 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's graph book, the podcast that talks to the people, personalities behind the operations who made the Tech TV network possible. I'm your host, Roger Chang. When people talk about ZDTV and Tech TV, they often start right on launch day when the network went live. But a lot of work had to be done beforehand to get all the pieces in position for successful launch day. Now, getting an insider's perspective on everything that led up to that moment is very hard to come by. Happily, I'm joined today by the amazingly talented Kate Batello, who along with Leo Laporte were the original show hosts of The Screensavers. Thank you so much, Kate, for joining me today. Let's start off right off the bat. How did you get involved with ZDTV? So this is kind of nuts, because I was in the IT department for Ziff Davis. And at the same time, I was doing theater at night. So there were a couple of different gigs, but I was a senior desktop analyst and I was assigned to do a lot of the office setup. I worked for the site for a minute. I was their IT person for a little bit. And then when they decided they were gonna launch ZDTV, they set up a new separate office and I was in there installing printers and all that kind of stuff. And I was at the printer rehearsing for my Judy Garland performance or rehearsal later that night. So I'm like, literally singing Judy Garland songs at the printer and Leo busted me. And that was how we made friends, which was funny. And then of course, I proved myself to be competent, which didn't hurt. And so from there, it was that they sent out this message to like everyone at Ziff Davis saying, if you have an idea for a TV show, give it to us, pitch it to us. So the IT department, we were all like, oh, we should do how to help people fix their broken computer show, right? And I'm like, oh, I know that guy Leo. I'll ask him what he thinks of that. And he said, actually I'm doing that. You wanna be my co-host. So that was pretty much, and at the time it was really interesting because I had to choose between that or the network department. I was about to get promoted and move into the network department. So I would have been like, network engineer chick. But instead I went for, obviously I went for the TV thing. It was a tough choice, but I thought if I can actually stand here and talk about tech in front of a camera, that's probably not something a lot of people can do. So I'll, maybe as well just go for it. So a lot of people might not be familiar with the site. Can you give a short explanation of what it was? The site was the MSNBC Internet News Digest Pop Culture Show. And it was hosted by Soledad O'Ryan. Boy, like that, she's like the huge, right? I love that. She was not the huge yet. She was just the cool, but she wasn't the huge. So, and it was just kind of an introduction to the internet with pop culture stuff and jokes. And Leo was DevNol. He did the first virtual puppet before I did Tilda, he did DevNol on that show. So that was basically it. Kind of a news pop culture mishmash. What's this internet wacky thing and what does it do? And so you were already in the IT department. Was that something you were originally just focusing on? Like the idea of being an on-camera personality didn't even occur to you up until that point? Not at all. I had decided I had been doing theater forever and I wanted a really practical job that required skill. So I got myself into an IT department and just went from there and just started out as a troubleshooter and moved up and I was a senior desktop analyst by the time we did Tech TV. So it was a really, as I said, but it was a really hard choice for me to leave the IT department and make the TV choice because I loved being in the IT department. Now, do you remember when they came up with, I mean, I guess some of the ideas for the shows are already formulated, but I think a lot of it was still being workshopped. Was there anything that they already had for the help shows or kind of like the, what Leo and you had in mind teaching people about technology or how to troubleshoot their PCs? That was interesting because we realized that we were going to be mired in a lot if we were gonna try to troubleshoot stuff. Like you can't really do that live on the phone because it can take 45 minutes to figure out what's wrong with your computer. We really couldn't do that, but I will say, we had a lot of meetings trying to figure out what we wanted to do and there was one concept to this day, I owe Renee Arricchio an apology. I apologize Renee Arricchio because I shot down her amazing idea. I thought it was really dumb and I'm sorry, I was wrong. And she had this idea from making the show a cooking show. So we would talk about tech while making food, right? And again, I thought it was really dumb, but later the USA Network, I think did it with dinner and a movie and it was just a fantastic concept and it worked really, really well. And I think that actually might have