TLR 16: Leo on CFRB with John Donabie - Tech News Summary - Blackberry outage, Vista SP-1, and another blow to HD-DVD...

It's Leo time.

In the village.

Leo!

Hey, Johnny!

How are you?

Hey, baby.

What's happening?

Well, I got an email here that says, one more hit.

Boy, if we'd got the original hits, that would have been even better.

Oh, you didn't get it yet?

No, I still haven't got your original one, but we have your one mole.

Both Dean and I just got it, the one mole.

That's weird.

We just haven't got the original.

How could you have not gotten the other one if you got that one?

Leo, I have no idea.

Let me make sure it went out.

Yeah.

Maybe just try to give another shoot.

Yeah, it went out.

Let me set it again.

JD.

Dean.

The Dancing Machine.

Ah!

Great!

Oh, that's funny, because you're going to get another one, because you got it.

No, no.

Yeah, there it is.

The end of the line for HD DVD.

I knew it.

Well, it had to with Warner Brothers.

Yeah, and the dominoes are falling.

I'll say Leo.

Here we are.

So, Leo.

Yeah.

He just got it.

This is so simple.

They've never done one, but if you can write this down.

Just, there's no www.

Just deartoronto.com.

Uh-huh.

These are two junior podcasters, and when I mentioned your name.

Oh, yeah.

The guy went, he's the king of podcasting.

And what they're doing is they drive around Toronto, and they find little things.

That's so cool.

This is their first week, but number three, or the one at the bottom, this is snow, and

it's been, somebody's colored it, and they put music to it when you listen to it.

Oh, that's really neat.

It's kind of neat.

Anyway, they're hoping.

This is the future.

We'll cover them.

I'll send this to Amber right now.

She'll do it on command, and I will.

Yeah.

They're nice people.

They're very shy.

Oh, it's cute.

They're kids.

Yeah, and they're just doing the.

I'm sure Amber knows about it, but let me send it to her.

We'll do it on that at night.

Yeah.

It's real.

It's like brand, brand.

Brand new, and this is their first week up, and one works at Ryerson.

She's also in a group with a girl called the Atomic Cherries.

I don't want to go there.

Oh, that's neat.

Yeah, but I mentioned, I said, well, I'll have to tell this to my friend, Leal.

Leal Laporte, he's the king of podcasting.

Well, we'll give him coverage.

He's the grand poobah.

I am the grand poobah.

You didn't know that, huh?

Oh, I knew that.

You didn't know I was the poobah?

I did.

I said.

I, in fact.

I know him, so I like to call him Pooh.

Pooh.

We need a little Pooh.

Pooh.

Oh, no, this looks good.

I think this is really cute.

It's very simple.

Are they kids?

They're not.

No, no, when you go down there, that's her in the red hair.

Very lovely woman.

She goes to Ryerson.

She's got massive legs.

Well, no, those are all cartoons with their heads.

Oh, okay.

No, I'm just kidding.

And the guy on the left, he actually is a techno guy.

He does tech stuff or builds websites, whatever.

I'm trying to find their names.

Oh, I've got it here.

Oh, Adam Schwabe.

Schwabe.

Schwabe, Atomic Cherries, and Ryan.

And the other girl's Rebecca.

What was her last name, Dean?

Oh, yeah.

She does burlesque.

Oh, yeah.

You weren't far off.

No, I wasn't.

She definitely does burlesque.

Oh, that's funny.

Burlesque is big in Toronto.

I never saw such a thing.

I don't know.

Where is it here?

Where did I put it?

Yeah, no, I see their names.

And Ryan is it?

Adam Schwabe.

Yeah, the guy.

Adam Schwabe, Ryan.

They don't really mention, but.

Nate.

Rebecca Black.

We'll interview them.

That's great.

Yeah, Rebecca Black and Adam Schwabe.

Schwabe.

Okay, there you go.

We'll interview them.

Oh, that would be nice.

I just sent a note to Amber.

