Leo Laporte

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Leo Laporte
Photograph of Leo Laporte's head and shoulders. Leo is pictured wearing a patterned shirt. There is a black background and Leo is smiling.
Laporte pictured in 2007
Born (1956-11-29) November 29, 1956 (age 69)
New York City, U.S.
Occupations
  • TV and radio presenter
  • podcaster
Known forFounding TWiT.tv
Notable credits
TelevisionInternet! (PBS), The Site (MSNBC), Call for Help (ZDTV/TechTV), The Screen Savers (ZDTV/TechTV)
Spouses
  • Jennifer Laporte (divorced)
  • Lisa Laporte (m. c. 2015)

Leo Laporte (/ləˈpɔːrt/; born November 29, 1956)[1] is the former host of The Tech Guy weekly radio show[2] and founder of TWiT.tv, an Internet podcast network focusing on technology. He is also a former TechTV technology host (1998–2008) and a technology author. On November 19, 2022, actor, writer, musician, and comedian Steve Martin called into Laporte's radio show to announce Leo's retirement from The Tech Guy radio show.[3] Laporte's last new radio show was December 18, 2022 with reruns for the remainder of the year. Rich DeMuro later appeared on the show to announce that he would take over in January with a weekly show, recorded on Saturdays, called "Rich On Tech."[4]

Background

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Laporte was born in New York City,[5] the son of geologist Leo F. Laporte,[6] and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island.[7] From 1973 to 1976,[8] he studied Chinese history at Yale University before dropping out in his junior year to pursue a career in radio broadcasting,[6] where his early on-air names were Dave Allen and Dan Hayes.[9] He began his association with computers with his first home computer, an Atari 400.[5] By 1984 he owned a Macintosh and wrote a software review for Byte magazine.[10] From 1985 to 1988, he operated one of the first Macintosh-only bulletin board systems, MacQueue.[11]

Radio and television

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From December 1977 to May 1998, Laporte hosted newstalk and interview shows on KGO, KSFO, and KNBR in San Francisco. He was a personality DJ on KLOK in San Francisco and San Jose and KMBY in Monterey.[8] Laporte had been a midday, general-interest radio host until the increasing popularity of Rush Limbaugh, after which he created and co-hosted the tech talk radio show On Computers from January 1991 to July 1994. The program was syndicated to over 60 stations nationwide as well as the American Forces Network.[8][11][12]

In 1997, Laporte was awarded a Northern California Emmy for his role as Dev Null, a motion capture character on the MSNBC show The Site.[8]

In 1998, Laporte created and co-hosted The Screen Savers,[13] and the original version of Call for Help on the cable and satellite network ZDTV (later TechTV).[14]

Laporte hosted the daily television show The Lab with Leo Laporte, recorded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The program was formerly known as Call for Help when it was recorded in the US and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The series aired on G4 Canada, on the HOW TO Channel in Australia, on several of Canada's Citytv affiliates, and on Google Video. On March 5, 2008, Laporte confirmed on net@nite that The Lab with Leo Laporte[15] had been canceled by Rogers Communications. The HOW TO Channel did not air the remaining episodes after it was announced the show had been canceled.[16][17]

He hosted, until December 2022, a weekend technology-oriented talk radio program show titled Leo Laporte: The Tech Guy. The show, started on KFI AM 640 (Los Angeles), was syndicated through Premiere Radio Networks. Laporte appeared on Friday mornings on KFI with Bill Handel, and previously on such shows as Showbiz Tonight,[18] Live with Kelly,[19] and World News Now.

He holds an amateur radio license, W6TWT.

Bibliography

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Laporte has written technology-oriented books including:

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He has published a yearly series of technology almanacs:

  • Leo Laporte's Technology Almanac
  • Poor Leo's Computer Almanac Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  • Leo Laporte's 2006 Technology Almanac Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).

Laporte announced in October 2006 that he would not renew his contract with Que Publishing, and had retired from publishing books.

In 2008, Laporte did a voice narration of Andrew Lang's fable The True History of Little Golden-hood[20] from Audible (Amazon), a sponsor.[21]

Podcasting

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Laporte owns and operates a podcast network, TWiT.tv with his wife[22] Lisa Laporte. Before the expansion to new facilities in 2011, Laporte said TWiT earned US$1.5 million (equivalent to $2,100,000 in 2024) annually on a production cost of US$350,000 (equivalent to $489,000 in 2024).[23] In a 2012 Reddit posting, he commented that revenue was approaching US$4 million (equivalent to $5,590,000 in 2024).[24] The TWiT studios are located in Petaluma, California,[13] where Laporte lives.[25]

References

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  9. ^ TwitLive Broadcast, after hours, 9 December 2008
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  22. ^ Danae Ringelmann interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network
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