what is the most TV friendly format for a chess tournament?

so people can enjoy the games the same way you're watching  a tennis match?

what about blitz - bullet direct elimination games between the first eight or sixteen played one after the other in sequence?

Prepare the arena...

Bruce Buffer: in the red corner weighing in at 123 pounds with a reach of 45 inches we have SUSAN POLGAR. In the blue corner weighing in at 45 pounds with a reach of 10 inches we have ANATOLY KARPOV.

 it's TIMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Is there ANY format that a TV executive would be attracted by. It's all about freaky, wacky reality TV man. Manhunt, the kardashians, Joe Schmo, fear factor. All this chess stuff...to a TV guy that's a blank screen.

The only TV thing that I could see as being at all marketable to sponsors would be internet streamed TV rather like the deathmatches here.

you'll concur that following the chess olympics by looking at some selected games here or on kingcrusher channel is not that exiting

there must be some way to comunicate the drama of those events to the average guy .

I think that there are two ways to go that might be marketable:

[1.] pure chess approach - rather like a deathmatch as I said in my response.

[2.] find a cult chess personality [ I hate that term but anyway] like Susan Polgar and market it as a simul on TV - Susan versus the UG tribe of downtoan Manhattan [facetious but you see where I am coming from]

maybe bullet is marketable for the adrenaline, something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVSy_H7F3PA

The format used in the Master Game series (BBC, early 1980s) was pretty good in my opinion.

e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxGD5Y5ZY3A

Hire Danny and David for the commentary.

Seriously, a mix of humor and good analysis would be very important.

A long time ago I posted here:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-dont-they-do-this-anymore

This must be from the 40's or 50's, I think it worked quite well.

Ugh, seems that video's no longer on youtube.

What a pity! It looked intriguing.

the master game is amazing. basically the way to do chess on the tv is... don't do the games live. blitz / bullet most people can't keep up with, and slow games would obviously not work. the master game format worked perfectly.

I'm sure many would say the pace in The Master Game is too slow. I disagree. After watching the Quinteros-Browne game for the first time last night (I thought I had seen them all, but not this one), I continued to think about the game until I went to sleep with remarkably (for me) clear 'after-images' of the critical position, around move 13 and subsequent moves. I reckon the players' spoken 'thoughts' create memory anchors. This is much better imo than the rapid games with sports-style commentating (e.g. GMs Ashley and King) that was tried in the 90s. They were more 'exciting' but in a superficial way.

i think you'll concur that

1-the players live faces  must be seen by the viewers so these can feel their emotions

2-only one game x time not like chess.com where in tournaments they switch from one game to the other and the drama is totally missed

3-if you want long quality games you can turn on the engines . between humans the focus should be more on the struggle , the emotions and above all the pace must be fast .

correct me if i'm mistaken

I concur. However, I think the pace is fast enough (just right in fact) when the game is condensed to 30 mins as in the later Master Game episodes.