In 1995, Ziff-Davis opened a television studio in San Francisco, California, US in order to produce a single television show called The Site, which aired for a single season on MSNBC. The show was anchored by Soledad O'Brien, featured Leo Laporte as Dev Null, and was graced with periodic guest appearances by Jim Louderback for inadvertent comic relief. The show was intended to serve the less-technical audience newly arriving on the internet, as the more technical audience was already well served by CNet.

After MSNBC changed to an all-news format in 1997, The Site was cancelled, and ZDTV moved on to starting their own television channel. Laporte stayed with ZDTV, but O'Brien moved on to anchor for other MSNBC shows, instead. Ziff-Davis' parent company, Softbank, sold ZDTV to Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures in 2000, around the same time they sold ZDNet to competitor CNet Networks, Inc. Allen's TechTV kept some familiar faces -- such as Laporte and The Screen Savers -- after the transition.