Back in the early 2000’s. as a college student who was finishing up an IT degree, I discovered the Screen Savers on Tech TV. At first I didn’t quite get what the show was going for, in fact it looked nothing like After Dark or any other form of screen saver, but as time went on I warmed up to it. It felt too good to be true, a bunch of people who were into the same things that were speaking my language

Tech TV was great, and people might hate me for this thought, but so was G4 back then. Soon after G4 bought out Tech TV and some of the personalities rotated out. Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton moved on which was unfortunate because I respected their opinions, but I more related to Kevin Rose so it made it a little easier to make the transition.

They brought in some more people and the show remained pretty good, Kevin, Sarah Lane, Alex Albrecht, and Kevin Pereira. The hosts all knew their stuff and seemed to enjoy what they did. They seemed more like a family then co-workers, and I absolutely loved it. As time went on, the show changed, the format changed, hosts changed, and finally the name changed. Probably the best move that G4 made was changing the name of the show and rebranding it, rather then try to pass it off as the same show it’s name had once represented.

I’m not going to lie, the day they made that change I was actually pretty upset, and I felt silly for feeling that way. It was in fact just a television show, or at least that’s how the world saw it, but to me it felt like more. It felt like I had made these smart friends who shared all of these common interests with me, and I was losing touch with them. It was as if they all decided to move away all at once.

Shortly there after I looked for something to fill the void that was left behind and I was surprised by what I found. Kevin and Alex went on to start up Diggnation, Leo started up his own online network, and the new Attack of the Show was decent for what it was. So there were still places out there for me to get my regular fix of all my tech info.

The new project started to take shape. Everyone started to find their niche and grow thriving communities. Often times we even saw cross overs between the shows. It was like having little Tech TV reunions all over the place. Tech was becoming more mainstream and as a result the internet as a medium became more accepted. As a result of this, Leo’s TWiT network became a huge success. This brings me to the point of this little rambling of mine.

To me, TWiT became my definitive Tech TV replacement. While the flagship TWiT show was always entertaining, I became completely hooked when they started up Tech News Today. This was a show with energetic and charismatic hosts who were there 5 days a week, discussing all the things I wanted to know about. Iyaz Akhtar brough a funny cynical nature to the show to always play the devil’s advocate. Sarah Lane was always a ray of sunshine, keeping a positive nature to the conversation. Tom Merrit took a while to grow on me, but his witty, dry sense of humor drove the show along and maintained order in what would have other been chaos. I had finally found my new Screen Savers. But as the past has taught us, all good things must come to an end.

In December of 2013, both Iyaz and Tom left the program. The same feeling that I had back in 2005 or so came flooding back to me, and though I kept telling myself that the new show with Sarah and Mike Elgan would be just as good it has yet to live up to those expectation.

So what does that mean now? Does the cycle start again? Are we back to where we were years ago and we simply have to wait for the next great thing to come back around? Do we take up our pitchforks and rebel again whoever we think might be at fault for the whole fall out and the loss of our beloved show?

These are the things that have been running though my head since the announcements were made about the changes to TNT. I really didn’t know what to think until I watched Tom’s exit monologue on December 30th. To paraphrase, he said that this is something that has come together as the long result of people persuing what they love. We all grew up with this technology that is now an integral part of our lives and looking back, we couldn’t have imagined in our wildest dreams how far we would come. It’s in our hands now.

We have access to endless amounts of entertainment produced in studios and bedrooms. People share their opinions and photos with their neighbors and people around the world. As technology improves the world is becoming smaller as people are more easily able to connect. The tools to create are becoming easier by the day. Right now more and more people are able to communicate and collaborate from across the ocean as easily as from across town.

That particular show might be over as it was, but that isn’t the end of the story. New communities are popping up every day thanks to the barrier to entry becoming smaller and smaller.

People like TWiT, Revision 3, Frogpants, and Gamebreaker are all examples of people doing what they love and finding out that other people are interested in what they have to say. Some of our thoughts might not be for everyone, but our voice will always find their place in the end.

Tom Merrit was absolutely right. We no longer have to worry about if a cable show is going to get cancelled, because we all have a voice now. There will always be people out there that love the same things that we do. If there is something you are passionate about, embrace it. Find a forum. Create a video. Write a blog. It’s not about if we change the world overnight, but in doing what we love. Who knows, if we find enough like minded people with the same passion we just might start that change. So here’s to changing the world, one small blog post at a time.

This is going to be a great ride. Let’s do something, people!