I was born, raised, and spent two thirds of my career in the Bay Area of California. There, like
here, the local community colleges may not be able to pay their faculty squatsky, but they all
seem to have their own local television stations. One of the stations that I could almost get at my
home north of Bizerkeley was from the College of San Mateo, on UHF Channel 24 I believe
(KCSM, what can I tell you?). It broadcast in only black and white originally, and mostly
showed retreads of Public Broadcasting stuff, but they did have some original content. And one
of those programs, back in the Late 70's, was Computer Chronicles, hosted by Stewart Chiffet.
Almost 20 years later, I still try to watch this program whenever I can, even after I learned that
the host was not a legitimate geek, but a lawyer.
When this show started, I do not believe that there was any other regularly scheduled television
program on the computer industry. The closest thing I can remember was the original Mission
Impossible, which usually tried to insert a background shot of a fake christmas tree lit computer
in the bad guy's denizen. As the PC Revolution took off, so did Computer Chronicals. Soon it
was on Real PBS Stations, in color. The production values went up, as did the name recognition
of the guests. A few years back, it started an annual Computer Bowl quiz game among all the
heavies in the industry. In the year that H. Ross Perot was first running for president, I still
remember the show when Stuart's co-host was Mr Gates of Microsoft, who was introduced as the
Billionaire Not running for President. Mr Gates was the only one there who did not seem to
catch the joke.
I still try to watch this show, even though it's schedule moves around more than a bad comedy on
a commercial network. Currently it is on at 2PM Saturday, presumably at a time when computer
nerd couch potatoes have nothing better to do, since as you all know, we don't have lives. This
is much better than 2PM on Mondays like it was for a while, when some of us do have jobs to
deal with.
The show usually has some sort of focus, and the host will interview three or four techies from
software companies that happen to have some sort of product that fits the week's topic.
Sometimes you get a sales guy, but usually the guest appears to be a developer or executive of
the company. I am amazed how often the show is talking about topics that do not see the light of
day in the trade press or trade buzz till months later. Of course, San Mateo is on the northern
edge of Silicon Valley, so to a great extent they were in the right place at the right time, and
continue to bask in that advantage. The end of the show is a short computer news segment that is
usually very informative and right up to date, even during reruns.
Today it seems you can't flip the dial without finding a computer related television program,
especially on Cable channels. Sunday night there is a program named C-INET on of all things
the Sci-Fi Channel. One normally thinks of this channel as a place to show bad movies, even by
geek standards, hosted by a couple of robots. The program is hosted by Richard Hart, who was
a television personality in San Francisco in the early 80's, and the program is produced by the
San Francisco Chronical newspaper (which owns station KRON there), so again they are based
in the right area, and have the right backing to get to the right people. The production values are
quite good, and the content seems useful if not as intense as Computer Chronicles.
There was a short lived Internet show on PBS, but it was real crappy and appears to have been
canceled. It was sort of Mr Rodgers for the Inet. Now Mr Chiffet has a second program on PBS,
Friday nights at about midnight, called Internet Cafe. It is mostly him wearing a toupe and no tie
hanging out in some allegedly hip saloon (how would somebody like me know what hip is?)
schmoozing with a bunch of wild eyed body pierced Deadhead geek wannabees about ... well I
haven't been able to stomach more than the first five minutes of the program, so I can't say that I
know or care much about what.
Once again, the Sci Fi Channel to the rescue. They now have a show known as just The Web.
The hosts are rather too young for my taste (but then, I qualify for retirement next year so just
about anybody on television would be rather too young). It seems to be some sort of middle line
between C/Inet (who produces this show as well) and the Internet Cafe. I have been able to
watch an entire episode of this show, but I was doing my taxes at the time so maybe I wasn't
giving it the utmost attention.
CNN has a computer news show on Saturdays. It seems to be more business oriented than deep
teck, so I usually watch it only when I am channel surfing while I am paying my bills.
The Discovery Channel does not seem to have any regularly scheduled programs with a
computer topic. They seem mostly interested in bugs and the sex lives of armadillos, or world
war II biplanes. Real Science does not seem to be their thing.
The Learning Channel has something named The Computer Man at 6 AM on Sunday (repeated
630 AM on Saturday for those that can't get up in time to see the Sunday show) but it must be
computers for farmers or somebody, because I don't know any serious hackers that ever get up
that early, especially on a weekend. And if we are still up that late, we are usually doing
something other than watching television. Something about getting a life, I believe. But just
today, in the interests of journalistic excellence, I hauled the second half of my lazy carcass out
of bed to catch this thing. (No, my VCR does not blink 12 o'clock, its a hardware thing, and
programmers don't do hardware.) Anyway it appears to be an MTV produced infomercial for
the power user. If today's episode is typical, they spend the entire show talking to and about
companies that make different products that relate to some theme. Most of the content is either
wiggly camera shots of the host, Mark Bunting, or commercials produced by the companies
being talked about. It is actually not a real bad show, but at 6AM I must admit that I did not
retain much of the content.
Most of my learning comes from what I do on the job, and from reading the computer trade rags, including of course ComputorLink. But these television shows are real useful because they show you the various products in action, and you learn about them not from some editorial tester, but from the person that actually wrote the program itself (or sometimes from their marketing guys). Unlike a magazine, you cannot go back and review a past issue of you have not taped the show and kept it. But most of these programs now have web sites, with the Computer Man site actually containing the audio of the most recent programs.
It is a good way to see what is going on.
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