How to watch the 95th Scripps National Spelling Bee

For nearly 100 years, the Scripps National Spelling Bee has showcased the greatest words of the youngest lexicologists. The inaugural champion, 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser of Louisville, correctly spelled “gladiolus” to claim a $500 prize at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

The words have only gotten louder, the pressure bigger and the nationwide spotlight bigger.

Of the 231 entrants, about a dozen finalists outsmarted them to reach the finals beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursdays on the Ion and Bounce networks and should run until about 10pm. The final spans nearly a week of competition the National Porta waterfront resort and development in Maryland.

Many Americans became familiar with the bee through its national broadcast on ESPN where it grew in popularity, viewership and popularity pop culture of the past decades. But that changed last year when the bee moved to Ion, a Scripps subsidiary, in the United States hopes to find viewers beyond paid TV subscribers.

According to the bee, that bet paid off: Viewership of the 2022 finale was up 147 percent year over year and was seen by 7.5 million viewers — the largest television audience since 2015.

The New York Times, which has written about spelling bees for nearly 150 years, will continue that tradition Thursday night, reporting live on the spellers’ stories and the words they face. Definitions come from the contest’s dictionary partner, Merriam-Webster. The champion takes home more than $50,000 in cash and multiple reference books such as a replica of the 1768 Encyclopaedia Britannica.