Get Ready For RoboZone Season #2

[Jim Zondag]

All right, all of you Michigan Robotics Fans; the Competition Season is about to start and we are getting ready to launch season #2 of the RoboZone TV Series.

RoboZone is the ONLY weekly television series covering the exciting sport of FIRST Robotics. This program is brought to you by FIRSTinMichigan and Yellow Flag Productions and will cover all 22 Michigan FRC competition events this year. This season we are producing 8 weekly episodes, including a 1 hour Michigan State Championship Special.

We will feature event highlights from every district, weekly state top team rankings, and expert opinions and predictions.

This year we have a major upgrade to the program: we are moving the show to FOX Sports Detroit. Robozone will be covered in all Michigan broadcast markets and on Xfinity and Comcast cable networks. All 3.6 Million households in Michigan will now have access to our weekly FRC robotics show.

For anyone outside our area, you can watch every episode on our new website:
http://robozonetv.com/
The site contains all of the season 1 episodes, a detailed weekly broadcast schedule for season #2, as well as Michigan top 25 team rankings from our experts.

Episodes air first at 9:30 am Sunday Morning on you local Michigan Fox Stations......Episode One is the Sunday March 6th at 9:30 am. Set your DVR, you don't want to miss it!

Each episode will rebroadcast several times each week according to the posted schedule. Tell your local sports bar to tune in to the 10:30pm episode and help spread the word about FRC robotics.

Robotics Sports coverage on TV every week on a major network......this is a 20 year dream which has finally come true.

Thanks to Mark, Lorne, Gail, Dan and everyone else who has made this possible.

Go Teams!!!

[andrew4130]

So excited to watch!!!!

[JustinCAD]

Since Season #2, Episode 1 isn't uploaded on the website, I figured I might as well post the link to the episode on YouTube. It can be found here.

That was a pretty interesting episode, and I can't wait for it to air next week!

[Jim Zondag]

Teaser for Next Week's Roboxone Show
https://vimeo.com/158548370/81f2a41a90

Robozone Episode 2 is in the can and will air on Sunday 3/13 at 9:30am,
This episode will feature highlights from the week 1 season opener events of Stronghold.
Kettering 1 District,
Standish-Sterling District
Southfield District
Waterford District

Check it out, root for your favorite teams, and relive the trill of competition.

[Richard Wallace]

Jim, once again this is inspiring work.

You are the man when it comes to facts and figures related to robotics in the land of the mitten, so here's a question for you: How will we know when RoboZone is helping our community reach potential new participants, and to what extent that reach is independent of what we're already doing?

To clarify: RoboZone is wonderfully entertaining for those of us who have already drunk the kool-aid and are whooping it up inside the tent. What kind of metrics will show us that RoboZone is drawing in those who did not know the tent is there?

[Jim Zondag]

Episode #4 featuring Week 3 event coverage from Centerline, Escanaba and Midland aired yesterday and is up on the Robozonetv.com website.
Check it out fans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra9uu-wlRoU

Richard, to answer your question:
This is a very important topic for us.
We want the show to have an insider and outsider focus: it needs to have enough details about the sport and the events to be interesting for those who already compete or support FRC, while at the same time be general enough to attract outsiders without confusion. FRC is difficult to communicate as compared to most sports, we have many short matches and many teams at each event, as compared to just 2 teams at most mainstream sporting events. This poses challenges in clarity of communication to outsiders, but we are working through our second season and are improving. We do weekly feedback reviews and try to implement continuous improvement ideas each week.

In order to be a legitimate "sport" we need to work to grow a viewer base of non-participants, with the obvious hope that many of these people or their children will eventually want to become participants themselves. All of this will help to bring attention and support to our sport; despite 25 years of growth, FRC is still very much unknown to the general public.

FOXSportsDet collects viewership metrics on all of their programs.
At this point in the season, we do not have a summary of these results yet.
We will share as much of this as we are allowed once we have it.
All I can share at this point is that the FOX programming director appears to be happy with the Stronghold game dynamic, the Robozone program format, and with initial viewership levels. So far so good,

Input and feedback is welcome from anyone.

Jim Z

[Jim Meyer]

This was the info I found for the MSC Coverage:

State Champs! High School Sports Show
Robozone State Championship
Sunday, April 24th, 9:00 – 10:00 am

Fox Sports Detroit
Dish – Ch. 430
DirecTV – Ch. 663
Comcast Brighton – Ch. 32

[Jim Zondag]

FIRST Robotics Fans:
The Michigan Robotics Championship Special aired this morning on FoxSPORTS Detroit. This is an amazing sporty style show covering last Saturday's exciting championship playoffs. Professional announcing, play by play coverage, team interviews and much, much more! The show is now posted on YouTube at the link below.

https://youtu.be/FyUsjrcUc-w

Please share with your friends and families.
It will re-air tonight again at 6:00pm and again several times this week.

Robotics is the sport of the future.
Robozone is bringing it to the world.