Bully for Battlebots

Now that I'm no longer living in an airplane on long-haul flights, I have lost track of broadcast television. It used to be that I'd see The Office, Million Dollar Listing, or some other show on the large screens in the cabin. I seldom paid attention to them and virtually never listened to their audio. But it was a way to stay in touch with popular culture.

These days the only thing I regularly watch on TV is Battlebots. It premiered in 2000, perhaps a little early for the technology and the audience. The resurrected show is in its third season after a hiatus 2002-2015. This year the format of the shows has changed to offer five battles in one hour…a great improvement over prior seasons when the show tended to drag.

Football and ice hockey, the most collision-oriented of the major team sports, are in long-run jeopardy because of CTE. Changes to protective equipment and changes to rules are not offsetting the increases in speed and power of today's better-trained, better-fed athletes. I doubt that football and ice hockey will disappear in the next 50 years —  way too much money is being made, both pro and college — but eventually these sports will go the way of boxing, which used to be more popular.

I wonder, what will become of Battlebots when its ratings increase 10-fold as people look for guilt-free ways to watch aggression?