Some think that System Showdown was born as a retaliation to it’s long-time rival, The Sports Docket, or so that Kwass can show his “versatility” by doing a second show, having no relationship at all to sports. Either way, System Showdown has become extremely infamous as one of the most popular technology shows on the internet radio network BlogTalkRadio.
System Showdown, casually referred to as Showdown, began with a trifecta of hosts: Jon Scheiber, Ethan Kwassman, and Zeeshan Mughal. Jon Scheiber, playing the role of “The Mac Guy,” is keen to displaying his tremendous Mac-ish insight at various points during the live episodes. Ethan Kwassman, playing the role of the “lunatic Windows user” (as Jon sees it) or as “the PC guy” (as Kwass sees it), bashes Apple for the expensive prices they place on their products during just about every show, but usually gets shutdown as Jon makes Kwass fall-in-love with the revolutionary product, and come to see it for what its worth. Zeeshan, who had to leave the panel once he began college at Stony Brook University, advocated the free market, open-source software, and anything and everything Linux.
System Showdown usually associated with the rhythmic phrase: Showdown with Kwass & Jon; made its official debut on Friday, May 18, 2007 at 5:30 p.m. with a 30-minute show. Their first one-hour show on June 1, 2007 was quite a spectacle, with not only being their 3rd episode on BTR, but also having Arnold Kim, founder of the extremely popular MacRumors.com website, joining the hosts on the show. In that episode, Showdown picked up 18 Live Listeners, and 5 callers into the program. Since then, Showdown has accumulated over 15 more episodes, as they air weekly on Tuesday nights. Due to the busy schedule of the hosts, every Tuesday night is not a guarantee, so they do some spot shows here and there.
Our most popular segments is App of the Week, which you can read about on its own dedicated page. Additionally, a major segment that has become a hit on System Showdown is The Digg Effect. This is where Kwass and Jon discuss in detail stories that they have personally “Dugg” on their profiles over at the extremely popular social news website, Digg (with a Double “G” yo). Hey, if Kevin Rose or Alex Albrecht happen to stop by this page, don’t worry. We don’t do a mock-up of your popular podcast, Diggnation. We have different intro music and everything. This segment began with Kwass & Jon discussing five stories or more from their website, but eventually it has become a segment where the hosts begin to discuss one story, then get sidetracked, and you know where it goes from there. But, it’s all good fun. Another popular segment is Techno Throwdowns, where Kwass & Jon battle it out between Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS, and discuss in-depth one program or app (as Jon refers to it).
With Ethan Kwassman and Jon Scheiber rotating duties on the switchboard monitoring commercial breaks, this dynamic duo presents an interesting conversation for their fans. Kwass, with his conservative Windows ways, comes around most of the time to realize the “creativity” of apps for the Macintosh, and Jon, comes around to see that Microsoft really isn’t that “evil” as he think they are, or maybe not. Some big technology products have been released during the establishment of Showdown, which had both of the hosts salivating over them. They include the MacBook Air, Mac OS X Leopard, iPhone, iPod touch, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Silverlight (only Kwass there), Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Vista (that was a lot of fun), and countless others.
On average, Showdown has about 17 live listeners and 125 listeners on the archived segments. In fact, from episode 9 to episode 11 in which the hosts talked about the release of Mac OS X Leopard, Microsoft Silverlight, and the new Microsoft Zunes mp3 players, they totaled 60 listeners.
If you want to call into the next episode of Showdown, just dial (347) 426-3903 or chat with the hosts through Jabber/XMPP during the show at ethankwassman@jabber.org and scheiber@jabber.org. We also have an off-air listener voicemail and text line at (415) SHOWDOWN, or (415) 746-9369. If you or an organization you represent would like to get advertised on Showdown, or just have a general question for the hosts, email us at showdown@showdock.com. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.