I suppose this is going to become a series and I hate that, here's why...
There's already enough negativity in the world and I'm not
happy to add to it but neither can I sit idly by while good intentions wend
their way toward hell undocumented.
So I might as well keep tabs on the house that Leo built and
see if forecasts of its eventual demise are the stuff of insight or
foolishness.
In the intervening weeks since the departure of Tom Merritt
and the fallout that resulted, TWIT has continued a now familiar trend of
upheaval.
Mike Elgan continues as the host and driving force behind
the revamped Tech News Today but
absent is holdover from the Merritt era, Sarah Lane, as co-host. She's now officially taken over full time
duties 4 days a week for the new Tech News Tonight(TN2.) It's entirely possible that Lane was paired
with Elgan early on to ease the transition to his era of TNT but was never
intended as a permanent association. Of
course that's just supposition.
Considering the suggestion of tensions early on between the 2 hosts (see the earlier article)
and this latest merry-go-round of hosting changes, it's not an unreasonable conclusion.
On the February 19th Inside
TWIT recording (see below) it
was announced that a search for a new co-host to join Elgan was underway. There was no mention of any further
participation of Lane in the morning TNT podcast.
The decision to change the news component of TWIT is still
questionable borne out by the absence of TNT on any recent iTunes top 10 podcast list since the format change. Tom Merritt's Daily Tech News Show (DTNS)
by comparison is consistently in the top
10. The only TWIT podcasts still ranking
in the top 10 on iTunes are hosted by Laporte including the long running This
Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly and Security Now programs. That would suggest that personality is a more
critical component of successful podcasting than pure content.
If that were the end of it there wouldn't be much need for
another article but this week brought another not altogether unexpected but
still surprising turn of events.
NSFW, TWIT's raucous, unbridled, freeform comedy program hosted
by Brian Brushwood (ScamSchool) and Justin Robert Young (Night Attack) announced
its farewell episode on TWIT this week.
In the February 18th episode, Hosts Brushwood and Young were
emphatic in their praise to TWIT for nurturing NSFW for over 4
years. Still their reason for leaving was stated as "Not wanting to hurt the network" due to content
incompatible with an increasingly overheated "family friendly" and
"CNN of Tech" focus.
While Both Brushwood and Young's popularity have grown well
beyond NSFW, the show still provides a hub for their related endeavors
. As such it will continue under a new moniker,
"Night Attack" where unrestricted and uncensored content
are expected to flow far more freely than would be possible under the TWIT
umbrella.
The new show will be financially
supported on a subscription basis via Patreon
which is a crowd sourced funding mechanism for the arts. Both Brushwood and Merritt have found success
with the service which currently supports Merritt's "Daily Tech News Show"
not to mention the cord cutter show, "CordKillers" which is a collaborative effort with
Brushwood. This will be the third show
to leave the TWIT network only to be recreated independent of the TWIT
influence.
Live streaming of "Night Attack" will be streamed
via Diamondclub.tv as well as released in
podcast form to other networks such as alphageekradio.com.
The issue nobody dares talk about, however, is that NSFW
functioned as a kind of release valve for TWIT's otherwise straight-laced
programming. Whether you enjoyed the
content or not the simple fact remains that many avid fans of other TWIT shows
would frequently make their way to the #unfiltered section of the TWIT chatrooms
when NSFW
was recording. Once there, fans could
break free of the often draconian moderators in other TWIT chatrooms and uninhibitedly
interact with the hosts. A feature not enjoyed and frequently
criticized for its absence on TWIT.
In the February 19th "Inside TWIT" Both
Laporte and CEO Lisa Kentzell repeatedly reminded viewers that NSFW
wasn't "cancelled" and left of their own volition echoing the
sentiments of Young and Brushwood the night before. That was followed by a discussion concerning
the latest TWIT branded swag designs. Increasingly it seems "Inside TWIT"
is more concerned about marketing paraphernalia than the direction of the
network.
This leads me to what I believe to be the ultimate endgame
for the TWIT network. That being to
position it less as community driven resource and more as a "brand"
to be traded on. For many fans, that's a
betrayal of what they believed to beTWIT's vision and the reason they supported
it so fiercely while others failed.
However, once the brand surpasses the content, TWIT and its increasingly "vanilla" programming will become little more than a commodity to be traded and ultimately sold to the highest bidder. Much like ZDTV and TECHTV that followed it.
We seem to be moving that direction but only time will
tell. The popularity of former hosts has
to be a bitter pill for Laporte as he grudgingly admits their post TWIT
success. An event that's been happening with such regularity
that such announcements have become as routine as a form letter.
There's no doubt that TWIT is an incubator for fledgling
Internet stardom and there's no lack of examples that have benefitted from
Laporte's tutelage. Unfortunately, much
like professional sports teams in Arizona, it seems that's all it will ever be
as talent continues its exodus to greener pastures in the face of an uncertain
future.
UPDATE: I found a working video link to NFSW 218! Check it out below!
NFSW show 218 ...
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