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Broadcast live from San Francisco, California, the show premiered on May 11, 1998 with Leo Laporte as host. The show's very first caller (by accident) was Laporte's mother. He functioned as a technical advisor to viewers experiencing difficulties with their personal computers (or "personal confusers", as Laporte jocularly referred to them). Such individuals were encouraged to contact the show via e-mail, telephone or webcam, with telephone/webcam users serving as on-air participants. Laporte also welcomed in-studio guests (including Martin Sargent, Roger Chang, Brett Larson, Hahn Choi and others), who expertly highlighted and reviewed various technology products with a novice perspective in mind.
In 2001, Laporte decided to focus solely on another TechTV program, The Screen Savers, and Becky Worley became the lead Call for Help host (briefly joined by Scott Herriott as co-host). Later that year, Chris Pirillo took over the lead hosting duties, with Cat Schwartz, Morgan Webb, and TechLive correspondent Laura Burstein serving as rotating co-hosts. In 2003, Pirillo left TechTV for publicly unspecified reasons, and Laporte returned as lead host alongside Cat Schwartz. Morgan Webb left her CFH co-hosting duties (and her other show, The Screen Savers) to co-host TechTV's X-Play.
Call for Help performed an annual "Call-for-Help-a-Thon" on December 26, 2002. The live telecast lasted eighteen hours in 2002, and twelve in 2003, during which viewers with questions pertaining to new technology gifts called in.
In December 2003, the original animated cartoon opening and theme music were replaced with a new live-action sequence, featuring Laporte and Schwartz, and a different song. A new version of the show's logo was introduced.
In May 2004, TechTV and G4 merged to form G4techTV. Call for Help, despite being the network's second-highest rated show (ranked just below X-Play in viewership), did not appeal to the combined channel's target demographic in the opinion of G4 executives, and was cancelled immediately. The final United States edition of Call for Help, taped two days prior, aired on May 21, 2004.
Read more about this topic: Call For Help (television Program)
Famous quotes related to united states:
“Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity—an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“The veto is a President’s Constitutional right, given to him by the drafters of the Constitution because they wanted it as a check against irresponsible Congressional action. The veto forces Congress to take another look at legislation that has been passed. I think this is a responsible tool for a president of the United States, and I have sought to use it responsibly.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)