Hi all. I was stuck on coming up with a question this week, so I dug up the archive of old questions done by the creator of “Question of the Week!!!” Andy Grady, and immediately got 3~4 questions I really want to do. After different considerations, I choose the following one. I still have a lot to learn from the master… Please e-mail me at [email protected] if you have any suggestions for question of the week. Thanks!
With the recent publicity of Dean and his inventions, and shows on tech TV and other stations about the competition, FIRST’s recognition is bigger than ever. But it still not enough considering how much recognition high school sports teams have. With that in mind, here is the question of the week…
Questions 12/08/02: Since kickoff is coming up, what publication or television show would you like to see cover FIRST in the following season?
Also, consider the recent event of FIRST leaving Disney… How do you think that affected the publicity for FIRST?
well i would like a major news station cover kick-off, as for it not being in disney, I would say that ABC wouldnt do its yearly story on us, but Dean Said that Disney will be at Houston, so that must mean Disney still wants to support FIRST, It just cant hold us anymore
Things FIRST should do:
-Advertise!
-Get those dang bottles of water out!
Media Should Do:
-Have news reports on teams through the season (like they meet three times, so it’s like, here’s bot a and here he is during concept, building, and completion!)
-Regional coverage
-Headline News bottom ticker should have FIRST standings.
Also, I think them leaving Disney won’t hurt the publicity of FIRST, if not to improve it. I think Disney will work their rear off trying to advertise and make people aware of FIRST so FIRST will once again come to Epcot.
Mmmmm… I think it will help to have FIRST leave EPCOT for now.
We will be away from our little sheltered life at EPCOT. Everyone expects stuff to go on at Disney, so it’s not a big deal to see a few tents in the parking lot.
We are taking over one of the newest football stadiums in the country, and getting our geekiness and nerdness all over it. Someone is bound to notice.
I don’t know if its just wishful thinking but i’m hoping that local news will cover our team at least after the fact or maybe during the fact just since we’re a houston team, then again the media frenzy hasn’t exactley started, right now by my count # of stories on news or newspaper- big fat 0
I would love to see channels like the discovery channel, and the learning channel do some specials on the FIRST competition. After all, TLC do specials on junkyard war, as well as other robotics competition. The FIRST competition is competitive enough, and should get pretty good rating considering the audience for those channels should be interested in these sort of things, especially when they find out they can participate in it very easily.
I have been reading a book about the power of media recently, and I am fairly convinced that if you want something big to happen, like using FIRST to change the culture by inspiring young minds about science and technology and keep doing it, you will need the media to acknowledge your effort and say good things about it… And its very important to get the big name media cooperation to start talking nice things about your project before the little newspaper/TV station start following their lead and say nice things about it. I guess this is why Dean promoted his Segway so much on ABC.
So, in terms of getting big name publications to start giving FIRST the publicities it deserve… I would definitely like to see technical magazine like Popular science or popular mechanics start making reports on FIRST, and more popular magazines like Times doing stories of the competition.
Until then, it would be hard getting local news stations and newspaper to be interested in coverage of this competition if they don’t see bigger companies like NBC, CNN, and ABC’s involvement…
I don’t think that FIRST sends out any type of press release to local media outlets. I think it would be in the best intrest of FIRST to send out press releases to the media in state where there are teams. This costs money which is something FIRST doesn’t have so I think that if teams want the orginization to grow the team needs to contact the TV stations and Newspapers and get the word out.
I work at an afiliate and I have metioned FIRST to a few producers and sent the News Director a link to the section on the FIRST website about what FIRST is…
It’s out of my hands now it’s up to everyone else out there.
*Originally posted by Jay5780 *
**I don’t think that FIRST sends out any type of press release to local media outlets. I think it would be in the best intrest of FIRST to send out press releases to the media in state where there are teams. This costs money which is something FIRST doesn’t have so I think that if teams want the orginization to grow the team needs to contact the TV stations and Newspapers and get the word out.
I work at an afiliate and I have metioned FIRST to a few producers and sent the News Director a link to the section on the FIRST website about what FIRST is…
It’s out of my hands now it’s up to everyone else out there. **
Why should FIRST be the ones to approach local media outlets? This is another part to first (like fundraising) that gets overlooked a bit. Since FIRST isn’t doing it, why doesn’t each team go out and approach their local media outlets and get the hype going themselves??
Every year since the team started, we have bugged all three local television stations and the papers. We usually get the newspaper out and sometimes get at least one of the news stations out.
Don’t wait for FIRST to do it, do it yourself!!
On a National scale, I would love to see TLC/Discovery stations cover it, if not getting it back on ESPN2!
There are companies out there that will fax press releases to local media for you. I don’ know the names of any specifically, but I know they are there because we get them all the time. Also FIRST could talk to the Associated Press and they would send out a news message to the media, again I get these all the time here at work. I have mentioned FIRST a couple times to a producer and one of the Sports guys (yes sports) and they said that it sounds good, but also said wy cover a local team if they don’t ask us to?
*Originally posted by Ken L *
**Hi all. I was stuck on coming up with a question this week, so I dug up the archive of old questions done by the creator of “Question of the Week!!!” Andy Grady, and immediately got 3~4 questions I really want to do. After different considerations, I choose the following one. I still have a lot to learn from the master… Please e-mail me at [email protected] if you have any suggestions for question of the week. Thanks!
With the recent publicity of Dean and his inventions, and shows on tech TV and other stations about the competition, FIRST’s recognition is bigger than ever. But it still not enough considering how much recognition high school sports teams have. With that in mind, here is the question of the week…
Questions 12/08/02: Since kickoff is coming up, what publication or television show would you like to see cover FIRST in the following season?
Also, consider the recent event of FIRST leaving Disney… How do you think that affected the publicity for FIRST?
Peace out,
Ken L =P **
It’s been awhile since I answered one of these. Now in all fairness, we do have the NASA channel. Of course, almost no one gets NASA TV, so we need a better answer. ESPN was good when they covered it, but chances are, we won’t see that again. That also rules out Disney or ABC. If FIRST were to get publicity from TV, it’d have to be accessible to everyone with a TV. So we have to go to the network channels. Now I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t want to be related to FOX, so they’re out. Not every area gets UPN or WB, so they’re out too. That leaves NBC and CBS. And since NBC runs more “less noticible” sports (i.e., the Gravity Games), I think they may be the perfect place to go for publicity. Now, odds of that actually happening…
As a collective whole, all the FIRST teams should talk to ESPN about covering the regionals. I watch Sportscenter every night and the way they do golf standings would be perfect for FIRST teams in the Regionals and then the Championship at EPCOT. Anyways, I think we could do this and its not outside the realm of possibility.