2015-02-22

29 Year Old Reporter Soledad O'Brien on MSNBC's 'The Site'


Here is a clip from the MSNBC program The Site from 1996 when Soledad O'Brien was the host. The show was about the new Internet and technology and MSNBC was then a very different kind of cable channel.

The Site was an hour-long TV program that debuted in July 1996 with MSNBC's launch and aired Monday through Saturday, reaching 35 million homes. The Site morphed into an entire technology channel called ZDTV, which was later renamed TechTV, and which merged to become G4.

Soledad closes out this episode with the virtual character Dev Null (voiced by Leo Laporte) singing  "Happy Together" accompanied by Andy Cahan, the keyboardist from the band that recorded that hit, The Turtles.



Soledad had anchored MSNBC's award-winning technology program The Site and also the MSNBC weekend morning show.

The Site was preempted for two weeks by news programs during the death of Diana, Princess of Wales during September 1997. That programming was very popular and changed MSNBC's approach to programming.  It was never brought back, and so the show ended without a finale.

Fans petitioned MSNBC to bring it back without success. A version of it was reincarnated, with laporte but without Soledad,  as The Screen Savers in May 1998.

Soledad had joined NBC News in 1991 and was based in New York as a field producer for Nightly News and Today. After The Site, she anchored NBC's Weekend Today starting in July 1999.

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