About TechNow!

 
TechNow is a half hour television show about technology, seen on NBC stations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Believe it or not, before our home TV station was purchased by NBC, we were on in Ghana. Ghana, like the country in West Africa. There's a Mercury News article about it reprinted here. 

We podcast parts of the show as well. Half million viewers and growing.

 

 

Scott Budman is the show's host.  He spends his entire week, professionally speaking, trying out new gadgets, visiting cubicles decorated with movie posters, and seeking out the movers and shakers of the Silicon Valley. He's been covering the tech beat since before it was cool; one of his early stories being shot in the first Yahoo! trailer. A little over a year ago, he got a chance to cover the growth of technology in India, a career highlight.

When not filing business and tech stories for NBC News, he can be heard dropping business updates on KNBR 680 (Sports Talk Radio) during afternoon drive time. He also files a (mostly) daily blog, called "technote".

  

In his spare time, Budman can be found at the local park with his two daughters, updating his music collection, and watching obscure documentaries. He actually co-wrote a doc called "SoundMan" that played in several Film Festivals; his DVR is filled with episodes of Shootout, Entourage, The Office, and Hannah Montana (the influence of daughters, I promise). You can reach him here (scott.budman@nbc.com) anytime.
 

 

In a coincidence that causes no end of confusion, the other main contributor to the show is also named Scott.  Scott McGrew  [hereafter known as "McGrew" -ed]  is the producer for the show, and he files regular reports as well. Being producer, he gets to set his own deadline and assign his own stories. It's like working, only if work involved getting paid to play with iPods and getting top ranking on Call of Duty 4.  He's been fooling around with computers since his first Apple II Plus.

McGrew also works as a business reporter on the Bay Area's NBC on the early morning news. Which is much more like real work. He gets up every day at 2am.  He also hosts the show Press:Here, a weekly roundtable of tech CEO's and world class technology reporters.

In his off time McGrew and his two boys build model rockets, which they launch out near Google headquarters.  You can reach Scott McGrew at (scott.mcgrew@nbc.com) and find him online through his Twitter feed @scottmcgrew, on Facebook, his blog and his personal website.

 

 

 

 

Daisy Whitney is in charge of covering Internet video, social networking, YouTube, iTunes and other forms of online media.  In other words, a lot of the cool stuff. 

 

She's also TelevisionWeek's new media reporter and her work is regularly read and watched by executives across the television, cable, advertising and Internet businesses.  Daisy writes for Advertising Age and has written for Shape, Business 2.0 and The Denver Post. 

 

She has been known to show YouTube viral videos at dinner parties, to stay up late trying to beat Slash in a Guitar Hero battle (she was finally victorious), and to curl up with a bowl of popcorn and her iPod to watch her favorite Web show "Internet Superstar."

 

 

Her personal website is daisywhitney.com.  Daisy graduated from Brown University in 1994 with a degree in art history but we hired her anyway.   

She lives in Marin County, California with her husband and two children, a jumbo dog and a couple bad cats.

 

 

 

 

 Patrick Norton is a big fan of really little pictures as part of his effort to save pixels for future generations.  He's a weekly contributor to TechNow, passing on some of his tips and tricks from his web TV show Tekzilla seen on Revision3.  You can find his true biography here.

 

 

 

 

Veronica Belmont is one of the world's best players of World of Warcraft.  She co-hosts Tekzilla with Patrick and also sends us her weekly tips.  You can find more about Veronica here.

 

 

 

 

Jeff Stewart is the show's editor. He has experience with TechTV, CNN, CNN International, Intel, KGO-TV and various other San Francisco Bay Area companies. 

 

 

 

Scott Brown handles lighting.  This means one half of the people who work on the show are named Scott.  Brown has all kinds of other jobs - he videotapes policitians, shoots corporate video, works on independent films and shoots weddings and birthday parties.  He also works as a video engineer and camera operator at Cathedral of Faith.

 

 

 

 

The taciturn Ruben Martinez is the director of photography for TechNow and does everything else.  We think maybe he's part of the Justice Department's witness protection program.

 

 If you'd like to advertise on TechNow, there's a pretty good video about the internal workings of the show here.

 

If you'd like a copy of something you have seen on the show, contact http://us.cision.com/referral/nbc11.html.

If you'd like to pitch a story for the show, please contact us by email here.