taken a few of the pressures off if we had done it that way that might have been smart, but we went for a very straightforward kind of. Renee Arricchio was the person that hired me. For anyone who might not know, she was the executive or not executive, but the producer for both Call for Help and Screen Savers at the time. And when I was an intern, she brought me aside, it's like, hey, we have an opening, would you like to fill it? It's like, yes, this is my first real job. I can quit the exploratorium and get like a regular paycheck and quit slinging out nachos and hot dogs. Actually about Call for Help and Screen Savers, originally there was only one show, but it became two. How did that come about? Because there were so many people. I mean, I remember the promos Leo calling at your personal confuser for Call for Help because people really had no clue. I mean, we were still dealing with Bondi blue IMAX. I mean, people had no idea what to do with their computers. They had no idea how to use the internet. They thought that, you know, there were people that thought a mouse was a foot pedal, like for a sewing machine and that old, you know, urban legend, but seriously, that kind of stuff happened all the time. And so we thought, okay, we wanted to address more serious things like how to map your network card and also what's a network? And those were two entirely different concepts. So Leo took Call for Help and he did it solo and he had a fun cast of characters and then he and I did the screen savers. Now, how did you formulate the format of the show? Was it based on an existing radio show format? I'm thinking about that. It was very similar, yes, to Leo's radio show which I had been on. I never knew how on earth he could do that. It was like three hours long, but I think, you know, we broke it down into like news magazine format, A block, B block, C block, you know, and we just had to figure out this section would be a demo. This one would be a question. This one would be a net cam call. This would be a recommendation. So we just kind of have different departments and then we would fill each one for every episode. Now you and Leo were both very, very knowledgeable. Actually, you're still very knowledgeable about a lot of the stuff you talked about. Outside of being just a co-host, what other duties did you have on the show? I actually had the very cool job of setting up the computers before the show. So that was really, really helpful because I would load all of the software, I'd have to, you know, sometimes you'd help me do the hardware stuff. Sometimes we'd be breaking stuff open and breaking it apart and putting it back together again. You remember that we would both spend hours in that studio just running around, installing stuff on every computer. There were so many, there were like one, two, all of them, so there were at least three computers on the set at any given time and they all had a full suite of software and bookmarks for every episode or hardware, depending. Was there anything about the show initially that you were very, I wanna say intimidated, but you were unsure of how it would play out? Yeah, and by the way too, I'm gonna give a personal shout right now to Becky Worley who talked me down from a total sobbing fit I had in the dressing room, like two days before he went live because I had it complete, I can't do it, I can't do it. It was hard, man, the show was hard. It was live television, you know, and I was learning to read a prompter and not answer back to my IFB and face the right camera and do all of that plus correctly answer questions and be interesting and not wiggle. And I mean, it was just so, so much. I will say, and when we looked at it later, we know we really thought about this. The biggest difference was that I was a troubleshooter, right, I was in the IT department, I was really, really good at fixing broken stuff, right? Or at explaining to people how to do basic things with their computers. But Leo had all of these years and years of expertise on networking and data and code and like deep, deep stuff. The problem was that they kind of presented us as equals even though that was impossible because at my age, there's no way I could have kept up with him anyway. I would have had to be a technology person the whole time. So sometimes there would be some criticism there, like that I didn't know stuff and if there was stuff I absolutely didn't know because I had not spent my whole life studying it and I had just spent, five years in the IT department instead. So that was kind of interesting. It was a little intimidating in terms of knowing kind of the depths of computer history and stuff like that. I mean, all the basic how everything works and how it goes was no problem, but there were some definitely deeper stuff that was really intimidating. Yeah. You mentioned that for people who might not be familiar, screen savers and call for help were daily shows. Did that present something of, I wouldn't say a hindrance, but was it