Just over 10 years ago, TechTV, the 24-hour technology news, reviews, and enthusiast channel that we all knew and loved, announced it was being bought by Comcast and merged with G4 – a move that we all know at this point would go down in infamy, mean the end of TechTV, the end of regular technology programming on TV, and do absolutely nothing to slow the steady and rapid decline (and now near demise) of G4.
Out of those ashes rose a number of enthusiast sites, email groups, and – most notably – podcasts and web video shows dedicated to tech programming. The network lived on for a while in Canada, Leo Laporte started the TWiT network, Revision3 was born, and we’ve seen a number of awesome shows and people come and go from the technology space. TWiT started as a regular recap of tech news, Ziff Davis ran Digital Life TV (then DL.TV) for a long time with Patrick Norton and Robert Heron, Systm was born on Revision3, we saw hilarious shows like Weezy and The Swish come and go, Morgan Webb’s WebbAlert rose and vanished at the height of its popularity, Kevin Rose’s Digg and Diggnation both exploded in popularity and then subsided, the Lab Rats answered tech questions and reviewed gear, AmberMac’s CommandN was a great, quick roundup of tech and social media news, and of course, Tekzilla turned up as the premier video tech show, and only recently ended its run.
It’s been a long 10 years, and while all of that was happening, the TechTVForever YahooGroup appeared and gave former TechTV fans a place to rally together, keep up with their favorite personalities, and help each other with tech. Out of that group, I started this blog – again, all back in 2004 – so we had a home on the web to keep track of new shows, new episodes, events in the tech world, and what our favorite personalities were up to. We’ve kept that up for the past 10 years – making sure homepages were up to date, new episodes were posted, and regularly going back over our old friends to see what they’ve been up to.
Still, while there’s sadly no substantive tech or TechTV-like prorgammning on TV, there’s more than ever before on the web. Tons of YouTube channels, blogs, and other personalities have their own podcasts, regular shows, Twitch and UStream streams, and more where they answer questions, cover the news, offer opinions, do unboxings, and more. It’s a great time to watch tech on the web, even if TV hasn’t–and probably never will-catch up. Still, that brings us to TechTVForever.
I’ve kept this site running and updated regularly with new episodes every day for 10 years. At this stage, the most active former TechTV personalities have shows on the TWiT network, and Revision3 has all but spun down any programs featuring our old friends (even though there are plenty of new shows with new friends over there.) I’m curious: Should we stay or should we go? Should we keep this up, and keep hunting for more that our old friends are up to, or should we set the sun on this project? We’ll let you guys make the call. Either way, it’s been a good run, and there’s plenty more over the horizon. We could walk you there, or let you get there on your own!