Hey! I've been watching a few old tech/internet related TV shows recently and wanted to blab about some aspects that I found fascinating and insightful. Specifically the shows are; Computer Chronicles, Net Cafe, and The Screen Savers, which are all available on the Internet Archive (maybe not every full episode, but most of them). Also, this post is gonna be long, and if you do end up watching any of these, consider this a general content warning for 'the past' (dated/problematic language and ideas).
Computer Chronicles
This is quite a well known show in the old/retro tech scene, it ran from 1984-2002 and closely followed the rise of the microcomputer/PC, the world wide web, and other related consumer electronics. I'd seen it referenced/explained in videos from LGR or CRD, with the latter describing it as a 'magazine show'. My understanding of that is; in the past (especially during the show's runtime) the way in which you learned about consumer electronics was a very slow process via print media magazines. These magazines would be given examples of hardware (and software) from the manufacturer, which would take time to physically review, then write/edit a print article about, which itself may miss a weekly/monthly/quarterly release schedule. It could take months from the release of a product before any magazine had a rundown of it to inform consumers of it's specifications, positives, and negatives, let alone 'the' magazine(s) you subscribed to, with writers/editors that you had come to trust. Condensing that process into a broadcast television show that has physical examples of hardware and software often at or before their commerical release, and can showcase it to you before you consider buying/upgrading or whatever, is obviously appealing. Especially in the context of the rapid advancement of computer technology throughout the 80s-00s.
I've only been watching this recently, over the end of last year to now, which is a coincidentally unfortunate time as the main host and creator of the show, Stewart Cheifet, has recently passed away. From what I have seen, he is also the one that has been uploading episodes to the internet archive since like 2004. The show has had co-hosts (and guests on every episode) that were notable microcomputing pioneers in their own right, but there is a certain presence on screen with Cheifet in particular. After watching numerous episodes from different seasons/eras, you can see the one through line is the tight control that he has over the show. It existed to inform consumers about these products that they can buy and use, and not necessarily as a space for endless corporate speels and half-truths. So if three companies say 'our laptop has the best screen', the show can put them side by side with the corporate reps demonstrating them, which allows you to determine the truth from a sales pitch. And to compliment this, Cheifet (and the other co-hosts) are frequently interrupting the reps that don't directly answer questions or are going off on their prepared speeches, to draw them back to the information people actually want/need to know, succinctly ("okay, quickly now..."). They also often interrupt to repeat/rephrase things said by the reps in more common terminology, and will physically move hardware while a rep is showing it off so that it appears better on camera. That and the sort of code-switching between interview and news anchor cadence does a lot to structure the show as well. News anchor cadence has a lot of audio cues that emphasise the most important information, while also distinctly ending sentences between subjects/stories before moving on. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, or stating the obvious, I think I'm just hyper-aware from not watching broadcast television for like 10+ years, lmao.
Anyway, the content is where the show really shines, and it's name is very apt as it literally chronicles computing technology over twenty years. There SO many instances where I'm watching and yelling at the screen "THEY HAD THAT THEN?", or lamenting the weirdly specific niche products that never took off (Cybiko, any Palm device, early quirky mobile phones or PDA/phone hybrids). I find it hard to comphrehend the differences between computing power when just reading about it, like looking up the differences between various processor generations is a mess of numbers to me. The episodes that show those processors on release, and the outrageous performance differences running the same task side by side with the previous generation are SO informative for this (see Intel 386 - The Fast Lane, Intel 486, Pentium PCs). The same goes for their showcase episodes on new OS versions like the original Win NT or Win 95 (1994 ep, 1995 ep), it provides a lot of context as to how life changing some of their features would have been at the time. The evolution of the internet is also ever-present, as the show spruiks it's own CompuServe bulletin boards for many years before migrating to a website in the latter 90s. There's a stark visual difference as the show progresses too, they all start in business attire as businesses the primary userbase of microcomputers in the 80s, before transitioning to a business-casual look in the 90s, reflecting the same change in silicon valley and the arrival of personal computers into many more people's homes. ALSO THE PRICES, watching the episodes through the 80s is wild, they'll show you the shittest brick laptop you've ever seen and end saying it's $4000, but then most stuff becomes more reasonable by the late 90s-00s. I can't really do it all justice, but I feel I've learned more about computer history in the past few months watching this show than at any other point in my life XD.
Net Cafe
A spin-off from the computer chronicles that is also hosted Cheifet, along with two younger hosts Jane Wither and Andrew deVries, that follows the early internet from 1996-2002. All of the episodes I've watched were actually filmed in large popular internet cafes of the era. It's a lot more relaxed, laid-back, and 'hip' than computer chronicles. The hosts are chatting and interviewing more casually, and dressing more casually too (Withers has a wardrobe akin to Buffy or Willow, with deVries having a Luke Perry in 90210 look). I haven't watched as much of this show, but it similarly gives a lot of insight into the culture of the web in the late 90s, including the look and feel of the web and the places you might've accessed it from. I've even gone to check out some of the websites they briefly show in the wayback machine, it's a bit of a gold mine in that respect. They usually have multiple interviews per episode, with an overarching theme like 'Hackers' 'Games' 'Weird Web' (it's usually the episode title too). I was genuinely surprised clicking on an episode called 'Politics' that they gave time to an online anarchist group who ran a left-unity search engine and were sharing Zapatista communiques. It's also funny to see patterns repeat, with people pushing the idea of VR being the essential 'next step' of the internet then, like 'the metaverse' did a few years ago now. OH and one of the wildest parts of the show is the 'Cyber Blast', where if you were watching during the original run, and had a 'TV modem' card in your PC (which they sold on their website), it would send you several files or programs over the broadcast television signal, at a speed '15 times' the average phone modem of the era could pull. The segment runs for about two minutes with a static snow screen and a little presenter head telling you what's being downloaded and how.
Screen Savers
Screen Savers is a bit different from the other shows, in that it was 'live-streamed' while being broadcast on it's cable TV network (ZDTV). Viewers could join a chat room and ask questions, their messages would be displayed on screen occasionally, and they were able to buy a specific webcam during the show's run (from their website) in order to potentially appear in an episode. I know I'm mostly kinda twitch/related but this show ran from 1998-2005. I've watched less of this than the other two shows, just a handful of eps, but it covers the same kind of stuff; demonstration of consumer electronics/computing and the internet of the era. The show was originally hosted by Leo Laporte and Kate Bostello, who are both highly skilled improvisational presenters, to the point I didn't realise the show was live for a while. They both seem genuinely knowledgable too, answering questions on the fly and showcasing the hardware/software well with the corporate reps. It's just SO fascinating to see like 'proto-' live streaming done by people who are obviously trained in improvisation and media presentation, as now I'm more used to modern self-taught streamers that learn from experience. Anyway, it has a similar effect of providing context and seeing how tech actually performed in the era it was released. They also have a Starsky and Hutch themed intro that stays in my head a while after watching.
Thanks for reading!