FIRST "Final 4": Ready for live TV (non-NASA TV)?

[Tristan Lall]

Let's be realistic about the nature of television. The broadcasters exist to profit from commercials—with the exception of public stations like NASA TV, or a PBS affiliate. For that sort of a business model to work, they need to be sure that any program will appeal to a sufficiently large audience, and that they can sell advertising targeted to that audience. Lacking either, they won't show a full-length broadcast of the game.

FIRST's current strength, when it comes to public exposure, involves the entire process—in other words, it's better-suited to a documentary approach. If the documentaries are good enough, it may come to pass that more and more people are willing to look beyond that, to the game itself—but here, one of FIRST's strengths becomes a weakness. We like the fact that the game is new every year—but to the layman, this means that the common ground is limited from season to season. When that happens, more time needs to be devoted to exposition, rather than gameplay—in essence, it needs to revert to the documentary format (after a fashion, at least) to explain what's going on.

Part of the problem likely has to do with the general lack of technological familiarity among the general public. It's easy for something that draws upon base instincts to become popular (e.g. Survivor); but what about something that is in large part not result-oriented, and instead process-oriented, and is furthermore dependent on the sort of technical skills that are not particularly widespread among the general populace? On American Chopper, or things of that nature, the projects themselves are secondary to the petty bickering and ineptitude of the cast—and let's face it, if it consisted of 70%* engineering and design, would it be so popular?

We all know that the general public wouldn't care what Sergey Brin wanted to say, and wouldn't know who Dean Kamen is. That added wrinkle makes for an interesting problem. If the stated objective is culture change, and these speeches are the instruments by which the process begins, how could we justify the obvious concession to television—putting the commercials in between matches, and ignoring the slow-paced oratory?

Basically, FIRST isn't ready for (profitable) prime time. It's not that it wouldn't be beneficial, it's just that the format is not very compatible, and the presentation isn't conducive to the generation of profit. Actually, one might say that prime time isn't ready for FIRST, but that's indicative of our perspective and priorities, which aren't by any means shared with the public. Maybe it's for the same reason that Battlebots, Robot Wars, and all other shows of that nature are broadcast only after heavy editing. The public wouldn't have a clue what was going on, if it weren't for the expository segments before and after each match. These segments are only possible because they can be filmed at different times, and prepared in advance of the broadcast date. I could see a FIRST show as being workable, but for a live broadcast to function well, there's much work to be done.

*This number doesn't imply anything about FIRST. I just needed to lie with statistics.