On April 17, 2004 former TechTV guys Leo Laporte (who is currently working a gig in TechTV Canada), Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose (still with G4 as of this writing), Robert Herron and Yoshi got together to form a group podcast that was originally a spinoff called Revenge ot the Screen Savers but that generated a Cease and Desist letter from G4, so they changed the name to This Week In Tech (also TWIT.tv).

This morning while running through the email and RSS feeds I downloaded listened to all four of the podcasts. Episode #1 is 34:44, episode #2 32:00, episode #3 1:00:26, TWIT episode #4 54:56. These guys have some great synergy going and in the first episode Kevin Rose talks about what is different now with G4’s current incarnation of the old Screensavers called: “Attack of the Show” Rose points out that it’s “not the same” as things were in San Francisco, which is in reference to when G4 bought the show and moved it down to LA. Comments left on the G4TechTV acquistion were more negative than positive. Next to the Gmail invite posts and a couple others, that ranks among the most commented on posts at this blog to date.

Yeah, they are showing some good humor with all the TWIT references and they even snagged PC Mag’s John C. Dvorak via Skype connection for one of the shows. Too bad Dvorak’s Skype connection wasn’t very good. Leo tried to ad lib and read some of his commentary.

The show has a good vibe going and they want to support the program through listener donations ($2/month or $20/year recurring via PayPal) , which they claim to have received 1000 subscribers in the first week of asking. To my knowledge this is one of, if, not the most financial success that any podcast using donations has had in such short period of time. This also shows that people are willing to pay for good content podcasts.

Of course, being TV personalities for years certainly helps with promotion for this show and just like group blogs tend to draw more readers, this makes a good case that group podcasts will draw more listeners. I sure wish James Kendrick would do something like this with the Tablet PC show. Get a round table of Tablet owners of various skill levels via Skype (with shared OneNote session!) so a wide diversity of opinions can be shared, rather than just the opinion of one or two. Speaking of that show, the last one was May 2, so they are about due for another one.

Meanwhile, last night was Adam Curry’s first Sirius show on podcasting called: Adam Curry’s Podshow. Last night at Best Buy I peeked around a bit at Sirius players (a Sirius purchase is likely in my future). Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine drove around listening to it:

The good news: Some are musical, with neat mashups; that’s the best part by far. The bad news: I just heard a really boring Canadian podcaster (no, that is not redundant and shame on you for thinking so) and Madge Weinstein, who is about as entertaining as and sounds like Mark Harris (of Martha Ray and Howard Stern fame). It’s not a fair sample, since I have to run in and out of the house and turn the car on and off, but it is a mixed bag.

You can submit your podcasts to submit@podshow.com

Apparently at the end, Curry played his most recent Daily Source Code podcast (all 40 minutes) in its entirety. I’ll have to poke around and see what some other bloggers that heard the show are saying.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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