Kenny Gow made a cross-country pilgrimage to San Francisco in February, like so many other young people before him.
But the ruddy-cheeked 18-year-old from Newnan, Ga., wasn’t looking to get lost in the Marina district or hang out in the Haight. With backpack on shoulder, Gow made the 2,500-mile trip to do some digital bonding at the south-of-Market Street offices of ZDTV–an upstart cable TV network dedicated to livin’ la vida geek.
ZDTV is still relatively small, reaching fewer than one of every four U.S. homes that subscribe to cable. Yet it has a fervent fan base of several thousand technophiles, geek wannabes and even technophobes who just want to surf the Web without their PC crashing.
The network isn’t about to replace Fisherman’s Wharf as a hot spot for the average tourist. But its status as a techie touchstone reflects how new icons are emerging in San Francisco’s Digital Era, joining the landmarks from the Beat Generation and the Summer of Love.
And the clean-cut Gow, who arrived at ZDTV in a button-down shirt and khakis, epitomizes the broadening appeal of geekdom.
“You think of the geeks as the A-V guy with the plaid shirt and the horn-rimmed glasses,” said Kate Botello, co-host of “The Screen Savers” on ZDTV. “The geek is not that A-V guy. It’s whole families. … It’s popular kids and unpopular kids. Little children and big children.”
Botello and Leo Laporte, her colleague at “The Screen Savers,” have a pretty good window into the world of ZDTV fans–they hear from about 1,000 of them a day. The show tries to help viewers solve problems and learn new techniques on their computers, taking questions by phone, e-mail or video transmitted through the Internet.
The two have drawn crowds of 1,000 or more at promotional appearances, including one stint in Las Vegas that had viewers driving in from Idaho and Texas. Fans have created at least 28 Web sites in honor of the duo and other ZDTV personalities, including one devoted to host Jim Louderback’s pearly whites.
“People are very emotionally attached to the show,” Botello said, “because it’s tied in with their own learning and their own self-esteem.”
There’s also a culture of mutual affirmation at ZDTV, a sense of geek community that the network tries to foster.
“It’s OK! Geek and proud!” joked Laporte. “Geeks have been an underclass, and suddenly they’re in charge. They’re not handling it too well, either.”
The result is fans like Gow, who says, “Kate and Leo are, I think, kind of like icons of today’s computers. … There really is no other show that I know of telling it like it is. They don’t cut corners.”
To Gow, “The Screen Savers” is better than anything else on TV, except possibly “Star Trek: Voyager.” That’s one reason he asked ZDTV if he could visit and interview Botello and Laporte for a public-speaking class he’s taking at the State University of West Georgia.
Gow, whose goal is to be a chemical engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will be starting this fall at Georgia Tech.
With high-school pal Luke Doroshenko operating the video camera, Gow talked with the two hosts for about an hour on topics related to technology and education. The goals, he said, are to promote the use of computers in schools and inspire teachers to understand the tools better.
Gow acknowledges having a long-running passion for computers, but they’re not his only interest. For instance, he plays the mellophone–the marching-band equivalent of a French horn–and is a field conductor for his high-school band. And he travels a lot, taking advantage of the free plane tickets his father receives as an employee of Delta Airlines.
“What’s life worth living if you’re just going to sit in front of a computer all the time?” he asked. “The computer’s made to help you, not to take over your life.”
Yet Gow has incorporated his PC deeply into his idle time, using it to chat electronically with friends, make free phone calls through the Internet or render 3-D landscapes just for the heck of it. “A lot of it is just trying to use the computer in as many aspects of my life as I can … to make my life easier,” he said.
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That’s pretty much the spirit of ZDTV, which publishing giant Ziff-Davis launched in May 1997 but sold to Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures late last year. The network, which has been on the air since May 1998, reaches about 16 million homes through 525 cable systems, including AT&T Cable in San Jose, Cupertino and Fremont, as well as the two leading digital satellite TV services.
The network’s weekly lineup includes a dozen shows focused on solving computer problems, buying high-tech gadgets, managing finances electronically, playing computer games, engaging in e-commerce and discussing the latest Silicon Valley issues.
Greg Drebin, senior vice president for programming and production at ZDTV, came from MTV, the network that tries to define what it means to be cool. In contrast, ZDTV aims to appeal to the befuddled as well as the savvy.
The network regularly puts viewers on the air to ask questions, make comments or promote shows, using video fed through the Internet from pint-size digital cameras. The pictures look horrible–the shots look more like impressionist paintings than broadcast TV–but Drebin said they reinforce the feeling of community.
The network even plans a weekly show, “You Made It,” featuring short videos created by viewers with their digital cameras. “It’s kind of a vaudeville on the Internet–vaudeville meets open forum,” Drebin said.
As much as it helps to have an involved and loyal audience, though, ZDTV really needs to be on more cable TV systems to succeed. That reach is crucial to its advertising revenue, which is the main source of cash for the network.
“One of the things they haven’t gotten yet is the breakout hit,” said cable analyst Larry Gerbrandt at Paul Kagan Associates, a media research firm in Carmel, Calif.
“They haven’t had their `South Park’ or `Sopranos’ yet. And that’s what it’s going to take,” he added.