The Lab With Leo Laporte - History

History

On November 25, 2006, Leo Laporte announced on his KFI radio show that production of Call for Help would move from Toronto to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Rogers Communications, the owner of G4techTV Canada, contracted with Greedy Productions to produce the show. Laporte also announced that the show would be renamed The Lab with Leo Laporte and would be recorded in 16:9 High Definition (HD). The primary reason for choosing The Lab name over the original Call for Help was with the constraints of the branding contract. The Call for Help name is property of G4/Comcast and is licensed under agreement. The name change eliminated the need for an affiliation licensing agreement.

Laporte traveled to Vancouver from his home in Petaluma, California monthly to record 15 episodes of the show. Episodes were typically recorded from Tuesday through Friday of the four-day "shoot week." Four shows were recorded live to XDCAM HD disc Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; three episodes were recorded on Friday. One goal of recording in HD was to attract a U.S.-based distributor; however, a U.S.-based distributor was never found.

On March 6, 2008, Leo Laporte announced on net@Nite #46 and via Twitter.com that Rogers had canceled The Lab after 195 episodes. He announced that as a result, he would be "ramping up video production from TWiT now." The last episode of The Lab aired on August 1, 2008.

The How-To Channel in Australia chose not to air the remaining episodes citing a lack of viewers, which is necessary to sustain airing the final episodes.

In late April the following note was posted on their official site:

  • Please note that production on the show has ceased. We are no longer accepting tech question submissions or replying to general info emails.*

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