 Welcome to DTNS Experiment Week. All this week, DTNS is on summer vacation, but in its place is Experiment Week where our producers and contributors are trying out new show ideas and releasing them right here on the DTNS feed. Enjoy. Welcome to Tech TV Scrappo, the podcast that talks to the people and personalities who made the Tech TV network such an innovative and forward-thinking channel. My name is Roger Chang and I'm the host of the show and I was also a former producer and editor at Tech TV. When Tech TV launched back in August of 1998 as ZDTV, it was positioned as a 24-hour cable network devoted to computers, technology, and the Internet. As part of that mission, two help and how-to shows were created, the Screensavers and Call for Help. The Screensavers focused on a more tech-literate audience that saw technology as both a tool and a hobby. Call for Help focused on who were either computer neo-fights and needed more help, or they were people who used technology purely for business and work. Eventually, Tech TV became G4 TV and during that transition, the Screensavers was transitioned into the show known as Attack of the Show, whereas Call for Help went off the air, or so it is commonly thought. In fact, Call for Help migrated north like Geese to Canada where it was part of the G4 Tech TV Canada network. I have with me, with great pleasure, Jen Cutter, because you happened to work at Call for Help Canada. Now, I guess the first question I should ask you is, how did you start? How did you get in the door into Tech TV Canada? And more importantly, how did you get on Call for Help? They are one in the same story, and it's kind of this, it's a huge snowball. It's kind of ridiculous. So Amber Mac, the main host of Call for Help with Leo, she had her own like side YouTube show called Command End, and she had posted that on the internet. I had made my own videos at openalpha.tv for YouTube kind of thing, just talking about the gaming stuff that I love to talk about. And I'd been doing my work in Windows Movie Maker. And then I saw Command End, and I was like, Oh, like the show shot in Toronto, I know where they're shooting. So I looked up their editor, Brian, and I emailed him because I was too scared to email Amber. Before we get too far, who is Amber Mac? Well, Amber Mac is the host of Call for Help Canada with Leo Laporte. And gosh, she's been doing everything forever. I've seen her on every news network in Canada. And right now she's doing tons of podcasts and corporate events. And you see her every once in a while on DTNX. She's a tech legend up here. And she's the one that got you in the door? Or did you just contact, you, you contacted the producer? So yeah, I, exactly. I contacted her editor, Brian, to say like, Hey, you guys are doing all this cool stuff. I'm in Toronto too. I'd love to learn more. And he's like, Well, just come to a shoot. So I went to a shoot. He invited me down. I got to meet Amber Mac. I got to meet Michael Azra, a producer at Call for Help, who was doing Command End with her at the time. And then they gave me all sorts of tips and stuff. And they said, Hey, there's a meet up going on the next day. You should come out to that too. And I was like, Oh, okay, cool. So I went to this meet up. And this was a really good meet up to be at because Leo was there. Kevin Rose was there. Alex Albrecht was there. They were so kind. They introduced me to everybody. And so I got to talk to Leo. And Leo's like, Oh, like, Well, what do you do? And I said, Oh, I did a show on YouTube. And he's like, Oh, check it out. And I'm like, Oh, sure. All right, bye. By the time I got home after that amazing party, I had a voicemail from Leo saying, Hey, I liked your shows. You should come down to the studio tomorrow while we're recording. And I was like, Okay. I called in sick to work. I went to the studio. I got introduced to everybody. Everyone's taping segments. To me, it's chaos because so many things are happening all at once. And at the end of the last taping of the day, Leo says, Stay tuned next. Stay tuned next month. I've got a new girl you're gonna love. And I'm just like literally sitting on the floor beside Alex Albrecht going like, Oh, that's neat. I wonder who he's talking about. And Alex is like thumping me on the back and Kevin Rose is cheering. And I'm like, Wait, what just happened? And I'm thinking like, Oh, God, someone's going to tell me what happens next, right? Everything's just been a blur for the last three days. I guess the follow up question I have for you at that point is, have you heard of Tech TV? Did you know what call for help was before, before that point? I mean, did you was it available on on cable in your area up in Canada? Or was it like completely new? And then you just had to kind of school yourself on all that before, before you came in? I had heard of Tech TV, mostly because I heard of xplay, because we did have xplay air up here on other networks at the time. But then when all this stuff started happening, like I had Googled who Amber Mack was before emailing the editor. And then I had Googled who Leo was before showing up at the meetup. And then yeah, like that night after Leo was like, Okay, and like, we're going to get you on the show next month. I just did this huge deep dive. And the biggest thing for me was I had to find somebody I knew, who actually had g4 tech TV Canada, because it was a specialty channel, like