Tv

[Gope]

FIRST is a great organizatoin, we all know this, but the problem is that the general public dosen't. Most people only caught small glimpses of us from interviews with Dean, and the NASA TV coverage isn't to great. I mean, other than us, who watches NASA TV.

FIRST needs publicity. We need to get someone else to broadcast our events. I think maybe TechTV would be a good channel because we follow their theme. And maybe even PBS or TLC or Discovery. If we could get that type of publicity then FIRST would explode next year with more teams than we could imagine. Not to mention the whole new group of sponsors.

So, how does this happen. Where do we begin, contacting Dean? Or something else?

[Ashley Weed]

I don't see this happening in the near future, however, many many events for sports are televised. Why can't we get CBS, NBC, or ABC to televise our finals?


..........now that would be TV coverage!

Its quite unfortunate, but the chances of FIRST having a large TV contract with a major network is quite slim in this sports orientated world. Its sad. ESPN has all this free time to show these dumb worlds strongest man contests over and over again, yet they dont have room to put us on. Heh the World Magic: The Gathering and Spelling Bee get ESPN time.


Sad

[Jay5780]

It's all about money. I work at an abc affiliate and I know that any local station or network won't put anything on the air unless it will either make them money from ratings (because they have to buy programing) or it is paid programing. Paid programming is not only expensive it is on a station by station or provider by provider basis thus it would not be on everywhere.

The best bet for FIRST would be to get Disney to put it on ABC as an affiliate swap. An affiliate swap is when the affiliate gets the show via satellite, tapes it, and then shows it in place of network specified reruns or during local programing.

If this was the case FIRST would have to let teams know about this before the show is sent to the stations so the teams can put pressure the pressure on to air it. A station will air it if they think that they will get viewers for it instead of a rerun.

And then you have the other side of the story... It costs A TON of money to produce any type of good show. I know FIRST tapes the events, but to make it a good show they would have to follow some teams around and hope that they would go on to win. FIRST used to show a previous years compeition in mid-December on ESPN.

Teams can help out by getting local tv media involved with there season to help the local FIRST community grow.

It would be great to see FIRST on TV again in itr's whole nature rather than in a news program.