The Site

The Site is an hour-long TV program devoted to the Internet revolution. It debuted in July 1996 with MSNBC's launch, and aired Monday through Saturday, reaching 35 million homes. Soledad O'Brien hosted The Site, along with her animated co-host Dev Null, voiced by Leo Laporte. The Site covered technology in all forms, from technical aspects to news and culture. The show was sometimes billed as "the Net's evening news" . Guests included musical artists, authors and columnists, who spoke about the impact of technology on their work. History The NBC News executive in charge of creating The Site was David Bohrman, who was also the network's Executive Producer of Special Events and Breaking News. Bohrman was sent out to San Francisco to create and launch the program. His hiring of O'Brien is described in her book, The Next Big Story: My Journey Through the Land of Possibilities. The idea of Dev Null was also Bohrman's (after experimenting with virtual set technology at NBC the year before). Leo Laporte wore a motion suit, had an IFB earpiece, so he could hear O'Brien, and his animated image was rendered in real-time by an Onyx SGI computer. The artwork for Dev was designed by Protozoa.