In July 1996, MSNBC was launched. One of its initial offerings was the daily show The Site, hosted by Soledad O'Brien. This hour-long program devoted to the Internet revolution brought Soledad wide national recognition.

“I had a PC when that job came up, but I made it clear in my interview that I was not a technologist. I didn’t do spread sheets.

Andy Lack [then NBC News president] made it clear they wanted The Site geared so someone’s mom would know what we were talking about.”

The Site aired Monday through Saturday reaching 35 million homes and was a forerunner to an entire technology channel called ZDTV which later became TechTV.

Her co-host on The Site was the program's creator, Leo Laporte. Laporte was sometimes seen in person, and other times appeared in the guise of a virtual character, Dev Null.

Sometimes billed as "the Net's evening news," the show also brought Soledad Net fame.

An unofficial fan club started in November 1996.

Many articles appeared about the program, and Soledad was given some flattering, though perhaps unwelcome titles like "Goddess of the Geeks."

Lloyd Grove in The Washington Post dubbed her "television's first cyberbabe.".

Her message boards at The Site were full of inane commentary, generally no more insightful than geek speculation on topics such as why she so frequently wore black outfits, and whether or not she had a tattoo.

Part of her on-camera banter was with a cyber character called Dev Null (Leo Laporte) who often flirted with and informed Soledad on matters technological.

" In fact, one of the reasons that that segment of the show worked is that I could not see him as I was talking to him, and the segment was unscripted. He was funny, and his jokes were not gags."

Still, as an admitted newbie about things Internet, and as an Apple macintosh user, she provided a great go-between for audiences members who were equally new to the cyber world.

Her main duties included introducing the various segments, interviewing guests about software and Web pages and reporting on Net topics. She became appropriately confused when techie guests wandered too far into he land of jargon and voiced a "so what" tone about some of the programs and pages that were technically rich and content poor.

Her days began at 6 AM and often ran to 12+ hours. On weekends, she would catch up on her stuffed inbox.

She had her own web pages where she gave occasional dispatches on her job - for example, a piece on a shark-diving trip to the Bahamas that was preceded by a 4 day crash diving course.

"The first time I saw "The Site," I fell madly in love with her," says musician Andy Cahan, the keyboardist of the '60s rock group the Turtles. "She's so gorgeous and she's just adorable, but very firm and business like too."
Cahan, who has a lucrative online business doctoring demo tapes for fellow musicians, is featured on tonight's installment of "The Site."
In terms of plugging into the Zeitgeist if not actual viewers, he likens the experience of being interviewed by O'Brien to going on the old "Ed Sullivan Show". "Everybody watched "The Ed Sullivan Show." It was part of the national conversation. "The Site" is the '90s equivalent."