you weren't just like getting it with your cable. So amazingly, my parents were the ones who had the cable package. So I was like, Hey, I'm going to come over and like fill your DVR and watch eight billion shows before next month. So that's how I schooled myself. I'd like looking up clips on the internet. Now, what did you think of that network at the time? I mean, from from my point of view, as a producer, you know, tech TV was was literally positioned as a specialty, technology, computer information network is spent off them from the original Ziff Davis brand. Did it have a different kind of look and feel in Canada? Or is it pretty much the same? The studio for call for help is smaller than half of my basement. It was the tiny I don't know how they managed to fit three desks and three cameras and all of those lights and all it was in the Omni building, which isn't going to mean anything to anyone outside of Toronto. But Omni is this multicultural network in Toronto and Southern Ontario. And it's like they had to move other shows stuff out for us to use the studio for the one week a month that we did. So I was really shocked that the set that actually looked really good on TV was so tiny. So so small. And you didn't have any prior television or broadcast studio experience before that point? I had exactly 22 minutes of on camera time on my previous two open alpha episodes before I set foot in a TV studio. That was all just self recorded and published. That was me shooting in my apartment was what that was. And my best friend came and helped me out with the camera when I wanted to move things around. Now, when you started, did they give you an assigned role as a producer or were you there for just a limited limited capacity? For example, when I started, I was an intern. And so what I did was all the intern stuff. I brought products over to the studio and I brought them back. I wasn't really hired until there was an opening. And I just happened to be graduating from SF State. So this, you know, the show producer brought me inside, Roger walked with me. And I started with this, like, are you graduate? It's like, did you graduate yet? It's like, No, I graduate in like four weeks. It's like, Okay, would you like a job? It's like, Yes, I would like a job. Well, we need a PA. You're really smart. You're really good with with all the computers and stuff. Can you handle that? It's like, Yes. And that's where my job came from. Was yours kind of similar or were they like, you're going to be doing gaming, you know, do gaming stuff? Or was there a more in depth kind of a or not in depth, but a more calculated plan for you into the into the show? It was, it was pretty defined. Like, it took me a while to figure it out what it was. But basically, especially for like, I don't know, my first like 12 episodes, I reported directly to Leo, all of my pitches went to him. And then like, if I needed help sourcing something, I usually did that on my own. But on occasion, I had to ask Amber, I was like, Amber, my thing died. Could you have a replacement? One of these at the studio that I could use. And she always helped me out. But basically, I got to pitch absolutely anything I wanted. It did not have to be gaming related. It just had to be tech related. And yeah, so I would send him like four or five pitches, he'd pick three or four of them. And then I'd be told what days to show up at the studio and with how many different outfits of clothing. Oh, interesting. So you were in effect a non air contributor for the for the show. No, I mean, that's that's fantastic. I think it's a it's a testament to your skill and your in your knowledge that they felt so comfortable that, you know, you would easily slot in. Oh, I'm sure somebody thought Leo was crazy for bringing on this literally random girl who like, now I've done tons of print work at this point, like I've written for gaming magazine since I was a teenager. And at this point, you know, in my early 20s, I've done several E threes and all that stuff. But TV, like nobody ever looked at me and said, you know what, that girl needs to be on camera. I mean, it's it's such an unusual experience. And I'll interject my life story in here, just as a, just as a comparison in contrast, you know, I come from a broadcasting background, along with Sarah Lane, we actually graduated together from the same school. In fact, much of the studio crew and a lot of the producers at ZDTV, when I was originally ZDTV, also came from the same school. And so it was a very weird experience to go from a classroom. It's like, Hey, my job also has the same people in it. And, you know, as a PA production assistant, when I when I started working, my role specifically was to ensure that the set machines were working, that all the stuff needed for that day shoot was there, whether it was a gadget, a product, or, you know, basically bookmarking the URLs, webpages, making sure they are all loaded, preloaded, pre-cached. So they, you know, when Leo or one of the other hosts clicked on a link, and I will make a side note here, I actually had to do both screensavers and call for help. So I was involved with both shows from the very beginning. You know, I had to make sure all that was set. It was also my job to make sure that the set stayed, you know, workable. That means all the set computers, the lighting, if there's any issues, I would, you know, it was lighting, I would