What does FIRST need to be on TV?

[archiver]

Posted by P.J. Baker at 04/29/2001 11:10 PM EST


Engineer on team #177, Bobcat Robotics, from South Windsor High School and International Fuel Cells.



I'm curious, what do people think is the answer to this question? Personally, I don't think it has much at all to do with many of the arguments I've seen so far.

I am almost certainly over simplifying, but:

Between 13 regionals and 1 national competition, don't we generate more than enough footage of high quality matches for a season of half hour T.V. shows?

Even with this year's "non-competition" (btw - I loved it), weren't the elimination rounds of all 14 competitions pretty exciting? (nothing more than the elim rounds would ever make it to TV)

Don't FIRST teams have plenty of great little stories to tell that could be used as filler?

Aren't there a lot of big time corporations that support FIRST and might be willing to purchase some ads on the shows?

It seems to me that the pieces are all there to do something on the same scale as the Battle Bots TV show. My guess has to be that they haven't yet been put together because FIRST hasn't yet tried properly. I have to think that if Dean, Woodie, & the gang worked with some TV production folks while they were developing the game, things could be tweaked here and there and the Elimination rounds could be run in such a way that they could be edited into the episodes of the TV show.

There's more to say, but this post is already too long. What do you all think? Am I way off base?

P.J. Baker
Team #177