Technology channel uses smarts, energy and improvisation to build audience

05/25/99

By Doug Bedell / Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News

SAN FRANCISCO - A year after revving up the world's first all-technology, all-day cable channel, ZDTV executives dispatched The Screen Savers - two of its on-air personalities - to a promotional event in tiny York, Pa.

What occurred was as mind-blowing as it was reassuring.

Geeks swarmed the local electronics store where Kate Botello and Leo Laporte were signing autographs. Security had to be called to help guide the two computer advice experts to their car.

On the way, they were confronted with:

• Children crying because they didn't get in line soon enough after Dad and Mom drove them six hours from Ohio.

• Banners screaming, "We love you, Kate and Leo!"

• An entire family carrying Katelike opticia. "They walked up to me and said, 'Kate, we have something to show you, " Ms. Botella says. "Then they all put on nerd glasses and shouted, 'Amaze yourself!' "

The sound of that ZDTV slogan - and the sight of the crowd - surpassed the wildest dreams of the stations leaders at Ziff-Davis Inc. Since the opening broadcast May 11, 1998, they have run on raw instinct to develop entertaining presentations of technological news, gizmos, gadgets and computing advice.

Here, finally, was graphic evidence that their formula was striking a digital chord.

"What we're seeing is when people watch this channel for any length of time, there is a significant energy created; they really get into it," says Mike Mason, a former Disney Channel and HBO honcho who is now ZDTV vice president of affiliate sales and marketing. "Our TV is learning TV, and no one is a beginner very long."

Larry Wangberg, president and CEO, was even more ebullient: "The continued convergence among PCs, television and the Internet has called for a new form of entertainment, and now we've set the standard."

As frenetic as the Internet itself, ZDTV's experiment in techno-television now reaches more than 11 million homes in the United States. It has a growing number of distribution agreements with 88 cable operators and is available in 231 cable systems and through three satellite companies: Dish Network, DirecTV and EchoStar.

In North Texas, TCI-Dallas carries the signal on Channel 294 for the 20 percent of its viewers subscribed to its digital service, and Buford Cable presents it on Channel 115 to Terrell digital subscribers.

Starting June 1, Charter Communications will bring ZDTV to expanded basic subscribers in most of its Fort Worth service area and all of the Park Cities.

Analysts at companies such as Berkshire Marketing Group are intrigued by ZDTV's eight-hour block of original live programming, which repeats two other times a day.

"Technology as entertainment, up to now slow to catch on, is showing signs of increasing acceptance in the nation's living rooms," Berkshire said in a recent report.

The trick is to make technology less intimidating.

"We have to make the vegetables taste good," says Greg Drebin, a former MTV programming boss who now heads similar efforts at ZDTV.

The format also has to provide perspective for the fast-paced, sometimes mind-boggling developments in complex technologies.

"Clarity in a world of chaos" is the way a station promo puts it.

To that end, Mr. Drebin and the other ZDTV whiz kids have melded the interactive potential of online chat and viewers who own Net cameras with the parent company's respected history in electronics and computer publishing.

Together with a hyperinformative Web site (www.zdtv.com), the station uses interaction to create a sense of community. The pervasive feeling from daily watching, Mr. Drebin says, is: "We're all in this complicated mess together; let's see if we can make it work."

A day in the life

On any given day, a viewer wakes to doses of fresh tech news.

Increasingly, the ZDTV reports are showing up on newspaper front pages.

With experts behind them from Ziff-Davis labs and the parent company publications such as PC Computing, anchors and commentators were first to advance significant stories on the Melissa virus attacks. They disassembled the virus code to reveal clues to the identity of the creator and tracked down Web sites where it may have been disseminated.

Leo Laporte, longtime radio computer voice and everybody's favorite high school teacher, might follow with Call for Help, a show he calls the station's "start button." Viewers equipped with video cameras assault the Hawaiian-shirted wonder with all sorts of problems that befuddle. Linux, Windows, Macintosh and even Unix programming and equipment hassles are given hands-on solutions.

Mr. Laporte may rip open a machine to explain how to repair a faulty drive light or whip over to a huge flat-screen monitor to show viewers a desktop fix.

During breaks, he moves into the Internet chatroom to solve more problems.

Later, joined by the brilliant and straight-talking Ms. Botello, The Screen Savers may feature a race to settle the argument on which is easier to set up, a Mac or PC. The 3Com Netcam network - viewers with video-equipped computers - opens. Joe from Jericho, Vt., may chime in with advice on DVD players, then pontificate on Bill Gates and his lack of charitable donations, leading Ms. Botello and Mr. Laporte into a wide-ranging debate.

All of it is done live. And, just as in real life, things don't always work.

"Viewers are showing us our faults," Mr. Drebin says. "When we make mistakes, man, they let us know."

