrealm, who are not afraid to **** **** up and totally share the text symbol (<>) with this very community. Actually you could draw a lot of comparisons with giant bomb community and diamond club with the love of photoshopping but back to the important story. Nothing like the twit army. In fact most of the fans are from the version before of the show called "BBliveshow". And boy, did the two communities clash. The twit army moaned about how they didn't like the new kids stomping on their lawn.
So it ended up in a split in the middle of the irc..... And by that I mean all NSFWshow related talk needs to be in the #unfiltered channel while rest of twit uses #twitlive. Now there are some important difference between those channels:
In #unfiltered you are allowed to swear. Originally NSFW was fully not safe for work with allowed cursing, however Leo quickly stopped that part after a bunch of n-bombs.
ALL the other shows use #twitlive, which is heavily moderated to be "family friendly"
So needless to say people more used to being "chatrealmers" would often go watch other twit shows (especially if hosts of NSFW appear on other shows) but meet the banhammer of twitlive when even slightly outside the rules. (obligatory lifesazoo mention, hey if you're reading this D:) ANYWAYS 5 paragraphs of explaining the background later
(Also if anyone feels I was biased towards the chatrealm, guilty as charged. I'd rather associate myself with the chatrealm)
[background story end]
So there's the twit army and the chatrealm. The old folk and the young kids. Perfect setup for a comedy sitcom, right? Well so back to game on. Game on was obviously a chatrealm type of a show. And chatrealm is totally the type of people who would vote for cards against humanity. However twit army is definitely the type who wouldn't want something like CAH on the live stream (even at midnight). So, back to
What caused the sudden decision of cancellation? Well note the * at mostly wrong.
I'd imagine Leo felt some pressure from angry e-mails, and with the show losing money he and Lisa (twit's ceo) decided to pull the plug.
But what about enlarging the new community? Well twit sucks at advertising their stuff. There are still posts of "Oh my god I was a Leo fan from Tech TV and I didn't know of TWiT till now". IT'S BEEN 7 YEARS. If there's people who are super easy to convince to watching TWiT (techtv nostaglia) that don't know about it after 7 years of operation, you've got a serious marketing problem.
Needless to say finding a new, younger audience for Game On was an impossible task for twit. While working on the minecraft show Game On dedication episode (about 3 weeks ago from right now), I got view-only access to Game On doc that was used to run the show. I noticed there was a tab called "Marketing ideas"
The sum it up, I stated that Game On was the only show with potential to go beyond the core TWiT audience. I still stand by that opinion and having the show hit number one on iTunes is proving my point. By simply posting an article on the gaming reddit page, more people are watching the show. Even some who watched The Screen Savers had no idea about TWiT and latched onto Game On. Today, it is showing what the show should have been from day one. I'm glad the show is getting some love, even if that love is too little too late.
I know Justin has stated on his morning show that he felt the crew of Game On didn't do that well and that the failure rests on their shoulders. I beg to differ. I think if anyone is to blame canceling its TWiT. If I were a company that put a good chunk of change into a show that was going to be my next big thing, I would be pimping the crap out of it. I would at least cross promote the damn thing. And I sure as hell wouldn't have my beta episode happen months before my launch episode. And I would branch out and setup partnerships with other sites with related content, buy ads on gaming sites, or at least a damn connection somewhere. It just seems like the show was miss-managed if the goal was 50k downloads.
So yeah... TWiT itself is to blame for the cancellation of the show. They just couldn't do it. And I dbout twit will try to expand the audience again. They just don't know how to. But there's only so many squarespace websites they can sell for the same people watching.
So it's now ~9 months later. Memes were born from Game On (Max Trollbot). Tributes were made. Chatrealm and twit army are still a conflict of groups of two different ages. I'm pretty sure the twit army has stopped caring about NSFW though, since they could send in a lot more complaints about thesethreegifs from the latest episode than about cards.
But yeah if anyone is slightly interested in twit content, go watch NSFW for comedy (it's humour is pretty compatible with giant bomb's in my opinion), Tech News Today for news (with Tom Merritt, Iyaz Akhtar and Sarah Lane), and This Week in Enterprise Tech for hardcore tech (I'm usually not a fan of enterprisey stuff but this show can be entertaining. Also the host is a priest who doesn't mind doing really dirty jokes (well, while trolling in chatrealm. But that happens every Tuesday night))
As for me, I'll just look forward to Game On getting resurrected on Geek and Sundry... (/s)
I hadn't wanted to drag on too long and re-hash everything from early last year, so probably didn't offer too much in my last couple of posts -- but your post is fantastic and falls in line with everything I've understood from observation, from listening to Leo time to time, and from the few people inside the brick house that I've had the chance to talk with in the past year.
