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If ABC wants to continue airing the National Spelling Bee...

B

bpatrick

I don't know how many of you care about the National Spelling Bee
(I do, because I got as far as my local finals in 1967), but there was
a glaring piece of unfairness on Friday night's telecast that was commented
on by one of the participants to the audience's applause:

It seems that ABC was afraid there wouldn't be enough spellers to fill out
a two-hour telecast and allowed only the ten spellers still on stage at the
end of Friday afternoon's truncated session to take part in the primetime
telecast. The problem is that six did not have to spell a word in the afternoon
and were allowed into the telecast because they came from states near the
top of the alphabet. (Nine spellers had been eliminated in the afternoon round--
ABC deemed 19 too many for the telecast but feared that 10 was too few.)

One finalist, Elizabeth Platz of Shelbina, MO, won the audience's applause when
she said, "I'd rather have five finalists than five who didn't deserve it."

BTW, Anamika Veeramani of North Royalton, OH, correctly spelled a medical term,
"stromuhr" (don't ask me what it means) to win it all, including more than $40,000
in cash and prizes.

If this is the way ABC is going to operate, put the whole thing back on ESPN.
 
Well, the National Spelling Bee is pretty much a verbal sport, as the words are always toughies.

But I remember watching the 1991 bee on CNN (won by Joanne Lagatta; the word was "antipyretic"), when they were still held in the afternoon.
 
ROBGv1 said:
Its not a sport why is it on a sports network?
Click to expand...

People forget that in the early days of ESPN, programs such as "lumberjack competitions" were a mainstay on their schedule...
 
johnnya2k6 said:
Well, the National Spelling Bee is pretty much a verbal sport, as the words are always toughies.
Click to expand...

Also, IIRC bpatrick mentioned way back when on R-I that he is an active or retired (I forget which) schoolteacher.

bpatrick (I assume you are a "Munsters" fan by your handle), since you are an NSB veteran, I must ask you this... did you ever see A Boy Named Charlie Brown in the theatre, like I did 40 years ago as an 8-going-on-9yo? Read all about ABNCB at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_Named_Charlie_Brown .

ixnay
 
DToTheJ said:
ROBGv1 said:
Its not a sport why is it on a sports network?
Click to expand...

People forget that in the early days of ESPN, programs such as "lumberjack competitions" were a mainstay on their schedule...
Click to expand...

Didn't ESPN2 air kids' jumprope competitions a mere 3 or 4 years ago?

ixnay
 
ixnay said:
johnnya2k6 said:
Well, the National Spelling Bee is pretty much a verbal sport, as the words are always toughies.
Click to expand...

Also, IIRC bpatrick mentioned way back when on R-I that he is an active or retired (I forget which) schoolteacher.

bpatrick (I assume you are a "Munsters" fan by your handle), since you are an NSB veteran, I must ask you this... did you ever see A Boy Named Charlie Brown in the theatre, like I did 40 years ago as an 8-going-on-9yo? Read all about ABNCB at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_Named_Charlie_Brown .

ixnay

I am an active teacher, although I teach history, not English (but I'm still a stickler for spelling), and, as I recently pointed out,
I have no connection to Butch Patrick; b is my first initial and Patrick my last name. And I do seem to recall seeing "A Boy Named Charlie Brown," but the word I missed was a lot tougher than "beagle." Mine was "anagnorisis," which has something to do with a part of a play. I haven't heard or used the word before or since.
Click to expand...
 
I think the deal with Scripps/ABC was to make sure there were at least 10 spellers during the primetime session. I know in previous years, the afternoon session stopped with like 12 or 13 kids left after a round and let them go on to primetime. When the afternoon session ended this year, it did during a round with a combination of spellers getting their word right and spellers who hadn't gone yet still in play, so those few plus random wild cards filled out your field for primetime. Sure, it wasn't completely kosher, but both Scripps/ABC wanted a competitive contest to be shown during primetime, so they did what they had to do. For those that causal viewers or viewers who were watching the competition for the first time (in afternoon and/or primetime), they wouldn't have noticed a difference in the primetime lineup because to them its just kids spelling until there's one kid left who wins.
 