something, was it a kind of a thing that you had to kind of learn and understand how to deal with? Yeah, I mean, it was a constant process. Every single day was study all day. You know, I mean, it was get up, read the emails and there would be 500 of them and I had to read all 500 or at least scan them and find out, find the questions, try and choose some of the questions to send over to Leo. Then we'd have a production meeting and we'd discuss everything that we were doing for the next week. Then I'd go back, research everything that we were doing, figure out all the software, all the hardware stuff that you and I would go and we'd pull all the hardware and everything we needed and then go and set it all up. So it was just, it was a constant, constant work and study process. I will say from my perspective, it was more of a nine to five job and that's just a coquelaculism nine to five because it was much, much longer. But I was kind of an, I was not really understanding how much of just a regular office day it was doing that show. In many ways, I was expecting more of a traditional broadcast where like, for example, a talk show, they gang shoot those like three or four episodes at once, but ours was daily and it allowed us to pivot to the breaking news, to have like the latest viewer responses. Was there something that you really enjoyed about the daily experience? I mean, that was so much fun, just that part of finding something new every day. I loved being on the set. It was always really fun making the show. The thing that was really interesting too was that it was hard to wrap our head around all the people watching, right? Because for me, the experience was, I am talking to Deb with her camera right there. You know, like that's the only person I'm talking to. There are thousands of other people on the other side of Deb, but I did not realize that at the time. It felt like a very, you knew that it was a very, very cozy, tiny little set. Did you feel like we were at the cutting edge? Now, when you watch CNN, you watch MSNBC, any cable news network, they have people calling in via Skype or whatever the Cisco equivalent is, but using the internet to transmit your video and your audio to a news desk is something that's just taken as a regular occurrence. But back then, we were pulling deep to make sure it was working, but did you ever feel like, man, this is gonna be a thing someday? And then we were like 20 years ahead of the curve. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it was like Blade Runner stuff, man. The ZDTV Netcam network? I mean, what? You know, people calling us up from Alabama and whatever. But now, mind you, it was like, hi, Kate and me. Oh, I, no, it was really bad quality, but it was still, yeah, it was just fascinating. I also remember when we had the first cell phones that could take pictures or video, I think it was Martin, may have been Martin Sargent, going up to the top of a building and we had to call in, but I remember like, we were so excited at how high-tech it was, but it was literally, er, er. It was so bad, it was so bad. I remember that because I was with him along with Julie Hendricks, and that's where he got me into drinking Roman Coke because we were at one of the towers in the Embarkteros Center, and our whole thing was, let's use the Ricochet network and we'll show people how this all works. And I have to say, it was a very, very impressive demonstration because at the time, you know, data networks did not exist on cell providers, right? It wasn't until the iPhone that really kind of kicked, at least in the US, the cell providers into providing a usable data format for video. Yeah. I am constantly amazed. Do you ever, do you ever maybe catch a glimpse of a previous episode or some reference to your time there where you say like, wow, I was part of that in the same way that people would say, I used to be a VJ when MTV first started. Oh yeah, totally. I mean, like the ultimate gaming machine, man, the AUGUM. I mean, that thing, we would always put the latest, whatever we could get our mitts on inside this machine. But I remember saying like, we always be completely serious. No one's ever gonna need more than 128 mega RAM. That's ridiculous, you know? So, so I do, yeah, occasionally I'll see something like that and remember how completely space age, everything really felt and how we did have access to the top of the line of every single thing. I mean, latest Tarvalds would come in and hang out with us for crying out loud, you know? So it was pretty cool. Did you have any standout experiences, whether it's a guest or a segment or a caller where it's like, you're just sitting there and like making yourself a PB and J sandwich. It's like, huh, I got to talk to that individual way back when. Oh man, there were a couple. There was like, Daryl Dragon, the captain in T'Neil, you may recall, that dude. Oh my God, I totally remember. Yes, and he totally hung out on the set. We'll just hang out, it's a captain, hello, Daryl. You