^ Well, it was who was funding the channel through commercials. Whoever was funding it *cough*Microsoft*cough* mandated the shows be one big advertisement for their products. I think the first time I ever had anyone suggest not using IE was from Patrick Norton, the co-host of The Screen Savers. It seems like they were always showing off good software to use on windows that was better than what was in windows but that all changed when they got their biggest funder. They even stopped the reg-edit segment with that hot chick that was a total computer geek. Like I said, at the end they were hinting to people calling in on what to use to fix their computers because their hands were tied.
I remember one of the last episodes with Leo Laporte interviewing some big whig from MS about their new media center XP remix and Leo was not his usual happy self, and that is weird for him. When the question of security came up the MS guy said 'oh yeah, XP media center has no problems' and when Leo pointed out it was built on XP and 'didn't it inherit the security problems?' the MS guy lied up and down reaffirming it didn't have any problems. Leo had his hands tied, he became a purveyor of lies, and he physically looked tired. I think he quit after that, I'm sure if all the show had become was a giant ad to sell one companies products the show was just not worth doing anymore.
Anyway, it was never the ratings, they were high, even internationally, I think it was one companies need to shut down a highly rated station that pushed it's competitor's products. Leo was a big Apple user and they all dual booted Linux. Call me a conspiracy nut but I watched every episode up until the models from 'Attack of the Show' made fun of all the people that watched it before it was renamed.
Now oddly enough I think they're funded by Google, like I said, like half of the episode I watched that had the wiz in it was just youtube videos.