Often they don't wait very long. Underneath the picture of Mr. Laporte and other hosts, streaming chat from Internet-connected watchers often rails against the on-screen approach.

At other times, chatters babble on about Mr. Laporte's shirts or Ms. Botello's nerd-wear.

The tech advice is decidedly broad. While Mr. Drebin and company focus on the intermediately skilled computer and tech aficionados, they try not to exclude those more or less advanced. Mr. Drebin calls it the "Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear" approach.

"The tech audience is very cynical," Mr. Drebin says. "But we didn't lose them. We are establishing this as an environment that is accessible from many angles."

Next, Jim Louderback and Sumi Das might zip into the spotlight with Fresh Gear, showing off a new telephone gadget, explaining how to manipulate digital photographs or demonstrating how to load MP3 music into a player.

Mr. Louderback, vice president and editorial director at ZDTV, came from the publishing side and hands-on work with Ziff-Davis labs. He takes particular pride in getting the wildest and newest gizmos onto the set first.

"I'm always running around telling manufacturers, 'Give it to us and we'll have it back in five hours,' " he says. "We're trying to get the first looks. We're always trying to get in the middle when there's something new coming out."

To that end, ZDTV cameras ambushed Apple researchers to get a glimpse of the highly anticipated color-podded iMac. And they were first to tell viewers about the lowest-cost computers being offered by e-Machines.

"You have to wow people with it," Mr. Louderback says. "You have to show how these things can affect people's lives."

And the pace of programming has to hold interest through some pretty heavy subject matter.

To keep things lively, a 3-D animated character called Tilde injects quick-hit spots featuring the best of the day's programming.

Computing guru John C. Dvorak assembles journalists and other industry pundits to hold witty repartee on events of the day; Mark Eddo grabs an author, a futurist or other intellectual for Big Thinker to examine what it all means; and a weird security guard known as the Surf Guru presents Internet sites and advice with stand-up shtick.

At the end of the station's cycle, Internet Tonight with Scott Herriott and Michaela Pereira presents viewers with its own versions of new and odd Net features.

"We are - in case you can't guess from all the zippy logos and such - the actual TV show that cares more and knows more about the Internet than Al Gore," Mr. Herriott intones.

When the pair can't get a joke Web site to send an e-mail to Big Foot, he's liable to halt everything, slam palms to the desktop and say, "So this is a really sucky Net trick site. Let this turkey die! Next week, we communicate with Nessie [the Loch Ness Monster] via flash cards. Good night!"

'The first integrated online TV station'

With the recent introduction of ZDTV Radio - featured with the Real Player through Internet Explorer 5 - the fledgling cable operation appears to be "hitting on all cylinders," Mr. Drebin says.

By using the ZDNet (www.zdnet.com) and cable station Web sites, video mail, e-mail, live Net cam viewer questions, running chat and regular old phone lines, ZDTV hopes it is leading the way to a new type of television viewing.

Ziff-Davis is used to being first out of the box with ideas. Well before the recent household computer buying sprees, PC/Magazine, Computer Shopper and PC Computing had carved out reliable niches within the tech community. Now joined by the start-up Yahoo Internet Life, Ziff-Davis counts four of the six leading computer magazines as members of its stable.

Two other well-established technology-based networks, Knowledge TV and CNET, have bypassed similar opportunities to enter the all-tech, all-day cable station business.

But, given the pace of modern technology and the scope of its infiltration into American households, the ZDTV launch seems well-reasoned and fortuitously timed, ZDTV executive Mr. Mason says.

"Believe me, we are the beneficiaries of the mass commercialization of technology," Mr. Mason says. "I think about us covering the revolution from the revolution. It's all very exciting."

As cable start-ups go, he says, ZDTV's launch is on par with the similar offering Home and Garden TV.

But the corporate bet is that ZDTV will become the ESPN of tech.

The industry is starting to take notice. On April 22, the station received seven nominations for the 28th annual Northern California Emmy Awards. In January, ZDTV's cutting-edge animations received the Bronze World Medal for development of Tilde and her counterpart, Dash.

As ZDTV opens in Fort Worth and the Park Cities, Mr. Drebin and his cast of nerds see a bright future ahead - even with the uncertainties created by the rapidly developing technologies the station seeks to cover.

"We don't know what is going to happen, where it's all going," he says. "We're in this together with the audience, really.

CABLE

Dallas: TCI, digital cable, Channel 294

Park Cities: Charter Communications, expanded basic, Channel 34 (starting June 1)

Fort Worth area: Charter Communications, expanded basic, Channel 53 (starting June 1)

Terrell: Buford Cable, digital cable, Channel 115

SATELLITE

DirecTV: national small dish service, Plus DirecTV and all Total Choice packages, Channel 273

EchoStar's Dish Network: national small dish service, America's Top 100 package, Channel 191