Bots that stay in the middle get skewered by “kill saws” that rise out of the ground like the tigers in Gladiator. Bots that get too close to the walls are smashed by giant hammers.
There are knives and axes and drones with flamethrowers. Surely the pinnacle of human innovation is a televised March Madness-style tournament in which robot gladiators try to smash, squeeze, slice, and melt their opponents with military-grade weaponry. While there may not be many human sports going on this summer, Elon Musk says we will soon live in a posthuman world, so it’s the perfect time to dive into the best posthuman sport: BattleBots.īattleBots is why God invented electricity. Something needs to fill the void between Woj tweets. EDT (baseball doesn’t count because nobody has watched an entire baseball game since 2007). We’re fortunate to have a World Cup this year, but there are still no sports to watch after 4:30 p.m. Blech.Summertime is no-man’s land for sports fans. If they do end up on TechTV, I'm sure it will be a better show than Comedy Central's was. They don't have as high viewership requirements to consider something successful as Comedy Central has, I'm sure.
Whether TechTV even wants BattleBots now, is an open question, but I wouldn't put it past them. This is not surprising, given CC's obvious clout (and $) compared to TechTV. They did go after BattleBots, but very simply, they were outbid by Comedy Central. So what happened? Well, I asked him the next time I saw him - at CES in early 2001. He was keen on the show, and seemed really interested in getting it for ZDTV. We had a nice chat with him, where he asked us such questions as whether we would like to see BattleBots on TV, how often we think we might watch it, etc. Incidentally, Leo Laporte (the managing editor of ZDTV, now TechTV) was at the BattleBots show that my wife and I went to. The 'commentary' and between-match garbage was so insufferable as to totally negate the coolness of the actual combat. Comedy Central turned it into something so crappy I didn't even want to watch it on TV. It was a really great time going, and I would have gladly paid to go to it again. The actual competition, before Comedy Central got ahold of it, was awesome. As I recall, the event I was at (during Comdex 1999) was broadcast on pay-per-view on Super Bowl weekend a couple months later.
I saw BattleBots live in person, before they were a TV series. We have done so as well and you can see it at Again, this doesn't mean that there will no longer be a BattleBots, it just means a little more delay before you get to see a new season. I'm sure a lot of builders will be posting the email that they received on their sites so that everyone can stay informed. The current season will continue to air as normal but BattleBots is actively searching for a new network to air BattleBots to help cover the enormous cost of hosting such an event.
Well, the Buzz is raging through the Builder's Forum like wildfire so I thoguht I would stop by and let everyone else know.Ĭomedy Central decided not to renew its contract with BattleBots and therefore the Fall event on Treasure Island, Season 6.0, is postponed indefinitely. Well, what genius at Comedy Central figured killing one of their staple shows and licensing cash cow was a good idea?