let the studio crew notice like, I need a new bulb for this for this set. But that was my job. And I also doubled as a gopher. So if someone needed something, I would either drive out and get it or I would run out on foot and grab it at the local safe ways. So I mean, it's a very, it's a very interesting dichotomy between your experience and mine. I had, I worked with two producers on screensavers and two producers on call for help. And I also worked with Leo, who was managing editor at the time. So all the questions, anything to do with any of the content on the shows passed through Leo because he had the final say on whether it made it on air. With screensavers, some of that workload was split between him and Cape Attello, who's the original co-host for the screensavers. But for call for help, Leo was so and so he run it by him. And this is this is very interesting, we would give him the questions that we wanted to use for the week, the Friday before. And he would go over on the week, the weekends, he would just go over them. And on his commutes, he would use a little, he would use a little dictaphone and he would just record his answers. And that was one of my jobs was to trans, not transmute, transcribe all those tapes into like actual, you know, into actual script content for the show, I would work with the producers, said, this is what Leo says, this is probably what we need. My job was to double check what his answers were. And if they were slightly different, or there was another better answer, I was supposed to slot that in. Yeah, I'm like, looking back, it's kind of ridiculous the amount of trust I was given, because obviously, television uses teleprompters. And I was allowed to write for Leo basically, like, here are the questions that you need to prompt for this next segment. And they let me write that stuff, which was really cool. I know you keep in contact with Amber Mac. Yes. And are there any other people you kind of regularly keep in touch with from your from your days back then? I should do a better job of reaching out. But one person I do keep in contact with and actually ended up working with after call for help is Steve Saylor. He, you may know him by his old gaming nickname snowball, he's a Twitch streamer, he works on accessibility and gaming. He used to run the teleprompter for call for help for a season or so. And then he ended up producing a show that I did with Darren Kitchen of hack five called the war room, we did this old school World of Warcraft radio show. But also I want to shout out Sean Carothers, who I feel like basically was the main producer of anything else I had to do on the show, I ran through him. Sean Carothers, amazing, amazing guy, same skill set as you, he made sure everything works. If I ever had a problem with anything, he took care of it. Mike Lazazera, another fantastic producer. Leo was amazing. The camera crew was so sweet. I feel like I will give a special shout out to bear. Let's see. Oh, God, there are so many people I wish camera person bear was a camera person. Okay, I'm just making sure it wasn't like literal bear that they kept around. Oh, no, we didn't have the room for it. But but everyone is really sweet and teach me the basics. Like, yeah, so we're going to shoot this, but we need you to stand on this box. And I'm like, why? Because you're short and you need to be taller next to Leo. And then there was a whole discussion like the first day, it's like, you need to go put on a different sweater. Because we can see your belly button. And I'm like, Well, you couldn't a minute ago, just let me not stand on the box. And it's like, Yeah, well, we can't do that. Go, go put on a sweater. It's like, Oh, what else? What else? Oh, it's so cool. The studio was on the lake shore too. So it's always such a lovely drive getting up there. And so yeah, so after that first year, in order to lighten Leo's load a bit, I was handed off to another segment producer called Mohit. And Mohit was a guy pitched all the rest of my stuff to for the last bit of the year. And I think that's all the main people that I dealt with on a daily basis. Because our shooting schedule was very different from yours. Because you guys, what did you guys do? Did you guys shoot like every day? Every day? I understand. And the only reason why I know this is because I talked to Leo about this because he was asking me questions initially. Because it involved because of Cancon or Canadian content rules, Leo can never be the host of the show. So he was just a perennial guest. And so but they had to gang shoot all the episodes. So he would be up there for like a, when I say up there, he was be up in Canada, like fly up from the San Francisco Bay Area to Toronto, I think, and and shoot like a within a week or two weeks of like all the stuff they would need for the following month or so. If I understand that correctly. Yeah, I picked him up in the airport once or twice. He would fly into YYZ in Toronto. So wait, you were also like the chauffeur? Well, I lived like literally next to the airport. So technically, I had volunteered. I was like, I can't if you ever need a ride from the airport, I'm like literally down the street. I hope you got a discount on your rent. No, like you honestly, you don't hear the planes after a while. It's when the planes stop that you noticed something's wrong. It's too quiet. It's too quiet. Yeah, so there is always one week