Say it ain't so, John C
One of the shows I've faithful watched on the Internet, over the years is Cranky Geeks. I enjoy the insight and also crankiness of John C Dvorak and the panel as they discuss or lampoon some of the tech news for that week. I'm not sure when I started watching but I'm quite sure it was early on. I was at the homepage, looking over the archive page and going through the topics and guests. Honestly, what would the middle of my week be without John, Sebastian Rupley and the others who made up the panel opining on the various topics of the day. Where else could I hear: "Dvorak.org/blog", except on Cranky Geeks.

I also made a small video and had it played on the show, you can look it up, its episode 79. It had to do with a small contest they had on the topic "What makes you cranky". It's not much of a claim to fame, but I'll take it.

Besides a long desire to have Danica Patrick on the program, which looks like will never happen, John and company give a spirited appraisal of all things tech. More often then not, John would declare something bogus, or crap, depending upon how he felt about the topic.

We also learned that he never got invited to many parties at Google or Apple. Seems he's never on the guest list, even though he had a number of guests from Google. For some reason he never had anybody from Apple, although he did have a few Apple evangelists.

John was always ready with a list of stories, some of which were not discussed, even though they might be mentioned on the website. He had them and the guests were prepped to be their crankiness.





There were always three panelists beside John. Of course for most of the episodes, Sebastian was the Co-Crank:


It appears part of his function was to go through and prepare a list of the stories to be discussed. After his departure, it was left to the individual guests to have stories ready, and they would lead the discussion as to why they thought they were good stories. Many times episodes would seem to revolve around one theme, such as Apple, or Google or apps. During big tech events, they would all offer their opinion. there was no sacred cow as far as the panelists were concerned. And truly on some topics they could become very cranky. As witness by this recent episode with Dan Goodin of the Register:


It seems over the last year or so, problems were cropping up, usually technical problems, bad sound, no sound, addition sounds, all were commented on. Of course a lot blamed Mevio and Adam Curry for that one. Hard to say, but often I would either change headphones or take to listening over the laptop speakers, to determine if the sound problems were mine or the show's.

One commentator in the comment section suggested that Ziff-Davis was bought by a group who has decided to get rid of all the money losing property and Cranky Geeks is one of it.

So what next, negotiations John mentioned at the end, just a statement or is there something else going on. Will the show or something similar or perhaps a John C. Dvorak only program appear on Revision3 or the TWIT network? For the latter, John often appears on This Week in Tech and has worked with Leo in the past. For the former, David Prager was a guest on the last few episodes, perhaps discussing concepts and ideas?

We will have to wait until next week's show.

The final verdict will be next week. To be sure I will be watching.