Rebecca Black.

Aren't you nice?

Ryan Coldry and Adam Schwabe.

Yeah, it's the Adam and Rebecca who are the two front people, and the Ryan guy kind of

helps them out, so.

Oh, she's at Ryerson.

Yeah.

I get it.

Okay.

That's neat.

Okay, I guess we'll record.

Huh?

Yes.

Yes, let's record.

We'll be on the board, everyone.

I am ready.

There is no need to fear.

Underdog is here.

Underdog.

And there's that Mowdy with the.

This is a thing, Leo, we didn't have when we were kids.

This guy, McKay Taggart, he's a young fellow.

Been producing me for two weeks while Laura's out, right?

Where's he going?

Going to help with a brand new radio station in Sierra Leone.

Wow.

Going over for eight months.

Wow.

And he's going to do a blog, and he's going to send me different information and what

it's like to try to get an English-sounding radio station.

And up in the Sierra Leone, and woo, it's going to be quite a nice story, I think.

And we just lost another young girl in front of school.

She's gone over to Dubai.

Wow.

Dubai's supposed to be amazing.

Yeah, very, very expensive, too.

Okay, well, they have a lot of money there.

Only people like Leo can live there.

I've never been there.

I wouldn't live there.

No, no, no, me either.

I don't like that.

I wouldn't live there.

But I certainly would like to visit someday.

For those of you in Dubai.

I'm sorry.

What was that, Dean?

Oh, Dean's giving us.

Dean's got his girlfriend in there, and he's really getting pushing me.

He's getting me around, trying to show off.

So that's, there we go.

Yeah, pretty much.

Okay, let's start with the Leo theme.

Good morning, everyone.

It is time for Leo Laporte.

He is the king of all media.

And he joins me this morning from, well, downtown Petaluma, California.

Do you ever say, do you ever be tempted to say, good morning, Toronto?

Oh, yeah, I do.

Do you?

Every once in a while, I watch Good Morning Vietnam over again.

I'm like, good morning, Toronto.

Yeah.

Leo Laporte, The Lab, Channel 250, and various other channels, 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Check your TV.

Oh, you can't check TV, guy.

It's gone.

Whatever happened to TV, guy?

I don't know.

But Leo is on television, and he's got a face for TV.

Yeah, I do.

I know I have a face for radio, but I have a face for TV.

And, of course, he's on radio at KFI in Los Angeles, everybody, every Saturday and Sunday.

I'm all over the place.

I'm all over the U.S.

You're everywhere.

I'm in 50 markets and on satellite.

Oh, yes, but you're a syndicated radio show.

I'm not just KFI.

Oh, God, Leo.

I'm everywhere you want to be.

But not in Canada yet.

I don't know why.

No, well, you know, we've got to get those people working on you for Canada.

This, the Service Pack, has not come yet.

Service Pack 1 is very close.

How close?

Well, they're done.

Yeah.

That's a start.

Okay.

And they've already delivered it now to developers over the, what they call the Microsoft

Development Center.

Developer Network.

They've actually started pushing it out.

Developers are so anxious to get it.

They say they'll start pushing it out to end users next month.

So you'll get it automatically on Windows Update.

It'll be big.

Several hundred megabytes in all likelihood.

Wow.

There's some question.

There's a debate over whether it speeds Vista up or.

Slows it down?

Slows it down.

Some say it slows it down.

See, I have Vista on my laptop, which, and laptops are traditionally slower than your

desktop anyway.

Vista's kind of.

Well, we have a technical term in the business.

We call it.

A pig.

It's a pig.

Well, it's usually, it needs a lot of memory, likes a lot of memory and well, it's doing

more, you know, um, there, there are some changes to the way Vista does its indexing.

There's some internal changes, mostly service pack.

One will fix bugs.

You won't see a huge amount of, you know, differences in the user.

It will come out on a Tuesday, apparently at some point, right?

Well, I think that's the plan is that they're going to push it out.

