Well, I think I will start this paragraph with the word “well” in honor of this particular bit of news. Ladies and Gentlemen, #totaldrama was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong, I say again, dead wrong. A hypothesis was expressed here many times that Dec 31st would not just end 2014, it would also end the tenure of our News Director extraordinaire.
Truth is Stranger Than Fiction.
We could see it play out in our mind’s eye. Leo at the round table with Gum sitting next to him, probably looking awkward as ever and uncontrollably nodding yes. #Soup thanking him for transforming TWiT into the mega news operation it has become. The Gum saying he loved it here but he just needs to travel, as wanderlust got hold of him, it is in his blood. Then #soup finally heaping praise on Sarah for turning TN2 into a success and enabling her as the rightful successor to the Gum. (Even though to #soup she is only qualified because she is on staff and the only replacement that is cost-free)
This new video creates quite the puzzle. Gum looks more miserable each passing day and although #Drama takes evil pleasure in watching TNT, we think it might be best for his psychological health to get a move on.
#Drama would also like to thank the members of #TWiTLive who ask the real questions. Is Gum leaving? How are TNT ratings? When is I’d Fund That! premiering? Any new shows? How are ad sales? Did TWiT grow or shrink in 2014? Where is this months meet-up?
And again we thank Richard Yes for the clip.
We have all witnessed bizarre stuff at TWiT. Lately, something unusually bizarre has come to our attention. Laporte has long been known as someone who despises humanity. Every emotion he expresses towards people is disingenuous, but a change is on the horizon.
This Week in Noodles?
Jeff is only 18 but he is quickly rising in the echelons of TWiT management. Originally, as noted by the lovely & talented Sarah Lane, his main function was #soup fetching. Reluctantly we will admit that this is a task that is not without prestige at TWiT LLC. Later Jeff was advanced to the position of analyst, a title higher than off-site producer currently occupied by Chad Johnson. (analyst is another title with no known function.) Chad Johnson, speaking of the devil, is someone young Jeff is charged with monitoring when the ex-producer is in the vicinity of the supply closet, to ensure that no office supplies suddenly vanish. Do you wonder what caused the boy’s unusually high comfort level at TWiT while everyone else is in constant fear of being unemployed?
Leo has been known to promote friends and girlfriends to high levels of management. It seems that the young lad is truly friends with Leo. The two have been spotted going to the movies together and now Leo is buying him gifts. (a sweater) Add this oddity to the list of things to keep an eye on at TWiT.
Thanks to Richard Yes for clip
*Reminder* last week to vote for hottest hotties in tech 2014
There are those who say that ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ now it can be said that ‘psychosis is the mother of crap.’ Father Rob’s unending quest to avoid seeing Helloworld’s illustrious tweets, combined with his unquenchable desire for attention, has caused the world to merit seeing this marvel of nothingness. I bring you today, a complete waste of time.
I wrote a program a while back that uses the Twitter API to scan through the connections of a few stalker accounts and block future trolls.
One major blow after another as the world was unable to get its hands on the magical code or see Padre’s Corner. We understand the need to keep this gem hidden from patent trolls but luckily our boys used their electronic archeological skeellz to unearth the coding treasure:
10 Scan DBase /tweets $A:$ZZZZZZ [time* <1 hour]
20 If Tweet = "padre is a jerk" then 80, else 30
30 If Tweet = "padre is a putz" then 80, else 40
40 If Tweet = "padre's a moron" then 80, else 50
50 If Tweet = "padre's a clown" then 80, else 60
60 If Tweet = "padre AND [expletive dbase]" then
80, else 70
70 If Tweet = "padre is fat" then 80, else 90
80 Block twitter /user - $A:$ZZZZZZ
90 Goto 10
A masterpiece like this may stave off his sabbatical for another year but if the inevitable fortunes keep him away from Leo n’ Lisa it may not be what the doctor ordered. Helloworld was not immediately available for comment.
*Reminder* to cast vote for hottest people in tech 2014
A blunder involving cutie-patootie-in-training, Selena Larson, may have been the straw that broke the camels back on a dark Monday in TWiT’s fabled history. The November day started with a routine TNT nightmare; guests forced to appear via phone, guests cancelling, typos in the lower third and Skype screw ups. But when TN2 starts, things usually take a turn for the better.
Sarah had a cold which made her voice super sexy and that may have been a curve ball young Anthony could not handle on his own. Selena Larson is a favorite of #Drama, she is an expert in diversity and she shares many values with our humble site. However, when Selena (expected to make the #totaldrama top 15 hotties in tech year-end special) came on, Anthony lost his cookies.