a month where Leo would fly up and we would shoot three to four episodes a day, which is why I was told to bring multiple sets of clothes. So that if I shot like first show in the morning and the first show after lunch, I could, you know, change my shirt and pants and stuff. Were you did you actively go out? It's like, all right, I got to buy TV friendly clothes, and then just have like part of your wardrobe TV only. Well, to start, Leo was very adamant that I only wear the stuff I like wore at home. And I was not like, don't try to be pretty was the unspoken thing. I was like, I know, like, wear your hoodies, wear your hockey jerseys, like just be you. And I was like, okay, awesome. And then we did like one press event in the States. And he's like, maybe bring a girl shirt. I'm like, okay, I can do that too. I mean, no, that's great. At least on screensavers, there was definitely a desire to make it feel very casual, to make it feel like you know, the set was designed to look like someone's basement. This is where you hang out. This is where you work in your your technology. And I know with call for help, they were trying to make it feel more like a home office. So a lot of the colors, a lot of the if you look at Leo's wardrobe tended to be more business casual, right? So you had soft, warm, it was very, it was a very, very, you know, conscious effort. And I'm glad to hear that like when they did it moved it to Canada, they weren't so hung up on you looking or dressing in a very specific way. Yeah, I had so much freedom, like I'm looking back and the jobs I've had since it's like, wow, I really, I really got lucky with my first camera experience. Was there one or maybe a handful of episodes that stand out in your mind? The most like when you think of your time there, it's the thing that pops in your head immediately? Let's see. Oh, like the the Step Mania episode where I was showing people you could play DDR on your PC or laptop. That show was fun and chaotic. Because yeah, like I had everything tech that could have gone wrong went wrong. And I had Amber and Sean Carruthers helping me out with like parts to put this together. And I like nearly had to solder part of my pad because it did not like being shoved in my car and then dragged around the studio for a while to get that working. So it was a lot of like fly by the seat of your pants stuff. But I really loved watching everybody else work. I learned so much from seeing how calm they were. And call for help. I don't know if this was the same for you guys down there, but we were live to tape. Oh, yeah, always. Well, the thing is, we were live live live live. We had it. We didn't even have a 10 second delay when we first started out. So we were always paranoid. We get the one live caller who would like be really nice when we call screen and that was one of my jobs as an intern was a call screener. And we were just I mean, especially Leo because he did a radio show for the longest time, even before even before doing tech TV in the site. Before it, he was just like, you know, we needed we needed 10 second delay because one of these days we're gonna get a call is really nice. And then they're just to start yelling profanities, you know, out of left field, and it's just gonna be like a total, a total, you know, WTF. Thankfully, never had that. But yeah, we were always live. Yeah, for us, I remember being warned like as I'm about to step into the studio producer grabs my shoulders like, Okay, so listen, the callers can hear everything that happens in the studio because they're just on hold all day. So like, don't say anything you wouldn't want to call her to hear. I'm like, I'm not gonna say anything anyway. So I'm just gonna sit here and watch. What do you think you got most of the experience? Was there a skill set? Were there people that you network? Was it a combination of both? Was there anything that you feel that I have become a different but a better person because of this experience? One of the most surprising benefits of the show to me was all of a sudden, my job was now legitimate. Even though I've been writing for print magazines and writing for websites and making legitimate money as a gaming journalist, since I was a teenager, the second I showed up on TV suddenly, I now I had a real job. So my family stopped telling people that I worked in IT. Oh, actually, I guess that's a side question. As I see now, it makes me think of a second secondary question of that. Because my mom, when she found like, Oh, your show's on and I was regularly on air, she would be really excited because, you know, at the restaurant, it was the middle of the day when they were closed because they were open for lunch, they closed for three hours and they open for dinner. And during that three hours, she would clean and then just sit down and watch TV. And I would be on and she'd be very excited. And she would always tell me, it's like, Oh, you have to be very careful about, you know, how you speak because people, you know, think highly of you now and all that. Did your family have a very similar kind of view of your of your time in front of the camera? Well, I think like that just kind of set it for them that I wasn't wasting my life. Like this was a real job with real outcomes that other people see. It wasn't, it wasn't me like because I didn't go to university. I started working straight out of high school. And yeah, it was