ESPN and FIRST
 

Whats the deal with this years broadcast of the competitons, will all of them be broadcast on ESPN or what just Nats?

I am a freshman fill me in :yikes:

I don't think ESPN covers it?


I know it'll be on NASA-TV...if your cable carries that channel.

*jeremy

O somewhere I thought I heard that ESPN covers it...

Along time ago ESPN used to cover it late at night. Not any more.

ESPN's last showing of the championship event was in 1998 (? Maybe 99) No clue on the reasoning why they dropped, and attempts with letters and emails by participants trying to get coverage back have failed.

Now that Disney is out, it would make ESPN coverage almost impossible.

Disney owns ABC Network who also own ESPN

ESPN covers Magic: The Gathering matches... now, I love that game, but frankly, I think we're more deserving of coverage.

I turned on ESPN the other day and they had re-runs of the national spelling bee championships from Washington D.C. ....

I was wondering why that wasn't on PBS or something :confused:

A few weeks ago, I saw a jump rope competition on ESPN2...

-Joel

they have something wrong there if they think jump rope gets better ratings than robotics...

If Tech TV had the resources I bet they would cover it...

Maybe If we asked PBS would cover it, or some station must be willing to broadcast it.

Cmon, it's the spelling bee! Everyone wants it on a sports channel :) so they could watch it after a hockey game or something

There was also that weird game where people push stuff around with big sticks. I think I saw it in the olympics, but I don't remember what it was called.

Curling.

I thought he was talking about hockey. (Really! I'm not just trying to get the hockey fans' goat -- although that's fun too.:D )

Robotic curling would be an amazing challenge. FIRST 2004? I'm all for it!

-Joel

Do you think we could get a local channel to cover the VCU Reg? Maybe 35, 12, or 8 would do it. I personally would like channel 12.

A friend of mine's mom works at 12, mabey we can get a spot there. Spark 2 was on 6 once.

Last time i saw the competition on TV was in 2001, the ONE minute report of channel 1 news..... they showed an amaizing 5 to 8 seconds of it and then moved on....... We NeeD full brocast of atleast the Nationals, so people that can't attend ( like me ), could know whats going on down there....

How about public acess television.:)

Dean got money, he should buy all this channels off, :yikes:

FIRST Regional Competiton: $25,000
Segway R&D: $6,000,000
Owning ABC News to publicies FIRST: priceless

Tech TV is a TV station from Microsoft.

Are you sure? I thought it was owned by Ziff-Davis (it used to be ZDTV, but they thought the name was too cryptic).

Hey wait a minute... how bout Dean buys disney or some other big company that owns tv stations...

Down with Disney. Up with Dean. Down with Disney. Up with Dean. Down with Disney. Up with Dean. Down with Disney. Up with Dean. Down with Disney. Up with Dean. Down with Disney. Up with Dean.

:D

Sorry, I just had to try that.

But seriously, he should buy Disney.

No, not anymore. A few years ago it was purchased by the guy who helped to start Microsoft. His name is Paul Allen, I think.

'98 was the last year ESPN covered the Championship. I think the first year they ran it was '95. They put together a one hour program which was run at least once each on ESPN and ESPN2.

I don't know why they quit running FIRST on ESPN, but it could be that the ratings were not high enough. I'm sure quite a bit of money was spent putting together the very professionally done broadcasts those few years. Still, it would be nice to see it return, but it might return to ESPN only if the Championship returns to Disney.

Paul Allen is very far away from the "Microsoft philosophy". I think TechTV is a really awesome network, and like I think you might've been implying, they do not support Microsoft devoutly. If you watch the ScreenSavers a lot, they condemn Microsoft's actions...not to say they're anti-Microsoft, but I'm just saying they have a broad spectrum of support for many platforms, products, and companies.

I'll e-mail them to see if we can maybe atleast get a spot on there...

*jeremy

So, uh, where can we find your cult compound?

Dean can't afford Disney. Sorry.

Yeaht thats true, maybe... just maybe. If a group of us gets together and takes all our footage and makes a kind of documentary. We could give it to TECHTV or someone to air

TechTV is owned by Vulcan Inc., which purchased it from Ziff-Davis Inc., on January 21, 2000.

In 1986, Paul G. Allen founded Vulcan Inc. with Jody Patton and William Savoy to manage his personal and charitable endeavors.

http://www.vulcan.com/index.asp

http://www.techtv.com/aboutus/corpor...360363,00.html

You would think with all the channels out there that always complain about lack of proggramming and give us shows like Judge Judy and Jerry Springer, there would be at least one that would show a global competition of over 600 teams that costs well over a million dollars to run and organize anually, would show the competitions.

You would really think somebody somewhere likes robotics more than spelling bees and Magic:TG tourneys. (I actually do like magic and this is not a dis, but FIRST is way better any day of the week):(

well lets start a guestbook and have people sign it, and sent it to diff. TV networks and tell them we want to see FIRST on TV.