Stupid. S-T-U-P-I-D. Stupid.

ABC is guided by such towering greed that it dashed the integrity of the national spelling bee!

In order for ABC to fit the Scripps National Spelling Bee into its time slot, it had to suspend the semifinals - which allowed some spellers to move ahead based solely on where their home state was in alphabetical order. Other participants in the spelling bee were left out just because of the name of their state!

It irritates me when televised events go on too long and run roughshod over scheduled programs I'd planned to view. Apparently, however, ABC was worried that its coverage would run too short instead of too long. Either way, ABC should have thought of all this beforehand.

Given ABC's Republican bias, maybe somebody at the network noticed that the first 4 states in alphabetical order are Republican, so maybe that's why they decided to do this. Then again, that would have left out their Wyoming copartisans.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/dpp/news/local_news/celebrity-and-controversy-at-the-scripps-national-spelling-bee1275687098402)