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Comedy Central Cancels BattleBots
Rathian writes "Bad news for BattleBot lovers, I saw on the BattleBots Builder's Forum that CC is NOT going to film Phase 6.0 of BattleBots. You can see copies of the email from the BattleBots founders Trey & Greg at RobotCombat.com, and at Team DaVinci Robots
God willing, another network will pick it up and keep this sport alive!"
Not to be a troll, but the whole BattleBots concept has gone from new and fun to watch to rather dull within the span of a couple of years. That's why they had to throw Carmen Electra on, right? People weren't watching, and a little sex appeal was required?
Not that I don't think something BattleBots-ish won't survive for a while, but I doubt it'll be for long. Just a prediction.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
How many times can you watch remote controlled scrap metal bump into each other and flip each other before it gets boring? For me.. it only took one episode. Not to mention the show has no business being on COMEDY central, since the only funny thing is watching the obviously fake "chemistry" between the hosts. Oh.. and whatshername's boobies are nice.
i'm a loyal battlebots viewer.... but with the advent of 3-4 other 'bot' fighting shows, someone had to die.
battlebots is RAW, its just the bots out there with some minimal hazzards. you look at other shows like robot wars, and each individual bot makes little difference to who wins. there are like 5 huge 'house bots', and all you have to do to win is watch the house bot push the other guy in the pit. lame. shows like robotica are just glorified RC cars that race around. lame.
battlebots did everything right, no compaints here at all. i'll be watching the re-runs after back to back to back SNL marathons i'm sure.
on a side note, be sure to check out the new season of INSOMNIAC on comedy central, its fucking hilarious.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Even though I never watched BattleBots, I watch Robot Wars in England. I'd have though BattleBots would be more suitable on Discovery or TLC rather than Comedy Central (like Junkyard Wars/Scrapheap Challenge)?
I'd think that it should have a chance of being picked up by another network, because a series like this that sparks innovation and interest in construction is better for Joe Public rather than Big Brother X (despite the 'socialology' aspect of it), The Mole, etc.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
These cheap TNN and TNT rip-off shows where people slap a cooking pot on top of an RC car and race around a rat maze with flame-throwers scorching their tires.
:-D
Hosts, which are more than drunken, overweight ex-NASCAR commentators looking to pay for their recently upgraded mobile home.
It sickens me to see all these cheap K-Mart quality knock-off shows, which cheapen such RAD programming such as BattleBots.
This kinda crap happens with -EVERY- form of popular TV entertainment. Look at Reality TV for fucks sake. First it was Survivor, -HUGE- hit. Then came Big Brother, Temptation Island, Fear Factor, Worst Case Scenario and a slew of other knock-offs, which have watered down and sucked all the fun out of reality TV.
I guess basically it all boils down to me being pissed off my TiVo will no longer have robots ripping the crap out of one another.
1. Too many weapons restrictions
2. Carmen should never be allowed to say anything
3. Get rid of the WWF spin crap and treat it like a nascar event.
4. Battlebots started making corporate deals poisioning the rules further by restricting equipment.
Got Code?
I always thought that battlebots was kind of dumb. I mean, at first it was interesting because it was new, but after it's newness wore off, it got very boring. Most people won by flipping their opponent over. I could enter a hampster in a ball and stand a chance. (Mutated, ill-tempered hampster, of course).
All I'm saying is there really was no battle. It ought to have been last robot to move, or until surrender. I mean, where were the hydraulic crushers, or the high power lasers. Or anything really. Something that can be damaged by a good kick doesn't deserve to be called a battle bot.
However, I would have been willing to endure the misnomer in the title for the chance to see the engineering and problem-solving involved. Except that the announcing...oh my dear god, the terrible announcing. There are several levels they could have chosen. Calm and relatively sedate (regular televised sports). Hyped and taking themselves seriously (like WWF). Hyped and not serious (Junkyard Wars). Instead, they chose hyped, not taking themselves seriously, but thinking they are the funniest thing on the planet. Of course, that's a Zappa for ya.
i loved watching the robots fight, people losing thousands upon thousands of dollars as sparks flew up and metal launched across the "battlebox"
... to ...
but the commentary gets worse and worse. the last episode i saw, they nearly had carmen electra perform soft-core porn.
i'm sure they did focus groups. but people in focus groups are going to see fire and say good and see the crap they aired and say good, just for the joke of it. there are some things that if you show them, even if they suck, people in certain age groups (even if they honestly don't like it) jokingly cheer.
to recap:
from an hour of deadly fighting
30 minutes of [you know what]
give me back my chainsaws and my mental patients!!!
and for god sakes, stop interviewing gary coldman!!!
then i'll watch again.
