Ready For TV Yet?

[nuggetsyl]

i think discover chanel would be the best place.

shaun

[lukevanoort]

Discovery fits, but I'd really like to see it on ABC, FOX, or one of the other huge networks. If the GDC pulls off a simple, (to understand) fast-paced game with lots of strategies, scoring, defense and so on it (IMHO) would get a good number of viewers. (At least more than that American Inventor show)

[Dylan]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

i think discover chanel would be the best place.

I agree, the Discovery Channel needs to cover the event, all three days of it.
They could make it a special!

[Dillon Compton]

I would like to see a channel follow one or two teams through a season, reality TV style (TLC, perhaps?). The show would air weekly and would document the trials and tribulations the teams experience in their quest to build a robot. Funding issues, unexpected failures, and tense design meetings; these things make for great television. The regionals attended would be filmed and summarized (perhaps a special two hour program would be aired, with highlights, matches, and images of pitcrews etc...). This would all lead up to limited or full coverage of nationals; they could make it a two-day special event, and invite speakers to speak in interim periods or low action times (Dean Kamen, national WFA winners, Dave Lavery, Woody, etc...).

I think that the weekly show for 6 weeks will help establish a viewing base that will attract people to the "big event"- this will increase viewership and perhaps make it even moderately worth while for the station.

Discovery or TLC are probably our best bets.

[MattK]

From someone who works in the TV Industry I can tell you right now, you will not see FIRST Nationals in prime time broadcast television anytime soon. The event does not have a wide enough appeal as of yet. I can see Discovery doing a 1 hour on the event, but never covering the whole competition. Even when ESPN covered the event, it was not every match, they covered just a select few.

[Tristan Lall]

Remember this thread from last week?

It raises some issues that seem rather relevant to this poll....

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by MattK

From someone who works in the TV Industry I can tell you right now, you will not see FIRST Nationals in prime time broadcast television anytime soon. The event does not have a wide enough appeal as of yet. I can see Discovery doing a 1 hour on the event, but never covering the whole competition. Even when ESPN covered the event, it was not every match, they covered just a select few.

You are absolutly right, It would be far more likly for you to see a special that would take a couple of teams that make it to einstein and show you how they got there. They could end the show with the finals match. To follow the team through build season you would need a series not just a special, a series would be very simmilar to American chopper (has any one else ever thought that shop would be the best workspace ever) and would likly present both the robot problems and the people problems, while this would be fun it is a long way away. For now just keep watching the clips that make it on other shows.

[Cory]

This is harsh, but for FIRST to work on a major network television channel, it has to be showing good teams. Nobody wants to see matches where the score is 30-0. They want to see matches like Finals match 2 on Einstein, where it's action packed, and high scoring.

This pretty much precludes any chance of broadcasting an entire regional, or even nationals. There's too many mundane matches mixed in with the exciting ones.

The best way I can think of for this to happen is American Chopper style, as suggested before. They'd need to follow a team like Beatty, Wildstang, etc. A proven powerhouse, that will make a good robot and have exciting matches.

They could show the design and build process, and then an overview of the highlights from each team's regionals, and matches from nationals. Full matches might prove to be too long for a TV audience, unless they're extremely exciting.

[Billfred]

Can they be televised successfully? I think it depends. The main requirement is that the game has to be elevator-friendly, in that I can explain it to someone on the elevators of the Moore School of Business on the way to class. (And those elevators move fast, goodness!)

I could definitely see the finals of a regional (especially the stronger ones) televised on one of the broadcast stations in town. And something like the Einstein finals would easily qualify as something for Wide World of Sports, even on a tape delay. (Sure, it's more exciting live--but the finals start relatively late for the east coast for such things.)

So my answer is yes, they could--but the game needs to be a top-notch one, on par with FIRST Frenzy and Aim High.

[Chris Hibner]

I really don't see FIRST ever being shown on live TV - there's too much down time, and too many matches that people probably won't want to see.

I see FIRST television taking the same approach that Poker has taken on TV: film the entire event, edit it to show the good stuff with a few human interest points thrown in, and air it at a later date.

Most of the TV announcers describe Texax Hold'em as hours of boredom with a few minutes of terror thrown in. No one is going to watch the hours of boredom just for the minutes of terror - therefore they tape and edit.

I'm not saying that FIRST contains consecutive hours of boredom, but out of a typical 8 hour day full of matches, 5-6 hours of it is down time. In addition, some of the matches just aren't that interesting. Besides that, I don't think that there's anything in the world that is interesting enough for people to sit and watch for 8 hours in one block - people have things to do.

