This was on ESPN, and it’s been broadcast on there for many years, which probably accounts for why it’s on the air. But you can’t compare spelling bees with reality shows simply because they’re cheap to produce.
Spelling bees aren’t an indication of how TV will be in the future, as reality shows might be. Spelling bees have been on for many years; reality TV has not.
Were you complaining when ESPN in its infancy was showing mostly crappy fourth-rate sports? I wasn’t, because I wasn’t watching them - but you notice those crappy, fourth-rate sports aren’t prevelant across the dial?
I was surprised to see ESPN air it but when compared to the other programming it indulges in — World’s Strongest Man, Bowling, Fishing etc., the Spelling Bee was both riveting and informative to watch.
And how long was MTV’s The Real World (then Road Rules) on the air before other networks glomed onto the idea that they could make a show without paying writers? A good 5 years at least. Simply being confined to one network for a while doesn’t mean it won’t eventually spread. Like genital warts.
Hey, if you wanna compare spelling bees to The Real World[sup]tm[/sup], more power to you. Don’t see the connection, though. Also don’t think there’s ever going to be a glut of spelling bees o’ertaking the land of television.
litost, I could not agree more. I was almost as pissed at that guy for not spelling gadarene (Gadarene, if he does vanity searches, is going to be mighty puzzled as to why his name appears in this pit thread;)) as I was at the commentators for effectively cutting out the first minute’s worth of finding out wtf the next word was. It’s the equivalent of putting your hand over the camera in a baseball game and talking about where the hiter is from, etc.
Sure, we let the plebs have their boobies, some of those people have never seen the real thing, it’s kind of like a public service.
Still, I take it all back, a spelling bee really couldn’t be worse than the majority of programs on TV here (unless they talked all over it – that’d really piss me off).
