Because TV is TV, ESPN forced the bee to adopt a new format this year to adhere to time constraints. For the first time, kids could be eliminated without getting a single word wrong while on stage. They had to take a computer test at certain stages of the competition. The test asked them to spell 15 words, 12 of them common to the pool, three of them unique to each speller. An automated Dr. Bailly gave them the word through a set of headphones, and they could push buttons to ask Compu-Bailly all the shyt they ask when they're on stage. After that, the test asked them for definitions as well. Stefan Fatsis has a good explanation of this new format and why it sucks, but the thing you need to know is that, at the end of certain rounds, the computer test results serve to winnow the field down further. At the end of the semifinal round, there were 18 kids left on stage. Only the top 11 advanced to the finals, with their computer test scores determining who got to move on and who didn't. Real BCS-type shyt.
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I can't begin to tell you how fukked-up ESPN has made this event. In addition to changing the very rules of competition, ESPN made these poor kids tape canned segment after canned segment. Some of these kids were natural extroverts, but not all of them were. I can only imagine how awkward it is for a shy 12-year-old to have to dance around in sunglasses for an ESPN producer and then watch that canned footage up on the big screen with everyone in the house watching it. There were so many canned segments in the beginning—including a sketch in which Dr. Bailly re-enacts those AT&T ads with the dude in a classroom asking kids easy questions; a shytty Tom Rinaldi piece that reminded you that "every word is the World Series"; a montage of ESPN's 20 years covering the bee; and a moment in which a kid tells the audience the new format is a "win-win for the Bee"—that it took a full 42 minutes to get through the first round of the finals. Without all that shyt, it probably would have taken six minutes. But in their quest to Olympify the competition, ESPN added shytloads of filler. This is why a computer knocks you out now, to fit in a segment in which Sam Ponder asks people around Washington to spell the president's name right. (Ponder noted that only one person she talked to spelled Obama's name correctly. He was from Japan.)
