A few years ago after arriving in Canada I started watching TechTV on cable and became hooked on shows like “The Screen Savers” and “Call For Help”. This was back in the days before TechTV sold its soul and became a bland gaming channel named G4. Several of the presenters who walked or got kicked from the network, before its ghastly transformation, went on to bigger and better things.
Kevin Rose started up Digg and hosted the Diggnation audio/video podcast with fellow Screen Saver presenter Alex Albrecht. My favorite post-G4 success story, though is Leo Laporte. Leo occasionally co-hosted The Screen Savers and was the main presenter on Call For Help. He left the network and began an internet TV network called TWiT.tv – so named after its flagship show “This Week in Tech”. The name has nothing to do with Twitter as Twitter didn’t even exist at this point in time. The TWiT network produces great quality shows covering Tech news, Cloud Computing, Hardware, Science, and there’s light hearted shows like NSFW and Munchcast.
Recently, a semi-regular guest on This Week in Tech, Jason Calacanis, has decided to start up his own online TV network called….ThisWeekIn.com. This is somewhat annoying news. Don’t get me wrong – Leo doesn’t own the rights to the words “This Week In…”, in fact there have been TV shows that have used that name in the past. Jason even asked permission of Leo before he went ahead. At that time Jason had said he wanted to do a show called “This Week In Startups” on a new network which makes sense as he is a web entrepreneur. But he has now gone ahead and started setting up several shows on this network with names like “This Week in Cloud Computing”, “This Week in iPad”, “This Week in Twitter”, “This Week in Youtube”, and the list goes on. I don’t think Leo knew this was what Jason had in mind. There is the risk that people will confuse the two networks which is a shame as, in Leo’s words, “Jason’s shows are kind of crappy…”
Either Calacanis is completely unoriginal in creating and naming his content or he knows exactly what he’s doing to one of his contemporaries. This seems like a deliberate move to try and force Leo’s hand into a joint network…something which Calacanis pretty much outlined a business plan for in a recent blog post. It looks like Leo isn’t too pleased about the situation…
This Week in Back Stabbing
A few years ago after arriving in Canada I started watching TechTV on cable and became hooked on shows like “The Screen Savers” and “Call For Help”. This was back in the days before TechTV sold its soul and became a bland gaming channel named G4. Several of the presenters who walked or got kicked from the network, before its ghastly transformation, went on to bigger and better things.
Kevin Rose started up Digg and hosted the Diggnation audio/video podcast with fellow Screen Saver presenter Alex Albrecht. My favorite post-G4 success story, though is Leo Laporte. Leo occasionally co-hosted The Screen Savers and was the main presenter on Call For Help. He left the network and began an internet TV network called TWiT.tv – so named after its flagship show “This Week in Tech”. The name has nothing to do with Twitter as Twitter didn’t even exist at this point in time. The TWiT network produces great quality shows covering Tech news, Cloud Computing, Hardware, Science, and there’s light hearted shows like NSFW and Munchcast.
Recently, a semi-regular guest on This Week in Tech, Jason Calacanis, has decided to start up his own online TV network called….ThisWeekIn.com. This is somewhat annoying news. Don’t get me wrong – Leo doesn’t own the rights to the words “This Week In…”, in fact there have been TV shows that have used that name in the past. Jason even asked permission of Leo before he went ahead. At that time Jason had said he wanted to do a show called “This Week In Startups” on a new network which makes sense as he is a web entrepreneur. But he has now gone ahead and started setting up several shows on this network with names like “This Week in Cloud Computing”, “This Week in iPad”, “This Week in Twitter”, “This Week in Youtube”, and the list goes on. I don’t think Leo knew this was what Jason had in mind. There is the risk that people will confuse the two networks which is a shame as, in Leo’s words, “Jason’s shows are kind of crappy…”
Either Calacanis is completely unoriginal in creating and naming his content or he knows exactly what he’s doing to one of his contemporaries. This seems like a deliberate move to try and force Leo’s hand into a joint network…something which Calacanis pretty much outlined a business plan for in a recent blog post. It looks like Leo isn’t too pleased about the situation…