Owner Discovery Communications Number of employees 75 | Founded 2005 Headquarters San Francisco | |
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TV shows The Philip DeFranco Show, Film Riot, The Totally Rad Show, Epic Meal Time, Film State Profiles | ||
Revision3 is a San Francisco-based multi-channel Internet television network that creates, produces and distributes Web television shows on niche topics. Founded in 2005, it has been operating as a subsidiary of Discovery Digital Networks since 2012. The network has primarily technology-based shows hosted and produced by Patrick Norton, and gaming shows hosted and produced by Adam Sessler. The network also creates and hosts comedic, political, DIY, and movie-related content. The name refers to the revisioning of video programming, according to founders Jay Adelson, Kevin Rose and David Prager. The first revision was cable television, adding general interest channels, catering to the "most common denominator." The second revision was PC-based Internet video, independent films, no business model, no loyalty, no audience. The third revision or Revision3 is TV and Internet converged. iPods, TiVo, mobile, and broadband enable mass, loyal audiences to shift to on-demand, niche content.
Contents
History
The company was founded in Los Angeles, California, by Jay Adelson, Kevin Rose and David Prager in April 2005. Dan Huard, Keith Harrison, and Ron Gorodetzky were also involved. Most of them were previously employees of the television network TechTV.
Show development began in July 2003 with a podcast series called thebroken, a videozine related to computer hacking featuring Rose and Huard. After TechTV merged with G4 and removed most of its technology related programming, Rose and Huard were inspired to create a new series, Systm, in May 2005, which is geared toward “the common geek”. Rose left his job as a host of the G4 series Attack of the Show (formerly The Screen Savers) on May 27, 2005, to work full-time for Revision3 Corporation. The popular show Diggnation, also starring Rose, followed in July 2005, forming the first three shows of the new network. Alex Albrecht joined Revision3 on August 5, 2005, to co-host Diggnation with Rose and contribute to other projects while Prager focused on production and business development.
It was announced on July 10, 2007, that Jim Louderback would become the new CEO of the Revision3 Corporation. He previously worked as editor-in-chief for PC Magazine, a publication of Ziff Davis. He was followed by Patrick Norton in August 2007, who worked at Ziff Davis as 'head of podcasts' and host of the IPTV show DL.TV. At Revision3, he is now Managing Editor and the co-host of Systm, Tekzilla, and HD Nation. At DL.TV, he was replaced by Roger Chang who in turn left DL.TV and Ziff Davis in December 2007 to join Revision3. Chang has joined Norton as co-producer of Systm and Tekzilla. All three had previously worked at TechTV.
On April 9, 2008, Revision3 announced that Veronica Belmont would be joining the Revision3 staff as co-host of Tekzilla. On April 21, 2008, on the 47th episode of Systm, it was announced that Chief Engineer and co-host David Randolph had left for another job outside of Revision3. On June 6, 2008, CEO Jim Louderback cancelled the show Social Brew after only four episodes. Previous to the announcement Revision3 employee Neha Tiwari was let go without notice.
In September 2008, Revision3 started Revision3 Beta, a "talent-farming" sub-network of unofficial shows headed by Martin Sargent. The project ended the next year for lack of show funding. No shows were promoted to the full Revision3 lineup.
On June 16, 2009, Patrick Norton announced that Systm would no longer be a weekly show, instead becoming segments within his other show, Tekzilla. He also announced that he would be launching a new show in July called HD Nation, which will be a show all about HD and Home Theatre. It will be co-hosted by Robert Heron who was a co-host on DL.TV, with Patrick Norton, and then remained host for 23 months after Norton left.
On October 10, 2010, Revision3 launched a show from the popular gaming website Destructoid, which recaps the latest news in video games 3 times a week in studio starring employees Max Scoville and Tara Long. On August 25, 2011, Past host of Bytejacker Anthony Carboni started a video game review show called "New Challenger" where other reviewers are pitted against Anthony's review, whether it be from a live guest or sourced from other popular websites. They have since together started "Rev3Games", a centralised channel for this and short bonus content.
On March 13, 2011, Revision3 announced a partnership with Gawker Media which would bring its most popular websites to video podcasting. This started with Lifehacker, a show showing small tips to improve your life. This was followed up a year later on April 13, 2012 by io9 with a Tekzilla-like show called "We Come from the Future", where the editors of io9 discuss the latest news in science and sci-fi. It ran for 32 episodes and ended November 16, 2012. On 11 August 2011, Jay Adelson (founder of Revision3) started a show responding to questions for entrepreneurial, company and business advice called "Ask Jay". Diggnation announced that it would stop production of episodes from the end of 2011, which caused massive uproar. As consolation for this, production star Glenn McElhose started his own show called "Toasted Donut" on November 15, 2011, where he experiments with different formats. The last episode went ahead live at the Music Box on December 30, 2011, skipping to episode #420 for a 2-parter.
On May 3, 2012, Discovery Communications announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Revision3. The transaction closed on June 1, 2012.