Sports-Style Broadcast

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

I think getting FIRST on a major television network would be the major challenge. not just because of making it marketable, but also because of scheduling. The NBC Universal channels are usually locked down with College Basketball conference tournaments in early March and deal with the NHL playoffs right around the time for CMP. CBS has the Masters, NCAA tournament and other college basketball conference tournaments taking up the time needed for Regional broadcasts. FOX has baseball, which means that broadcasting CMP would be an issue. ABC has the same thing, but with the NBA Playoffs. Finding commentators who are likely to know their stuff shouldn't be as difficult as many people think it would be.

I think there are three options that FIRST can take if they really did want to get on TV.

FOX Sports Network channels that operate regionally may be a good landing spot. channels such as FOX Sports Southwest and FOX Sports Florida may be interested in carrying an event like a local FIRST regional. The main concern then would be to get a simulcast of the Championship Event, not all the teams would be regional anymore, and that may mean some of these affiliates lose interest in broadcasting this over a college baseball game on a Saturday afternoon.

The only issue with FSN is that they don't have national coverage. I agree that they would do an excellent job covering regionals, but the Championship is another story. FOX and the new FOX Sports 1 could televise some events.

ABC/ESPN may also have an opportunity to work out; If ESPN gave FIRST the same opportunity that they gave Cricket. We would likely see regional events could be broadcasted on ESPN3 and the Championship Event could be run on either ESPN or ABC (whichever isn't broadcasting the NBA Playoffs). District Championships could also be shown on ESPNU or ESPN2

My scenario for ABC/ESPN would be:

• All events (Regionals, Districts, District Championships) on ESPN3 and usfirst.org (ESPN3 isn't available to all internet users. The usfirst.org
• A "Regional of the Week" Saturday afternoons on ABC
• ABC has the SEC basketball tournament semi-finals on one Saturday afternoon in March. A potential resolution to this conflict would be to take that weekend off and televise 2 regionals (most likely an ET/CT regional and Hawaii) another week. A PT regional could also be televised immediately following the basketball games (joined in progess if necessary).
• ESPN televising an additional regional in select weeks (when it doesn't have any other programming)
• MSC on ABC
• MAR Championship (or another future district Championship) on ESPN
• Championship qualification/alliance selection coverage on ESPN or ESPN2 or ESPNU and ESPN3
• FTC and FLL coverage on ESPN3
• Saturday afternoon division elimination "whip-around" coverage on ABC (If FIRST decides to go back to having 2 FRC fields in the pits, all eliminations could be in the dome; leaving 2 fields to "bounce" between, instead of 4)
• Uncut elimination feeds from all fields on ESPN3
• Einstein/Awards Ceremony coverage in the evening (8/7c) on ABC
• ABC currently has an afternoon NBA playoff game the Saturday of Championship. That would have to move to ESPN/ESPN2. EDIT:ABC has the X-Games and not an NBA playoff game that Saturday.

The major drawback to this would be that ESPN3 doesn't really bother with improving production quality for the events broadcasted online. This would likely mean regional events would be left the same, just a plain webcast similar to the one on the big screen at the event. unless the regional thought it would be important to make sure home viewers have something better to watch rather than the big screen.

See below.

FIRST could also settle for a network like HDNet, which does UFC and used to do UFL games.... Come to think of it, one of the investors, Mark Cuban, would be the perfect person to add to the FIRST leadership...

We can do better than HDNet, especially since HDNet doesn't exist anymore. I don't know if Mark Cuban would be great to add to the FIRST leadership either.

Remember that television is all about ratings, the last time FIRST was on TV, this is what happened.

TV is usually about money. Generally ratings = money, but in this case we can be profitable for any TV network, since they won't have to pay any rights fees. High rights fees are the reason why even the undisputed ratings #1 NFL still loses money for the networks that televise it.

The ratings threshold for profit would be very low. And I think we can meet or exceed some of the non-major sports ratings. (The ones that are seen on Saturday/Sunday afternoon broadcast TV.)

If FIRST wants to get on TV. I think FIRST will likely have to build some infrastructure to ensure that regionals/district broadcasts are standardized. (ie: they're broadcasted using the same service, same resolution etc.) before a network executive would really take a serious look at putting a competitive high school robotics competition on television.

I agree, the FMS/house feed needs to be improved and made more uniform across events.