It kind of in a role, a stage rollout over their patch Tuesday.

So you may look now, maybe next Tuesday, next month's Tuesday.

You broke the news on the show.

You broke the news on the show about Microsoft trying to take over Yahoo.

Yahoo politely said, no, thank you very much.

Not so politely.

Thank you.

Now Yahoo is looking to Rupert Murdoch for help.

They're desperate.

Well, basically, you know, they went to Google.

They said, Google, please bail us.

Here's the problem.

Microsoft offered a substantial premium over Yahoo's stock price.

The stockholders are saying, take it, take it.

We want our, we want our $31 a share.

Yahoo's board says, no, we're worth a whole lot more, but you got to find somebody who

agrees with that.

So the hope is they can take over.

They can go, they don't want to, and the other problem is that the founders, Jerry

Yang and David Filo, don't want to sell.

They say they want to keep running the business.

So what they're hoping to do is find somebody, Google, maybe none, then Google bowed out.

Maybe, maybe, oh, Rupert Murdoch, he's got deep pockets, who will give them some bucks

that will help them go to the stockholders and say, see, you know, we're showing you

we're worth more.

They're asking Rupert Murdoch for about enough cash for about 20% of Yahoo, and they want

to do it.

They want to ask for enough money so that it values them at 50 billion, which is more

than Microsoft.

So do you think eventually they really want to sell to Microsoft, but they want more money?

I don't think that's what this is all about.

I really think they don't want to sell at all.

All right.

The problem is Microsoft now could do a hostile takeover.

They could go to the shareholders and say, hey, look, we're offering you a big bucks.

Take it.

You're listening to Leo Laporte, everyone, from the lab on News Talk 1010 CFRB.

Leo, you know, I don't have one of these, but boy, I'll tell you, I was watching CNN

the other morning, because I get up every morning at six Eastern time, and they're

all freaked out talking about the BlackBerry outage.

And it's fascinating to watch now, you know, human beings, millions of them, you know,

sitting, oh, my God, my BlackBerry's down.

You know, can I walk down the street?

Apparently, it was due to what, the outage?

They say this is the same thing they said last time.

I remember this happened a few months ago.

They said it was due to a routine upgrade of an internal data routing system.

The geeks did it.

We don't know what happened.

They're blaming an upgrade.

Look, this is the second time this has happened, a nationwide, I mean, actually, a continent-wide

outage, 12 million people without BlackBerry.

This is a significant issue.

And I'm already seeing full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal from other providers saying,

we don't go out.

This could hurt RIM.

They've really got to, people are dependent on them.

Oh, yeah.

In Congress.

And here in Parliament, Congress and the states, I mean.

Yes.

So, you know, you can't just kind of.

Kind of not work.

That's not going to work.

And I have to conclude with this because it's such an important story.

For those of you who went out and bought HD DVDs, please just take a pill.

I'm one of them.

I got a whole library of HD DVDs and a Toshiba player.

Now, from the Hollywood Reporter, word comes, Toshiba may be dumping HD.

Well, Warner Brothers went over to Blu-ray and I think that was a kiss of death for HD.

It's been like dominoes ever since.

Netflix in the States, which is that rent by mail, stopped carrying HD.

HD DVD blockbuster says, I'm sorry.

Best Buy says we're not going to, we're not going to promote HD DVD anymore, but this

would be the big one.

Toshiba and Microsoft are the last two big partners in the HD DVD coalition.

If Toshiba says, okay, we'll stop making the player.

That's, that's basically saying stop making movies because you're not going to be able

to play them.

Microsoft will be the last guy is standing and they're going to withdraw soon.

So this is from the Hollywood Reporter.

Toshiba's denying it, but boy, there's, she seems to be some real evidence.

What a story.

Taking us back to the days of.

Beta and VHS.

Well, it's over so much faster than I thought it would be.

And I'm actually frankly relieved.

Leo Laporte.

Thank you, my good friend.

Thank you.

