Quick Hit: Good bye, TWiT

We've posted on our more personal blog about how we've grown a little disillusioned with This Week in Tech (TWiT). The broader points are still there. TWiT episode 191 sealed the deal, and with a heavy heart today we are clicking "unsubscribe".

The issues with this podcast were myriad: Most people attribute it to the wine that they consume during the podcast. This is a dodge, and something that Leo is using to deflect from the real problems with the show.

The first is that Leo, bless his soul, is producing too much. He likes to brag about how many hours a week is broadcasting, but because of that the points in his shows are getting muddled and unfocused. He's not sure where he talked one issue or the other, or with whom. Points are being made over and over, and even when he has been corrected on one podcast he will make the same accusation on another. The quality of the shows themselves has suffered: Instead of planning them he just reads a bunch of talking points with no real idea where the discussion is going to go. We've said this before and we'll say it again: he should check out the Slate gabfest podcasts (both political and cultural) to see how a podcast can be both informal and have a structure AND finish in a reasonable amount of time.

Secondly, most of the people on the panel are NOT interested in what others have to say. TWiT 191 was a prime example of that. While Lisa Bettany and Shira Lazar were trying to discuss their take on the issues at hand, Dvorak and Leo were more interested in teasing, joking, and interrupting. Constantly. It was insulting and frustrating. But wine or not, this happens on almost every podcast.

Thirdly, and this is the most painful one, Leo's attitude towards female panelists if so markedly different from his attitude to mail panelists that it's distressing. For example, he would never introduce Wil Harris as "the handsome Wil Harris", but he will talk about the "the beautiful Molly Wood", as well as spend a good part of a podcast talking about how he was intrigued that she had a tongue piercing. Often when he does talk to them, they rarely get the chance to interact on the same level as the men. TWiT 191 had a prime example of that when Lisa (we believe: we have difficulty with voices, male or female, when we can't see faces) discussed her issues with blogging. We're paraphrasing, but it wasn't much different than this:

Lisa: And then, after a while, when you start getting compliments, you start to pander
Leo: Like "You're so beautiful, and I love your picture"
Lisa: No, I mean in terms of what you write and how you treat your subject matter.

To ANYONE seeing the first point, the only way you could get to the second point is if you thought what that person brought to the table was their looks. We actually had to pause the podcast at that point, because it just seemed so odd that in a conversation about on-line writing THAT would be the topic he'd grab on to: What's it like being pretty?

We are still going to listen to MacBreak Weekly, because that podcast is a little more focused, though even the quality of that has gone downhill since Merlin Mann left despite Andy Ihnatko's attempt to keep it more focused. We will probably check in from time to time, but right now we have too much to do in a week to spend almost two hours listening to something unfocused, simply parroting news we can get somewhere else.

It's in the can.