The whole CAH/GameOn thing fell pray to a sort of tabloid style rumor-mill, in an almost reasonable way: As you pointed out, Leo extended the show's run to give it a chance to prove itself. Then CAH went down one night. A couple nights later - CANCELED. So it would seem that Leo changed his mind about the longer probation of the show due to CAH, when what really happened was that the financial situation became quite serious for a time and Game On was the most obvious target simply out of expense and lack of return.
I give Leo kudos for trying something he swore he'd never do, but I think the experience (both in it failing and in the response of all of us on the intarwebs) has only solidified his position and convinced him that he was right, in the first place. So I don't expect a lot of shows that shift away from the format they've done for the better part of a decade. There are still some great shows on the network. Many more great once die on the vine. But it still has something to offer, either way. Just a shame that I don't think it will become what it ultimately could be. It has sort of wound up as the "AM Talk Radio" of the internet. A place that older people (even older than myself) sit around for a little conversation that won't offend anyone and no quick jerky camera movements to make us vomit back our Geritol.
I like Leo. I like the likable personalities he hires. I like a lot of the shows (This Week in Computer Hardware is fantastic, Triangulation is good, PadreSJ's enterprise show is good, -- even Security Now if you're in the right mindset sometimes, the science shows with Kiki Sanford were absolutely incredible, until TWiT decided to ditch everything not produced in-house, NSFW is fucking bananas, the PCPer stream is great, and even the old gray-hairs babbling on about old school tech on This Week in Radio Tech and Ham Nation are entertaining.
Probably the only thing I really dislike is the stagnation of the network and canceling of great shows in the process (I can understand Game On, but what about all the other great shows, like some you mentioned?) . . . oh, and the shitty barrier between viewer and host because of the over-reliance on IRC (the only way to participate in any aspect of the network or shows is through the chat room and volunteer, unpaid, old-bitties are the gatekeepers between you and the shows and personalities and they'll cut you off at any time with little or no justification, just for the fuck of it).
I miss some of the fantastic people that were in IRC *despite* the environment. Despite the assertion of some that the network is dumbed down for old know-nothings, there are a lot of very accomplished highly-technical professionals that I had interesting discussions with on there and I'm a big fan of some of the personalities that show up on shows, there. But I'm not going to stick around where I'm not wanted (whether that's directly or because Leo for some reason won't make Dan accountable for the moderation that drives away their audience/customers).
I'm kind of surprised that NSFW isn't the most popular show on the network, yet. They've always supposedly been one of the lower-rated shows and are kept because Leo digs Brushwood. . . . but . . . the show is so consistent, has so much content, is so different. Has so many great guests and bits. It's the kind of entertainment absolutely nothing else on TWiT touches. Or even tries to touch.
Anyway, excellent post. I'm glad you came in and detailed all the stuff I was just too lazy to and did it with more authority than I even remotely could.
PS: Tom Merrit still looks like Rick from The Walking Dead.
I have no idea what the hell ANYONE is talking about in this thread.
What the fuck is twit?
What the fuck is Game On and Shut Up and Play?
Cards Against Humanity is the only thing I know anything about in this thread...and I get the feeling that's all I NEED to know.
Hm. I'll give this a go. Don't know if I'll succed, but here you go. :)
TWiT is a huge professional streaming network founded and run by Leo Laporte, after he and many other people were axed after G4TV and TechTV merged. Tons of people followed him and have or do work at TWiT. They're fairly sizable (something like $9m last year) and have a 24x7 network where they produce and broadcast the content live - including between-show content.
Game On was a show that Brian Brushwood, Veronica Belmont, and a few others created on the network in an attempt to put a videogame show on the network. It cost a lot of money and didn't get a huge audience. Shut Up And Play was a stream-only (not archived) sort of LAN/party show after the game show, all night on Sunday nights.
One time, everyone from both shows and a bunch of guests had some beer and sat around a table playing CAH in the middle of the night, which resulted in some unbelievably hideous phrases being uttered.
A day or two later, the show was canceled. Because of the timing, everyone assumed it was because of the shenanigans over the weekend, but it was probably due to the cost of the show and the financial situation the network was in during that month/quarter. Everyone on the internet lost their shit (which I probably didn't help by starting this thread, initially).
Seriously, though, you should go check out the NSFW show, at least. I might suggest one of the Michael Rooker episodes. :)
I am not sure why he blames CAH for killing his show. Should blame whoever was in charge of oversight. If they had just cut to a porno on the stream and got shut down - would he blame all porn?
I wouldn't stream that stuff. I was amazed that GB did (twice). I guess they were just lucky only a niche audience watches things like TNT.
Everything you said t2t2 was dead on (and I can confirm as another moderater of the Game On subreddit, and friend of the producer of Game On that it is all pretty much correct).
Also, personally, it didn't really look like Leo was squirming when talking about CAH recently. In fact, his opinion of it has seemed to improve slightly. He really only brought up other peoples complaints. I think people might be projecting just a bit.
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