Just noticed it is now cancelled and some of the hosts are creating a new show under the DTNS banner. I am out of the loop. Appreciate if someone can explain. Thanks.
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Lisa Laporte tweeted about it here: https://twitter.com/lisadlaporte/status/1673037899045171206
In a nutshell, it seems like the show got cut because viewership had drastically declined and wasn’t worth continuing to produce. If there’s additional drama behind the scenes, I haven’t heard any indication of it yet.
Honestly I’m kind of surprised the twit network is still around at all. Their overall product has seemed really dated to me for a long time and it seems like the podcast advertising realm is a real shit show right now.
TWiT is definitely in trouble. The last time I listened to them, one of their advertisements was for… doing advertisements on TWiT. They were also pushing their subscription every chance they got.
Their whole network comes off as a bunch of boomers complaining about technology. I don’t think they’ll be around much longer.
If I were an advertiser I wouldn’t want to associate with Leo Laporte, to be frank. I think he has been lucky to get advertisers largely because of his radio days; if he hadn’t had those ties to start with, I don’t think he’d have gotten very far.
Do you mind expanding on why advertisers shouldn’t associate with him?
He cheated on his wife with his producer, Lisa, who I think he later went on to marry after leaving his wife.
He showed sexually explicit texts between Lisa and himself on air, not just once, but twice. If that wasn’t enough, he also showed his penis on air in much the same way.
He’s made racist comments on air, including saying “they all look alike” in reference to black people, and saying blacks and hispanics are responsible for all crime.
He’s abusive to his employees, such as when he said “Fuck you you’re dead to me” and threatened to punch Brian Brushwood in the face, after (show hosts) Brian and Justin Robert Young were banned from TWiT with no public reason provided. They didn’t badmouth Leo or TWiT, not that that would excuse that behavior anyway. He seemingly can’t control his anger, even on air, and verbally attacks his engineers for any mistake they make. He also is no stranger to attacking his guests/co-hosts on air.
Sarah Lane, co-host of one of (if not the) biggest shows on the network at the time, spoke about workplace sexual harassment (it might be worse than it looks). His interview with Cali Lewis is rather uncomfortable to watch; there is a tasteful and appropriate way to have the conversation, and then there’s the creepiness with which he approached it. Not to mention how inappropriate it was in the context to really have the conversation at all.
Not that I’m generally a fan of this sort of website, but there’s a website devoted to documented Leo’s disgusting actions. If you can get past the editorializing, it is still useful to document things that actually happened. You can ignore the editorialising entirely and just watch the video clips they uploaded if that suits you.
Overall, my opinion of the man is:
- He has absolutely no sense of appropriate behavior in a given context. Some actions are acceptable (calling out your engineers for repeat mistakes) but not in all contexts (on air); likewise for attacking guests.
- He is a sexual pervert who can’t put in the required effort to keep his professional and sex life adequately separate.
- As an employer, he doesn’t treat his employees with respect. That’s not to mention workplace sexual harassment.
- He only got as far as he did because he had a massive advantage of having his previous TV shows and radio shows–this is how he got most of his early advertisers (most of whom stuck with the network).
I’ve been a viewer/listener of the network since its inception so please understand that I’m not unbiased. I’ve also seen many of these incidents live as they happened and in imho, the characterization of some of these events is a bit misleading but I can see how they might have been interpreted that way. Forgive me if I don’t really want to go into the nitty gritty of it.
I think he has his faults and they sometimes interfere with my enjoyment of the podcasts but if he was a truly horrible person, I don’t think many of the people I respect in the tech space would associate with him offline. “A man is known by the company he keeps” often rings true to me but it has also steered me wrong at times.
All I really care about is good insightful content about the things that matter to me and (fortunately/unfortunately depending on your pov) twit is one of the few places to get the kind of long form discussion that I like.
Thank you for your post even if I disagree with it.
TWiT only has any value because of the rest of the employees: the engineers, the co-hosts, and everyone else that puts it all together. Leo is not what makes the network have value (though of course he was at its founding). I think the network would be better off without him now. I too used to watch since the network started and was there for some of it live, and eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t watch any show with him in it (which sucks because I happened to like SN a lot, among others).
the characterization of some of these events is a bit misleading
If you mean the editorializing from that drama website, then I’d agree that it has a very clear bias. That doesn’t discount what I really wanted to stress though: the video clips and screenshots, which are primary evidence that themselves are not editorialising, very clearly show a pattern of problematic behavior. There is no excusing a lot of what I linked to in my previous comment.
I think he has his faults and they sometimes interfere with my enjoyment of the podcasts but if he was a truly horrible person, I don’t think many of the people I respect in the tech space would associate with him offline. “A man is known by the company he keeps” often rings true to me but it has also steered me wrong at times.
I’m curious who you have in mind here. But I’ll say that people have various reasons for associating with others, even if they’re not great people. Money, opportunities/connections/contacts, convenience, etc are all reasons that sometimes make people spend time with bad people.
All I really care about is good insightful content about the things that matter to me and (fortunately/unfortunately depending on your pov) twit is one of the few places to get the kind of long form discussion that I like.
The long-form discussion is not solely enabled by Leo; it would happen just as well without him. In fact, in many situations, it would probably happen better without him. I’m not saying for a moment the network doesn’t have value or produce some quality content. My point was, and is, that Leo is a rather nasty person and that if I were an advertiser I would not want to be associated with him.
I respect your opinion and I’m not here to change it. All I’ll say is that I feel like I’ve been watching/listening long enough to confidently say at his core, he’s not a racist, pervert or many of the things implied by that site.
