"Leo Laporte To Retire From 'The Tech Guy' Radio Show; Rich DeMuro To Debut 'Rich On Tech' " (article)
I joined the TWiT Mastodon, and have been a big fan of Leo and his podcasting network going back to the ZDTV. He probably should retire, it's been a very long time and he seems to be getting bored with it. I imagine he'll want to spend the rest of his life seeing the world.
I too have been a big fan of Leo & the people who've worked with him. I never missed "The Screensavers" With Leo & Kate Botello & a lot of the shows on ZDTV. I personally believe a lot of Leo's success was from the cohosts of his shows. Mikah Sargent is the weakest of all Leo's cohosts (My opinion). He seems like a very nice guy but to me he seems to be a mismatch compared to all the others. While typing the above, I had a thought about a movie idea. It's about a young geek that travels back in time. He then gets trapped in a ZDTV time warp & the people he has contact with are the ZDTV cast from the past. A big difference though is that they're all the age they are in reality. Now back to reality. I would love to get some of the full ZDTV episodes. The tech they show is quite old but it would be fun to compare back then to now.
I don’t think he’s retiring at all, just devoting all of his on air time to his own podcast station. He wanted to quit the radio show a few years ago, but the money was just too good, and from what I recall his twit network wasn’t as solid and the income from his radio gig was still needed. Could be remembering wrong, but leaving doubt only because I’m not positive where I heard it, but 90% sure it was Leo himself when he as doing a live Q&A on his TWIT network a few years ago. Yes, he definitely seemed bored with it. I was too, and he would go on for far to long with callers imo. He’s great on his own shows though. I’m curious how TWIT is doing lately. With the tech would kinda pulling back in a huge way, I wonder how they will do with advertising revenue? Sounds like he is very set though.
They launched a subscription model, Club Twit, about a year or so ago, where for $7 a month listeners can get their podcasts without embedded ads. I subscribed for a while, but dropped it because I wasn't listening to the podcasts. I might resume the subscription in the future.
It’s so easy to skip the ads, not sure why people pay unless it’s just to support them, which of course is fine. I don’t know why anyone even advertises on podcasts. Does anyone really listen to the ads? That skip button is quite useful! I used to be a very TWIT loyal listener, but there are now so many podcasts out there! Getting hard to keep up. I’m surprised Leo hasn’t sold off his network. I wonder if his ad revenue already topped out. A lot of competition now, I had read their revenue is way down but who knows. They sure do an amazing job.
Leo's wife Lisa runs the company, and sells all the advertising. Presumably, they could sell it to somebody, but it would cost so much in terms of credibility, which is their main value. They poll all of their listeners every year to gather information, with the idea that a TWiT network listener is worth a lot more than random person off the street - Hi-Tech decision makers. They had to physically relocate the entire business twice, first from the "Brickhouse" to a space in downtown Petaluma, and then more recently to a more suburban location. They spent more than a million developing their website, and they had to spend at least a million building out their current location. Which of course got shut down during the pandemic. They have done some cost saving measures, like launching new programs like This Week in Space as audio only - which seems to be giving up a major advantage without much value. It would seem like they could put an ad-free video version up on YouTube, and use their advertising platform. There's plenty of space programs up there currently, some that are very successful. The only reason I stopped listening so much, and stopped being a subscriber, is that my wife moved from Chicago to be with me here in Kansas City. So I spend my time with her, and most of what she wants to do is watch movies. So I don't find myself a dozen hours a week to listen to podcasts.
Rich DeMuro has been a techie mainstay on KTLA5 local news for a few years. https://ktla.com/author/rich-demuro/
The problem with DeMuro is that he comes across as aloof. While Laporte has a massive ego he usually puts it aside for callers (his listeners) and enables them to tell their story and listens to them and sounds appreciative (which makes him likeable). Leo's voice is calm and soft which endures him to his fans. Not sure if DeMuro can do this. I hate pod casts, and don't have time for them. But if I'm driving on a Saturday/Sunday morning/afternoon and am bored, I'll tune in to his radio show and find it relaxing. Staying on top of all the new tech and changes over the years is beyond a challenge. Good luck to him.
