Despite all the hoopla over the National Spelling Bee, thanks to recent movies, Americans aren't willing to watch pre-teens try to spell impossible-to-pronounce words. The final two hours of the Scripps National Spelling Bee aired live on ABC on The winner of this year's national spelling bee was an upset. New Jersey 8th grader Katherine Close correctly spelled "ursprache" to win the whole shooting match.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-05-2006 @ 10:58AM
Tammy said...
We were going to watch some of this anyway but our local station got hit during a bad storm. The channel was out all night. Not sure I would have watched two hours of it but we had planned to check it out.
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6-05-2006 @ 10:59AM
Jay said...
Small Typo....Last sentence...."The winner of this year's national spelling bee (not be) was an upset."
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6-05-2006 @ 11:11AM
Lampbane said...
Unfortunately, Thursday is drinking night so I went out, though the bar did have it on the TV and my friends and I got into a debate over the worth of spelling bees...
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6-05-2006 @ 11:17AM
richard lawrence said...
Actually it aired last Thursday night and I thoroughly enjoyed. Read the article more closely and you will see that the audience built over time. If I were ABC, I would be quite pleased. While the article seems to be somewhat dismissive of the audience size, I hardly believe that the network had delusions that somehow the Spelling Bee final was going to post AMERICAN IDOL type numbers. Even more importantly, I am sure the audience for the final two to three times larger than it ever was on ESPN.
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6-05-2006 @ 11:29AM
Jon said...
I read, I think in the Boston Globe, that ABC was pleased with the ratings and it was better than they expected.
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6-05-2006 @ 12:12PM
doc said...
I have to think that for an off-season program, that cost next to nothing to produce, 8 million is a pretty solid audience.
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6-05-2006 @ 1:59PM
WarT0rn said...
Don't talk about my office like that. C U iN Toledo!
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6-05-2006 @ 2:01PM
elf said...
I was amazed that they sprung for coverage in HD. Of course my kids were very disappointed that we'd set the DVR without thinking it might run long so they missed the very end. At least we know for next year.
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6-05-2006 @ 5:59PM
Daniel Solis said...
i tuned in just at the very end!
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6-05-2006 @ 6:08PM
Jim said...
I loved the fact that ABC covered it live, and I hope it will continue to do so.
I had one complaint about the show: The only thing more awkward than the pre-teens themselves was watching their parents figure out the seating arrangements when their kids were eliminated. Note to ABC: Put extra chairs on stage next year.
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6-05-2006 @ 9:51PM
AmStarr said...
My daughter was in a NYC Spelling Bee a few years ago and the only ones in the audience were the parents of the participants.
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6-09-2006 @ 7:15AM
MalcolmJules said...
Wow! The Spelling Bee on ABC! I'd like to thank the programming geniuses over at ESPN for doing such a wonderful job of covering "THE BEE" over the years.
Awesome...
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