know, Sinbad, I remember when he came out. And of course, Lena Sarvalds, that was so huge. That was so mind bogglingly huge for all of us. So those were the guests that I think stand out the most. There is one sketch we did that I will always remember because someone had written us asking if we could help them with a mystery novel and they wanted to be accurate with the novel. And so there was a character of a wife on a boat and a husband on land. And the question was whether or not they could communicate like whether cell technology was okay enough for them to communicate in certain ways would this be realistic in the book? So I had to go stand offset, you remember this, stand offset with all the cameras, David Yount, floor director of my heart, David Yount with a full cup of water, just chucking it in my face on live television, I'm wearing a raincoat, I'm on the boat, we like did green screen, like that was super, super top of the line, green steam, screen CGI, boat behind me. And I remember this very clearly because part of it, he was super uptight about it because he was gonna smack me in the face with the water, but I couldn't make a noise and I couldn't react and I couldn't go, because my mic was still on. And then Khadija had to run up or Elisa and like wipe off my face and make me perfect and get me back on camera in 30 seconds. And I could not react at all. So that was one particular thing that really stands out to me is hilarious and bizarre. For me, working at tech, or ZDTV, what became tech TV, 60 to 70% of the people I met on the daily basis, I used to go to school with. So it was not, it wasn't like I'm in a new space, it's like, oh, everyone I used to go to school with we're all doing the thing we're studying, that we got our degrees in, so it felt like, it felt just like the same group of people and it was not unusual to hang out with them after work. Did you have that same sort of familial experience with everyone? Oh, absolutely. We were all together 24 seven. It was life. That was it. You know, it was all our friends, our whole social group, everything. Oh yeah, we just spent all our time together. And it was cool because we all went through boot camp. That's absolutely what it was. There was nary a soul in that building that was fully qualified in this particular way. No one had ever made tech television before, right? So nobody knew how to talk about technology in an engaging way. That was completely brand new. We were live five days a week. That was a thing a lot of people had never done before. I mean, so there was just a ton, a ton of stuff that we all learned together. And because we launched the network together, the whole thing was this group endeavor. I mean, the pilots were originally big group meetings where we'd come out with poster board and talking funny voices. And I mean, it was nuts. And we did all of that all the way up, running through to launch. So yeah, we were together all the time. It was something else. Do you still keep in contact with any of those individuals, those groups of people? I mean, on Facebook or on the socials, I live so far away from everybody. Everybody else is in California. But I am still friends with quite a few people on the socials and whatever. Of course, I'm married, one of them. So yeah, right? So that worked out all right. Ray Weigal, he was on extended play and then he moved down to the labs. And then we got married. We've been married for like 21 years now. Hey, that's pretty good. Oh, congratulations. That's great. I've only gotten, I'm not even at a decade. Oh no, wait a minute. I got hitched in 2013. Yeah, it's been a decade. It's been a decade for me. You remember, that's good. That's good. You know, it's weird. If it wasn't for Facebook, we would totally forget our anniversary. It's so bad, so bad. Did you have any standout moments like experience-wise that you have taken with you and applied to your other work that you've done? Oh, I mean, I definitely think that live television made me a radio person. That is certainly a thing. You have to do a lot of talking and you have to think off the top of your head and just go. And I do a lot of hosting. Actually, it's really interesting because after that career there, I host a lot of stuff and hosting is its own special thing, you know? So that is one thing. Another weird thing actually that turned out to be a useful skill, honestly, was the IFB. So you've got the earpiece in, right? And the producer is talking to you. Now this is really hard when you're first doing it because you're reading off a teleprompter. You're speaking out loud and there's a person speaking full sentences in your ear that you are processing while talking at the same time. And I have occasionally had to use that skill in radio or whatever. If I'm trying to catch up with something, so I'll put the news in one ear and I'll be listening to the news and I'll be blathering on on the radio, waiting for exactly the right pause before I move the slider to