just really nice to have that sense of legitimacy. And it definitely made pitching things in the future to other places easier. And then other news networks started calling me. So like CB24 was like, Hey, there's a Nintendo event. Can you do a hit for us? And to be like, Yes, I will send me a cameraman. I'll show up and do that hit. So I got to do stuff like that. So I showed up on the CBC ones and CB24. And then yeah, I think it was after that because I had done E3 for many, many years. And then at the launch of the Nintendo DS TV Tokyo came up to me and they're like, Hey, can you speak English? You want to do a thing with us? And I'd be like, Okay, sure. So I showed up on TV Tokyo for a couple of segments. That was really fun. And once you could say that you've been on TV, it made a huge difference. And it really, I'd say why didn't my fan base not so much in Canada, because very few people in Canada seem to have the network. But because we had a lot of international deals, all of a sudden I started getting all of this mail from Australia, and some from the UK and a lot from the United States. So I mean, that's, that's, you know, that's the final question I had in my head as you're, you're, you're explaining your experience. Do you find that you suddenly became more recognizable where you were just in the store? Or you were just, you know, somewhere very you thought was very innocuous and some say, Hey, you're Jen Cutter, you're from Comfort Help Canada. Yeah, I definitely are recognized at conferences a lot more. You know, there's good and bad that comes with that. I had some person following me around PAX East. And then I my friend sent me a link saying like, Hey, do you know this guy? Because he's posted 300 pictures of you on his Flickr account. I'm like, Oh, that's not great. I'll have to look at that when I'm home. But yeah, like in computer stores in Toronto, occasionally like grocery shopping. And then like, at least once a year for five years, somebody would see me go like, Oh, Oh, Amber. And I'm like, Oh, so close. Like, I knew that like they could recognize me from the show. And then they reached for the first female female name that they associated with that show. And so they'd call me Amber. For people who are do not know what I look like, I do not look like Amber Mac. Amber Mac is a gorgeous person. And I am a very nerdy hockey player. But I'm thinking like, you can't if you put me and Amber next to each other, you're not going to confuse us as related. They were always very apologetic about it. Like, Oh, no, we had Jen Jen. Can you say hi to Amber for me? It's like, Yes, I will say hi to Amber for you. Don't worry about it. I guess, I guess to close. If you had to do it all over again, would you have done anything differently knowing what you do know now? Or do you think like, overall, the experience was beneficial for the way it played out in the way you, you know, you experienced things? Oh, for what I know now, I would absolutely have asked way more questions. I would have asked for like more responsibility. I would have tried to pitch some different form segments. I'd love to have like, done a segment with Sean or with Mike, just to get like more faces in front of the camera. But like, I had an absolutely wonderful time. I'm so glad that it happened. I'm just really grateful for the whole experience. That's, I mean, I am with you. I often, I often say to anyone who cares to listen, which is not many, because my wife has stopped listening as well, that, you know, my time at tech TV, ZDTV was like going to a second university, like industry facing kind of education. But I, you know, I made a lot of great friends and made a lot of intelligent, smart people who I am grateful that I still know today. And one of those people, believe it or not, is you. It's great. Like I would have never met you otherwise. It was so great. Like one of the huge benefits of going to E3 aside of from going to E3 was because I had a G4 tech TV Canada press pass, they would let me into like the G4 staging area where they had all of the stuff for X play and attack of the show. So I'd get to go meet all the people there and hang out and meet so many friends there. I was I was Olivia Munn stand in for a couple of segments when standing was not feeling well. And I was like, I can stand there and do that. Sure. Unfortunately, we're we're at our time limit. But before we go, is there anywhere you would like people to follow your comings and goings, social media platform, blog, anything you'd like to shout out? Oh, well, I am at Jen Cutter, Jen with two fans at literally every current social media platform on the planet, of which there are many will find out who wins in a year from now, I guess. And then there's Jen Cutter com and open alpha dot TV. All right, that's it for this episode of tech TV scrapbook. And if you'd like to hear more stories from behind the scenes of ZDTV tech TV from the people who work there, email me at feedback at daily tech news show dot com. If there's enough interest, I will continue the series with other producers on our talent and crew that made ZDTV tech TV possible. Hey, folks, Tom Merritt here again. That's it for Experiment Week. Thanks to all the contributors who made these great shows. We hope you enjoyed it. Let us know what you think email us feedback at daily tech news show dot com. We're back to regular shows on Monday. See you then.