Friday, May 6, 2011

BLAME OUR PERSPICACIOUS READERS FOR NOTICING:  This year, the championship finals of the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee not only won't be in D.C. (moving across the Potomac to National Harbor), but they apparently won't be on ABC either -- ESPN, according to the official website, will be covering it live on Thursday, June 2 (corrected) at 8:30pm.  Now, mind you, this may be a good thing, if it means that the competition won't be so broken up by lengthy commercial breaks and profile segments, and instead be treated more like the afternoon rounds are -- like a competition.  (We'll be here live, regardless.)

More good news? The larger location means the public can buy tickets for all rounds.

In other Bee news, two returning competitors to note today: Canada's Greatest Speller, Laura Newcombe, is back for her third and final time; and 2008 Shonda Fave speller Sriram Hathwar -- then the Bee's youngest speller ever at barely-eight -- is back for a third time, having bested the kid who deprived him in 2010.  [The final three words in that Bee: brahnt-uh-FO-bee-uh (fear of thunder); eh-POK-uhl/EH-puh-kuhl (momentous); and vahy-TOO-puh-ruh-tiv (condemnatory).]

7 comments:

  1. You may be the first person in the history of the world to think that an event moving to ESPN will possibly result in fewer profile segments/general nonsense.

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  2. There's not as much of an obligation to fill a particular timeslot on ESPN, since they can go to SportsCenter pretty much immediately.

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  3. La Binsk12:16 PM

    June 4 is a Saturday.

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  4. Marianne2:18 PM

    Aww, but I liked walking past all the participants and family members on my way to work!

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  5. shonda rhimes7:05 PM

    I am so excited!  A network-free Bee.  Now, I love ABC dearly but all that fanciness messed up the clean competition that is our Bee. 

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  6. sconstant7:41 PM

    I thought you had to be the parent of a speller to get a ticket.  Now how can I justify these children I've had?

    (P.S. to Adam: Howard has been scuttled, it's the Scripps National Spelling Bee)

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