TechBeat is a technology news program that is now going to air beginning on January 8th from 8:00 to 10:00 ET. The reason for the time change? Ratings and views. The program barely gets views on YouTube and for radio ratings, the show gets a 0.2 share of the overall radios turned on in the region. Weekends are still critical for news events, and while BCOP radio has cut some of their news programming, they cannot make enough money selling ads for Traffic & Weather and the Top and Bottom of the hour News.

As a result they will be giving me another chance to move to evenings on Saturdays.

The premise for TechBeat was the following

• Mix journalism with technology. This may had been the biggest error I made. Cover Silicon Valley and not be a fanboy? Opps..
• Provide an executive summary of the technology news with instant analysis for several minutes. The program runs from :06 to :14; from :19 or :21 to :28; and :34 to :44 and :51 to :58 after each hour. The program averages about 7 minutes of live tech stories to read and summarize.
• Provide a call in for second-opinions with a journalistic mind. The usual suspects of a core all news radio audience of small business folks having issues with their PowerEdge servers, the phone company screwing customers over with “cloud VOIP”, and other usual suspects. Most of the callers call from another side program I produce that is completely separate to the Beat and are often haters of the host.
• “you” and “me” makes “us”. This all we-culture only works when the community is all happy, and to single out individuals as a weapon is often “you”. By enforcing you-and-I by default, the onerous is always on the listener.

If TechBeat continues, it will be due to a change in format. Another challenge is I am no longer interested in technology, and that’s been extremely difficult to produce the program to go to the air. I have stumbled at times live on the air.