You must almost be time for a Vancouver trip, aren't you?

It is.

Can't wait.

Next week.

A couple of weeks.

Yeah.

A couple of weeks.

Week from Monday.

All right.

Well, as always, thank you so very much.

It's good to talk to you, John.

You too.

This is News Talk 1010 CFRB.

Yeah.

I got called in the office the other day.

Oh no.

You know, John.

Oh no.

The way you kid around with Leo so much.

I mean.

You sound like you're just so gaga over him.

I said, no.

Are they saying that we're gay lovers?

Is that what they're saying?

Well, maybe.

No, but they just think I'm being a little too goofy.

And I said, you know what?

That's what people love.

You know?

I said, if Leo was.

Well, John, let me tell you about.

Oh, so boring.

Yeah.

That's why Leo works.

He's a personality.

And I said, I try to work with him that way.

Yeah.

No, it certainly doesn't bother me.

I feel like we have a great rapport.

Oh, that's okay.

That's why I've been putting out the, you know, those little things of the, you know, the

podcast.

Of the beginning and end because before and because it's great.

I think it's wonderful.

Oh, they always calm down after a couple of weeks and it goes away.

Yeah.

No, I'm used to that.

And that's one of the reasons I kind of stopped working in mainstream media is I just got

tired.

I don't blame you.

What to do.

I'd stop in a minute if I were a Leo report.

Well, I mean, I still do, you know, I still do TV shows and the radio show, but I'm in

the position now where they don't tell me what to do.

Now, Leo, when you say you're in 50, that means that when you're doing your KFI live,

it's not KFI anymore.

It's not.

Well, it's on KFI, but that's.

Oh, yeah.

One of the that's just one of the stations.

I do it through premier at their studios, not KFI.

Oh, and it's on in San Francisco, L.A., Seattle, Washington, D.C.

You do this right out of the office where I was.

Same place right here.

Yeah.

Same place.

Right.

So it doesn't for me.

There was really.

You're right.

There was very little change.

The clock changed a little bit and the advertisers changed.

But sure.

But KFI is still probably the most important station.

They certainly take all six hours.

But it's.

Oh, yeah.

OK.

Because you can take it.

What?

Three or three.

Three or all six.

Yeah.

Is that the way it works?

Yeah.

They try to get every station to take at least one day worth.

And the way they sell it is that you're going to be on three hours.

Yeah.

And then XM satellite takes all six hours and repeats it.

And by the way, you were on city the other day here in town.

We're going to be on city from now on.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Well, my boss doesn't see that.

OK.

I know.

Well, you know, it's funny because Rogers every about every six months they say, why

aren't you on 680?

And I say, because I have a relationship with John Donabee.

Do you want me to get off the network?

Yeah.

It's the number one station in the market, the number one show in the market.

And then they shut up.

Is that guy outside, Leo?

Yeah.

You can hear him, can't you?

Oh, yeah.

Thank God he waited till now.

Yeah.

I better run.

But thank you so very much, my friend.

Thank you, Johnny.

When are you going to be in the month of March in Vancouver?

Do you know?

Yes, I do.

And I shall check.

It won't be Easter weekend.

I know that.

That's good.

Yeah.

No, in fact, it's going to be the day after Easter.

It's March 24th.

Well, I arrived the 24th.

It's the 25th through the 28th.

So it's actually the week after Easter.

Okay.

Yeah, because I'm going out to Vancouver for a few days on my own in March.

And I'm trying to coordinate a week so I can go out there to see Sam.

And this trip, I'll be by myself.

And that means when she's at work, I got to find something to do.

And I thought maybe I could scurry over and watch a film.

Yeah.

25th through 28th.

Okay.

Thank you, my friend.

All right, John.

Talk to you next week.

Bye.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Stop being silly.

Stop that.

Stop it.

Stop it right now.

There's a penguin on the TV.

You're being silly.

And now a man with three buttocks.

All right.

Talk to you later.

Bye-bye.