With Kevin on board, the dynamics of our small team began to change. Before it was Halsey, Bettina, Matthew and myself hold up in the NY office basically writing business plans and calling people. Now, there was actual work to do and the emphasis turned to Kevin and his team in LA. Matthew headed to LA to help in planning for the pilots, Halsey was between LA and SF and Bettina and I stayed in NY.
Since we hadn’t yet found a network who was willing to air our shows, we hoped the the pilots would serve as a calling card and a demonstration that you could make TV about computers and digital technology and make it interesting. It also was a vehicle to show how tv and online could work together and make for a better, more informed, more connected media experience.
The next two months are pretty much a blur. Here is what would need to happen 1) hire all the people to tape pilots for four shows, 2) create each show concept, write scripts and create graphics packages, 3) design and build the set(s) for the four shows and move into our new office in SF, 4) figure out the online stuff we were promising, 5) keep trying to find a network who would have us and 6) make sure we had the money to pay for all of this.
Fred kept copies of Frank Voci’s weekly newsletters from this time. Here are all six:
Newsletter #1 (January 11, 1994)
Newsletter #2 (January 18, 1994)
Newsletter #3 (January 25, 1994)
Newsletter #4 (February 1, 1994)
Newsletter # 5 (February 8, 1994)
Newsletter #6 (February 15, 1994)
We brought on some wonderful new folks to help including Bob Bibb, Rick Brown (from Channel One), Amory Gable (from National Geographic), and Chris von Rumohr (a Harvard classmate of Matthew’s).
Fred Sotherland started to work both on design of graphics packages and set design. He sadly got the message from me that we had almost no budget for either so he would be asked to do all of that with almost no resources.
In the midst of all of this and the day before Matthew arrived in Los Angeles, the Northridge Earthquake would strike on January 17th. The first quake was 6.7 and there were a couple of 6.0 aftershocks immediately afterwards. Halsey and I were in NY and would gather it made a total mess of Kevin’s office. The aftershocks would continue for at least a week and there was a guessing game in the office as to what magnitude they were. On what was already a tight schedule, this didn’t make life much easier for folks putting the shows together.
Kevin and Halsey got very focused on finding talent to host the shows. One of the obvious places to go was personalities from the computer magazine world like Fred Davis, John Dvorak, Gina Smith, and Jim Louderback. Fred Davis had been very involved for a while since his girlfriend at the time, Sylvia, had been helping Bettina with the launch party and industry relations in general.
One of the more interesting connection was Adam Curry, one of the first VJs from MTV. He was a very early voice in the growing interest around the Internet and had gotten himself in a situation with MTV when he registered “mtv.com” and initially refused to give it back to them. In my first meeting with him in SF, he turned to me and asked whether I had read the science fiction novel, Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. With the concept of the “Metaverse”, it was considered by Adam as what the Internet would become. When I answered “no”, he said he would not talk to me again until I had. He wasn’t actually kidding me, he actually turned his chair and never said another word to me until I could confirm weeks later I had read it.
Snow Crash was pretty futuristic, but there was a significant gap between that and today’s reality. To give you a sense of current state, look at Frank’s work on getting us set up with companion online services:
For email we were all reliant on AOL accounts. You see a discussion of something called cnet.com and Frank wasn’t even really sure how to describe it (our Internet Node):
One of our “big ideas” was the concept that we would have actual icons on the screen during the shows. The icon would be a signal to the viewer that they could go online and find additional resources. Fred came up with four icons. I believe the first was “more information", the second was “poll”, the third was “community discussion” and the fourth was “download”.
So in the below case, you see the first icon is red. So for whatever John Dvorak was speaking about you could go to CNET online and get more information.
We really believed that this was the future — that all TV shows would have icons that would connect a show with online through visual cues. This was not a widely accepted notion. In meeting after meeting people would tell us that the idea of a computer and TV being in the same room was crazy. “Are people supposed to remember when these icons turn red and then run to their office and look up what it means?”
Kevin decided on four shows as pilots: CNET Central, The Web, The New Edge and CNET Insiders. The thought was to create some diversity among the shows with hope that it could show that there would be enough material for a two hour block and ultimately a 24-hour network.
We continued trying to find a home for these show ideas. With Marshall’s help, we started having discussions with Discovery which seemed like a natural fit for CNET. Marshall had worked with Ruth Otte at MTV where she was head of marketing. She was now the President of Discovery. Discovery actually had a show that addressed technology and science called The Next Step. The show was produced by KRON in the Bay Area was created and hosted by Richard Hart and produced by Dan Sexton. We seemed like a natural extension of this show and we were really hopeful, given Marshall’s introduction to Ruth.
As you can see I was a little overly ambitious to think that I could get fully through to the actual shooting of the pilots this week, so you will have to wait until next week to see them.
It is worth saying that this was 27 years ago, so I am doing my best with the accuracy of the story. I apologize in advance if I get anything wrong or forget anyone. If I do, please email me and I will fix it.
So Fred Sotherland designed the first download icon, which later would be the Download.com icon and logo of sorts?
I like the graphic showing how the email is sent to that address, then opened, then appears on the computer screen. It's so awesome seeing the vision, and how it has played out-- and how you guys went for it, despite so many uncertainties. After seeing many retro-references to it recently, I'm re-reading Snow Crash, this time with my 10 yr old daughter who's obsessed with virtual worlds -- a nice contrast in prognostication with the CNET journey.