Tech Media Propaganda Operation Makes It Official, Goes In-House At OpenAI
On Thursday, OpenAI announced that it had acquired the Technology Business Programming Network (TBPN) show. The Financial Times reports that the recently de-Sorafied AI giant paid somewhere in the "low hundreds of millions of dollars" for the purchase. The deal immediately prompted a great deal of online handwringing about a nominal media operation selling out to one of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley, which is understandable but unwarranted. Nothing will have to change, as even the independent version of TBPN was already so dedicated to cheerleading for the rich and powerful people in tech as to have been indistinguishable from marketing.
TBPN streams on Twitter for three hours a day, five days a week. It was launched by startup guys turned streaming guys John Coogan and Jordi Hays in October 2024, and quickly rose to relative prominence: Its audiences have always been small, but audience size doesn't matter as much when the tech world and particularly so many of its most powerful people pay so much attention. TBPN has scored a bunch of rare interviews with the biggest names in tech, including Mark Zuckerberg at last year's Meta Connect. Zuckerberg famously loathes the media and does not do interviews, yet there he was, chopping it up with the boys.
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