Talking tech and building an empire from podcasts

<p>Balancing on a giant rubber ball in a broadcast studio and control room carved out of a cottage in Petaluma, Leo Laporte is an unlikely media mogul.</p><p>From there, he runs his empire, a podcasting network, TWIT. For 30 hours each week, he and the other hosts on his network talk about technology -- topics like the best e-book reader or how to get rid of a computer virus -- for shows that he gives away online.</p><p>Nerdy, yes. Silly, no. TWIT gets its name from Mr. Laporte's flagship podcast, "This Week in Tech," which is downloaded by a quarter of a million people each week. He produces 22 other technology-focused podcasts that are downloaded five million times a month. He also streams video all day long that captures his podcasting and a weekend radio show on computers, "The Tech Guy," that reaches 500,000 more people through 140 stations.</p><p>"I don't want to be just a carbon copy of existing media," said Laporte, who at 54 is just old enough to remember using carbon paper in typewriters to make duplicates.</p><p>Advertisers, especially technology companies, appreciate Laporte's reach. Mark McCrery, chief executive of Podtrac, which is based in Washington, and measures podcast audiences and sells advertising, said TWIT's advertising revenue doubled in each of the last two years and was expected to total $4 million to $5 million for 2010.</p><p>Starting at $40 per thousand listeners, TWIT's ad rates are among the highest in American podcasting and are considerably higher than commercial broadcasting rates.</p><p>Podcasting is an often overlooked corner of the media world. The term is derived from iPod, the Apple media player that can be used to listen to these radiolike programs as well as recorded music. The iTunes store from Apple, where about 75 percent of the audience for podcasts looks for fresh material, contains about 150,000 regular shows featuring has-been and up-and-coming comics and sex talk, as well as mainstream fare like NPR and CNN broadcasts. There are also video podcasts.</p><p>Laporte has shown there is a lot of life in podcasting. Doug Keith, president of Future Research Consulting in Philadelphia, which tracks media companies and publishers, said advertisers were drawn to the network because tech enthusiasts were keen on its content.</p><p>In July, Mr. Laporte spent three hours signing hundreds of autographs for members of the so-called TWIT army in Detroit. Some of his fans had him sign their iPads. No wonder then, that $20,000 a month in voluntary contributions comes in from the TWIT Web site, which has a series of "Tip Leo" buttons that set off recurring monthly contributions of $2, $5 and $10.</p><p>Laporte's first great love was radio. In the late 1970s, he dropped out of Yale to pursue a radio career. He began talking about technology on the radio in 1990. In the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, he appeared on tech-focused TV programs, including as an animated character on "The Site," an MSNBC show devoted to the nascent Internet.</p><p>Many who listen to or watch his podcasts today remember him from such cable TV shows as "The Screen Savers" and "Call for Help." And it was a round-table discussion by former staff members from "Screen Savers" that prompted Laporte to begin "This Week in Tech" in 2005. Laporte posted a recording of the discussion at a Macworld conference on his blog, not intending it to become a podcast. But it got so many hits, he started posting regularly.</p><p>The two-hour show, featuring journalists and industry insiders talking shop, consistently reaches the top-200 podcasts lists at iTunes.</p><p>Next year, the TWIT empire is expected to move into a larger building, down the street from its current headquarters. Laporte plans to start a morning show this spring to compete with drive-time radio broadcasters.</p><p>"It's not as if I had a plan for all this," Laporte said. "It just kind of happened. It was almost as if we had this audience that was waiting for the medium to come along."</p>