See what happened in this video below.
Smile, you’re on TNT where we spell with an I after E except after C
If everyone is gonna post TNT screw-ups, I will too. Do you think she spells her last name with an “ei” in her actual name and an “ie” in her twitter handle.
This is the man who takes trips around the globe on Google’s dime.
He also owns stock in tech companies, pretty sure including Google and Apple. But he almost never discloses that. He is a professor of journalism.
*Update* He is an “Adjunct Professor.” This was noted in a comment by BHB. I looked up what that is and you should too.
I am willing to accept that in five years there has never been a black woman on TWiT. Never, not once. (excluding ring central ad) I am willing to accept that although ten percent of the US population is black, less than 1% of TWiT faces are black and zero employees. But women? More than half the worlds population was born with female genitalia. You have to make an effort to shun half the population.
The following listing is of the most recent This Week in Tech episodes, all of which did not have one person born with (XX) chromosomes:
Nov 23: 1 host and 3 guests
Nov 16: 1 host and 4 guests (special segment included)
Nov 09: 1 host and 3 guests
Nov 02: 1 host and 2 guests
Oct 26: 1 host and 3 guests
Making your girlfriend CEO does not make you less prejudiced, it shows what traits in women you value and what a woman has to do to get respect there. If you combine this with his outlandish statements to the lovely and talented Sarah Lane it makes me wonder.
For those of you who like math, the chances of getting head 15 times in a row on a two sided coin is .00341796875. So if 50% of tech journalists are women and they were selected randomly the odds of getting (see listing above) 15 guests in a row as men are likewise .00341796875. And tech journalism is filled to the brim with female journalists.
The fallout from the Apocolypse of 2014 is still being felt today, eleven months later. The positive network effect (of the former TNT, and other shows) was overlooked by TWiT’s founder and CEO. Losing those programs and people is now having the opposite network effect on the failing network and this loss is too big for even Doubting Saint Thomas to deny. Thanks to the hard work of Tom, Sarah, Jason and Iyaz, the admittedly expensive show TNT finally broke even in the 2013 ledger, even under TWiT’s skewed accounting practices. This feat was a huge boon to TWiT finances. TNT was a daily show that anchored the live views. A whole host of internet stars were brought in by Merritt, unheralded ancillary shows were popular, much of the audience from CNET came over, shows from The Social Hour to Framerate brought in audiences and a percentage of all those show’s audiences became TWiT viewers. All this at no cost to TWiT as the TNT show broke even.
It must be said, this was a commendable plan to grow the network. A plan developed in a day gone by. A plan that worked as they grew without fail, year after year.
Fake Invoice – *NOT REAL*
But that was not enough for the new TWiT, they wanted all that money. As everyone who was not asleep under a rock knows, in the interest of saving a few bucks, the hallmark news program was torpedoed to save a few thousand dollars a year. The loss of the bulwark show had immediate repercussions. Friends of TWiT were friends no more, chatroom members were banned for speaking out, other shows were cancelled, TWiT birthed its own competition and no new shows were working. Today, no one at TWiT seems able to right the ship as they neglected to employ anyone with a management background. Money is being thrown at scammers who use phrases like “increasing brand image to vertically integrate programming.”
My friends, the emperor has no clothes.
More money coming his way
Now the falling dominoes have reached the previously untouchable, This Week in Tech. The show that seemed invincible, is not what it once was. Week after week, more and more people unsubscribe. Firing Chad seemed like a stretch as Leo blamed anyone and everyone (including TD.N) but himself. Jason has been thrust into the glaring spotlight and we hope he is not next to fall on his sword. Fabled tech hero, John C. Dvorak has been begged and wooed to appear more often on the flagship show and other less noteworthy voices have been offered money to be on the program, but nothing is working. Desperation is settling in. The show with the most ads and highest downloads is falling and falling fast. We all know that TWiT was keeping the network afloat. Can they survive without its success? How long until someone comes up with a competing show that deals the death blow? Maybe Kevin Rose or Dvorak himself will do it. They will have to sell a lot of shirts to make up the lost revenue, maybe V-necks will help, I like V-necks.
*Update* The invoice is not real, it was meant to illustrate how podcasts are billed. Twit does not have the final numbers on DL’s until two or three weeks after taping. Totaldrama has estimated CPM rates, not actual.
Exposing The Dark Underbelly of TWiT, Leo Laporte, and Failed CEO Lisa Laporte