the thing. So it has definitely come in handy and just the ability to just go on a dime. I think that's also really useful. Knowing what you know now about how technology works out or how your career has progressed, would you have done anything differently back then that you look back on and say, hey, I would have done that or I should have done that instead, whether it's a segment or the way the show was laid out or callers you would take. Yeah, the biggest thing that I would change if I could change it right now is I would have presented me as a senior desktop analyst who loves computers and is good at them and not try and sell me as though I were some kind of equal to Leo, which was again impossible, right? That is a big thing I think that I would change. And other than that, like, I don't know, I have a different performing attitude now. I'm older, things bother me less. My skin's a lot thicker. I'm more confident, you know, that kind of thing. I didn't watch the show a lot, which I should have, but it was always hard to watch the show. But of course the lesson is if it's hard to watch the show, you need to watch the show more so you don't make yourself cringe. So that was important. Like if you don't make yourself cringe, it means you're actually doing a pretty good job. So that was something I did not pick up for a long time. Like you got to actually watch that so you can make constant little corrections in your stuff so you're not cringing at yourself. One of the moves you made at the network was to transition over to extended play as a co-host with Adam Sessler. Is that something you still enjoy doing gaming or playing games? Or was that something like, hey, that was great. That was an awesome experience, but not necessarily something I do anymore as a hobby. Yeah, I'm not a hardcore gamer anymore. Just really not. And I was interestingly like before. So when I was in the IT department, one of the magazines I did was Computer Gaming World. They were my client. So I played computer, I played games all the time. I played Quake when it was Quake Test in a little small private network room, that kind of thing. But since then, no, I mean, you have to concentrate on what you're working on, right? Right now, I'm a classical music host and a kid's show host. So I spend a lot of my time working with classical music. Honestly, if you ask me about gaming, the game I've played the most over the last few years is Fate of the Empress. So, you know, on my end. Do you still get recognized from your time at Tech TV? Do people like, wait a minute, are you Cape Attello and you're just like picking up groceries at the local supermarket? Yeah, it's rare. It's a lot more rare. Thank goodness that it was then, it was not my favorite. But yeah, and it's usually older tech people, you know? So when I started here at Interlochen, like the people in the IT department, several of them knew who I was, stuff like that. So every once in a while, actually one of my favorite times being recognized, I had moved here to Michigan and I'm in the kitchen with my mother-in-law in the lake house making pie. And I'm covered in flour and an apron and whatever and this delivery guy walks in and he goes, hey, aren't you Cape Attello? Yeah, that was pretty funny. Now, I know you did music theater. Is that something that you still enjoy doing even as a non-profession, but just either listen to it or you just kind of hum different bars of tunes that you've done in the past? Yeah, nowadays I spend more of my time doing choreography. I'm a morning classical host. That means I get up at five and I'm on the air at seven. So nighttime theater is not really a thing I can do now. And I do a show every day. So I'm like, I can't do those shows because I'm doing this one, that's fine. But I generally do directing or choreography. Mainly choreography is good because then I don't have to be there every single day. And then I can be able when I'm done. So that works out really well too. Thank you very much, Kate. If people want to follow along the work that you're doing today, where should they go? You can find me at classicalipr.org. I'm at Interlochen Public Radio. You can listen to my kids' shows, check out my podcast if you like. Classical Sprouts, which is the awesome classical music podcast for kids and their adults. And you'll find that it is not baby-ish. We don't like to talk down to the children because they don't like that either. And that's where you can find me. Classical Sprouts, Kids Commute or Interlochen Public Radio. That's it for this episode of Tech TV Scrapbook. I'd like to thank Kate Patello for taking time out of her busy schedule to be on today's show. And if you'd like to hear more behind-the-scenes stories from the people who worked at Tech TV, ZDTV, email me at feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. If there's enough interest, I will continue the series with other producers, on-air talent and crew that made ZDTV Tech TV possible. Until then, see you around.