Script competition overviews

If you enter writing competitions its often hard to get any feedback about your entry. However, in the past couple of weeks both Danny Stack (for the Red Planet Prize) and Ceri Meyrick (for the BBC Writers' Academy) have posted overviews of entries that make for interesting reading.

I was particularly struck by this comment from Ceri Meyrick:

Again, as last year, it was often the theatre play scripts that stood out for their originality, maybe because writers felt they had more freedom with the format. There were certainly many technically competent television screenplays, but some of these told rather boring stories, or that simply wallowed in depression.

It would be interesting to know how many of the successful Writers' Academy applicants have come from a theatre background. Would aspiring screenwriters be wise to spend as much time writing stage plays as scripts?