I bet that you can take an entire regional and edit it into about 1 - 1.5 hours of exciting television. If FIRST becomes popular enough, the show could air on Sunday - the day after the event. I don't ever see FIRST going live for an entire event - MAYBE the final 4 at the Championship, but that's it.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

I bet that you can take an entire regional and edit it into about 1 - 1.5 hours of exciting television. If FIRST becomes popular enough, the show could air on Sunday - the day after the event. I don't ever see FIRST going live for an entire event - MAYBE the final 4 at the Championship, but that's it.

Probably would be 2 weeks to a month afterwards, because the editing would take that long. You are talking about human interest stories, team interaction, as well as the robot competition and such. However, in this format (texas holdum style or documentary style), it could be packaged properly for Discovery Channel, TLC, or other 'high tech audience' channels.

[petek]

One more chime in the chorus for a Discovery-type story (vs an ESPN-type sport show):

I feel a Discovery Channel-esque show could cover the awards far better than a sports-oriented production would. I'd be concerned about CA, EI, etc. not getting any coverage if the focus was the robot competition.

[jax1488]

much like HBO on demand... where u pick out the movies...

their should be FIRST on demand.. lol pick out the regional and matches... and if u have DVR it will auto. record for u!! i think thats the best way to go

[Lil' Lavery]

A&E HAS followed 2 teams for the full season in the past. In 2001, the A&E series, "The Competition" did a 1 hour show on teams 116 and 388 and how they faired at the NASA Langley/VCU Regional.

FIRST competitions do not suit themselves to be live tv compatable. There is simply no time to put commercials. Especially at the regional level you also get several "dud" matches, with multiple lower level teams, which are not entertaining to watch. The 10-8 matches are simply boring, no other way to put it.
I can tell you from expierience that an action-packed matches will draw substantially more attention from a non-FIRSTer. During an outreach event this year, we had a DVD running with several of our matches on it, our AVA entry, the game animation, and the GTR Semi-final highlight real (to show what CAN be done in FIRST, not just what 116 did). Many more people watched and commented on the GTR highlight reel than any of our matches. Seeing teams like the triplets, and Thunder Chickens unloaded is far more interesting than any average match.
If you were to edit the competition and basically make a highlight reel of the better matches, elimination rounds, and the big awards, then it might be entertaining television. But then again, that was what ESPN did, and it was still pretty boring to watch.

[Marc P.]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

Most of the TV announcers describe Texax Hold'em as hours of boredom with a few minutes of terror thrown in. No one is going to watch the hours of boredom just for the minutes of terror - therefore they tape and edit.

I'm not saying that FIRST contains consecutive hours of boredom, but out of a typical 8 hour day full of matches, 5-6 hours of it is down time. In addition, some of the matches just aren't that interesting. Besides that, I don't think that there's anything in the world that is interesting enough for people to sit and watch for 8 hours in one block - people have things to do.

I bet that you can take an entire regional and edit it into about 1 - 1.5 hours of exciting television. If FIRST becomes popular enough, the show could air on Sunday - the day after the event. I don't ever see FIRST going live for an entire event - MAYBE the final 4 at the Championship, but that's it.

This was exactly my thought when combining FIRST with TV. To the competitors, it's exciting to watch your team's hard work come to fruitation by fielding a robot and having it compete. To the average person who has no idea what goes into building a robot, or what the spirit of FIRST is, the competition looks like 8 hours of repetitive motion. It's not even so much that the matches are boring to watch, but more that people watching the same type of game over and over and over again tend to become disinterested after a period of time. Robots come on the field, move around, shoot some balls, move off the field, rinse, repeat. It's interesting for the first few matches while the concept of the game sinks in, but after watching 20 or so matches in a row, it does get repetitive. This is especially true if an outsider doesn't have a team to relate to. Take a sport like baseball for example- most people interested in baseball have a favorite team, like the Red Sox, or Yankees, and have favorite players on each team, like Manny Ramirez, or Derek Jeter. People can watch a full 9 innings of baseball because they have a team to root for, and their team/players are out there for all 9 innings. In a FIRST competition, even if a spectator has a favorite team, that team will only be competing in 8 or 9 out of around 100ish matches. The rest of the 90ish matches won't hold as much meaning or interest, and combined with the repetition of the game, can easily become boring to the average TV watching person.

I think the solution is like many have already posted in this thread- put together an edited show documenting the trials of one or a few individual teams throughout the build season (Discovery Channel did this for some teams in the 2004 season, details in this thread ), and finish it up with highlights from the team's performance at the competitions. This will generate interest in how the robots come to be, give the spectators some attachment to the featured team, and as a result give the viewers someone to root for when watching video of the competition itself. All the while, it may encourage people who otherwise wouldn't have known about FIRST to seek out teams in their area and offer whatever assistance they can. Accomplish that, and it may help make Dean's dream of a FIRST team in every high school a reality, once enough people see what's involved in working with a team and realize they can easily become a part of it.