There was something odd about this year's event.
The past few years it seems to me there's been much more publicity.
This year they managed to put it on a Friday night in June when no one was watching.
The ratings bombed. I don't recall that happening the past few years.
 
bpatrick said:
I have no connection to Butch Patrick; b is my first initial and Patrick my last name. And I do seem to recall seeing "A Boy Named Charlie Brown," but the word I missed was a lot tougher than "beagle." Mine was "anagnorisis," which has something to do with a part of a play. I haven't heard or used the word before or since.
Click to expand...

b, I never saw or heard the word you flubbed before until you mentioned it. My handle btw derives from seeing too many Flintstones reruns. :) And I saw Snoopy Come Home too on the big screen (but not Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown or Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown [and Don't Come Back!]).

ixnay
 
ixnay said:
b, I never saw or heard the word you flubbed before until you mentioned it. My handle btw derives from seeing too many Flintstones reruns. :) And I saw Snoopy Come Home too on the big screen (but not Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown or Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown [and Don't Come Back!]).
ixnay
Click to expand...

Semi-Hijack

ABC Family showed both A Boy Name Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home back in November or December. I wish they would show Race For Your Life Charlie Brown. It was my favorite. A Boy Name Charlie Brown is my number 2 favorite. I believe the last time I saw Race for Your Life Charlie Brown on TV was on the UPN Movie Trailer which aired Saturday Mornings (or afternoons depending on your local UPN affiliate). Back in the day USA used to show it on cable a couple times a year (but that was before they USA became the Law & Order Network).
 
I was in the Stark County (Ohio) Finals in 1972..The word I missed: "Mayonnaise"..Wouldnt have mattered a lot anyway because The Canton Repository Newspaper, The Local sponsor of the Bee, was in the middle of a long strike, and because of issues relating to the strike, The winner wouldnt be able to go to Washington for the national finals..Was frustrating because I had competed for four years (5th-8th grade). Going a little farther each year..But, oh well..
 
The reason it's on ABC? Well, it's because of how deep in bed Scripps historically is with ABC - WXYZ, WEWS, and (most importantly) the events of the 1990s affiliation switch where Scripps signed a group deal with ABC for all stations except KC (KMBC-9 too dominant) and Tulsa (Allbritton, another ABC fanatic, also in the market with KTUL-8).

In the 1990s, after Fox/New World, this was the second big domino to fall. Group W only got mad because WJZ got pulled under the rug by the Scripps switch forcing ABC to WMAR. That was Domino 3, and it was actually a very big domino.
 
ABC also got Scripps' WCPO Cincinnati from CBS in
that deal. Also, Fox/New World got the CBS affiliates
in Phoenix and Tampa, so Scripps switched KNXV and
WFTS, respectively, from Fox to ABC.

The whole thing, as I understand it, was to keep WEWS
and WXYZ from going to CBS, since WJW and WJBK also
went from CBS to Fox in the Fox/New World deal.
 
Remember when Cablevision had a brief skirmish with Scripps Networks over carriage of HGTV and Food Network? I wonder if that happened around the time of the Scripps-sponsored spelling bee - would it be blacked out?
 
bpatrick said:
ABC also got Scripps' WCPO Cincinnati from CBS in
that deal. Also, Fox/New World got the CBS affiliates
in Phoenix and Tampa, so Scripps switched KNXV and
WFTS, respectively, from Fox to ABC.

The whole thing, as I understand it, was to keep WEWS
and WXYZ from going to CBS, since WJW and WJBK also
went from CBS to Fox in the Fox/New World deal.
Click to expand...

Yup. And CBS was really trying to get in bed with WEWS and WXYZ. Of course...where they ended up in those markets at the end is a whole other yucky story.

And to see a brand-new package flushed halfway down (KSAZ in 1994) because of this...wow. Ick. And the package was extremely beautiful.
 
I believe the final rounds of the bee in primetime had been on Thursday nights in the past. I really don't know why they moved it to Friday, of all days, this year.

Speaking of newspapers, all of the spellers used to be sponsored by their local paper for a long time. Now they never show the names of newspapers under the spellers' names on TV anymore. I am wondering if the economy had anything to do with this and they no longer sponsor the kids.
 
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