(since it seems relevant via demographics, i'm 15, male)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... if you think it looks like drunk boxing when the human is controlling it directly, what do you think it will look like when the human writes a system that attempts to do exactlly what it would do if a human was controlling it directly?
MUCH MUCH less compelling.
allow EMP = biggest EMP always win, and TV coverage is impossible.
chemical = are we to expect the humans will go back into the ring to pick up their bot after it is sprayed with acid?
flamethrowers i don't have a problem with, just not real exciting.
i'll just stop there... but i really feel strongly about this, there is a give and take, and the current rules make for good fights. the second someone has a 30 foot flamethrower/EMP, and can beat any bot in 10 seconds, the show is over, and its all about ratings.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
it actually took comedy central out of my rotation when 'scanning' for something to watch. Except for South Park at 10 wed., it was nothing but decade old SNL re-runs and BattleBots. I'd be more likely to find something entertaining on QVC.
.22 cal shells to shatter things, the other had an oxygen torch. The "house bot" had big hydraulic pincers.
They weren't robotic, and hardly battled. They didn't have any 'weapons', anything interesting to see. Just oversized remote control cars smashing into each other.
The concept of robots fighting each other with crazy weapons is good, the reality a la this show, was a bore.
I saw something (didn't catch the beginning) on the Discovery Channel (?), which was a special that had two submarines 'battling' in a swimming pool. It was some university team vs. the naval academy. One of them had a 'boomstick' which used
The navy 'robot' was completely demolished. They didn't simply bonk into each other for 5 minutes. All their hard work was destroyed.
That should have been how BattleBots worked. Rather than running around bonking into each other but having no actual damage happen.
It just wasn't a very good show. Maybe ESPN2 will pick it up. I saw them run live coverage of a 'Magic: The Gathering' tourney.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Just because American football sucks doesn't mean anything more interesting than it is a sport.
If ever there was a network born to show BattleBots, it's TechTV. Something tells me the budgets wouldn't be as high, but that might be a good thing. There wouldn't be as much impetus to tart the show up so much just to draw in the viewers required to pay back the budget.
Personally, I liked the original Robot Wars UK show the best. I did think the house robots had a little too much direct impact on the outcome, but I liked the concept of having qualifying rounds where the bots had to overcome challenges, followed by the individual combat rounds.
Maybe what's needed is some new thinking, like team robot combat. Maybe a capture-the-flag sort of thing. You could have robots optimized for offense and defense, which might add some interesting twists to a show. The problem would be that the costs to assemble an entire team of robots would be drastically more than for an individual robot or two.
One thing that is missing from this show: a variety of weapons. The weapons shouldn't be limited, this just makes the teams stagnate with their wedge or flipper or spinner designs. The truly original bots just aren't seen anymore because they get beaten to shreds by the people who make the old, tired, (albeit successful) designs. I think allowing for more weapons will add variety to the field.
We can only hope that ESPN picks this up.. then they'd have something to show on ESPN2 that's not jocks having a pissing contest.
You can't see this if you have sigs turned off.
Besides, I can hardly call those things "robots." More like RC death machines. When I think of robots, I think of more autonomous machines with some built-in intelligence. To me that would have been way more intersting to watch. Although, I guess watching some poorly programmed bot drive along the side of the ring the entire match might get boring. Oh well. Something like that.
TLC has a new show starting soon that may be intersting to see. With the original girl host from Junkyard Wars and, I think I saw him, Henry Rollins. I guess we'll see.
BattleBots does not belong on TLC ... they already tried it...it was called Robotica!!! But, what we should really be getting behind are the shows like Junkyard Wars.
As I'm sure others will point out, these were generally nothing more than glorified remote controlled cars. The truly inovative bots were few and far between, and most of them were either designed as a "wedge" or a "flipper".
I'm not saying that shows like this shouldn't exist or even that it doesn't take know-how to build them, it's just that most of the ideas have been done over-and-over again...anyhow, I'ld call 5 years a pretty good run for most any show...I mean how much longer can you really go until there's nothing new being done. I actually think we're there now, we just didn't realize it till now.
You might get something as a Saturday Morning show on one of the networks, but I wouldn't count on it.
Here's a question...why can't the contests continue without a TV Show? I mean, anything that I'ld actually term as a sport should be able to survive without prime-time television coverage. And if it honestly holds such a large "geek" audience, then companies like IBM, Dell, and Apple should be scrambling to sponsor events and bots...
On a side note, I personally enjoyed the shows, but like most ppl thought it was out of place on CC.
It was all over when they got rid of Bill Nye. You gotta love the "Science Guy"