Sport and the Media

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Sport and the Media

The growth of television as a significant cultural form during the 1960s put the relationship between sport and the media on the public agenda. In late 1969, the US magazine Sports Illustrated drew attention to the ways in which television was transforming sport. In effect, sport in the television age was a 'whole new game'. The growing economic and cultural significance of television for sport gradually became a pertinent issue in countries around the world. Clearly sport and television had developed a degree of interdependence. They belonged together 'like ham and eggs'. In the view of some, television had 'made' sport

Newsweek expressed concern, in 1967, over the extent to which television was the powerful partner in the relationship. Debates developed from the 1970s as to whether the effects of television were beneficial or harmful both argued that television had transformed sport. By the 1980s, academic research had mapped out the field and proposed research agendas and book-length studies had appeared. It is noteworthy that, to date, far more critical attention has been paid to television sport than to sport coverage in the print media.

The study of the media has been informed by sociological and semiological traditions.

I will outline work in these areas and then discuss some key themes and topics before concluding by outlining current research trajectories. Typically, media sociology distinguishes three main aspects of the communicative chain: production, message and reception. Sociological study of the first part of the communicative chain, the production of media messages, involves the study of the structures and finances of cultural institutions and the sets of economic relations and legal constraints that underpin them; the production practices that develop within them; the producers, and the professional ideologies that frame their practices.

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Media organizations exist within legal frameworks that determine their scope. In the United Kingdom, the BBC is a public corporation, and the ITV system is overseen by a public body, the Independent Television Commission. Both are charged with a statutory responsibility to provide a broad range of material, which includes sport coverage. The introduction of Channel 4 in 1982, with its statutory obligation to be alternative and innovative, had an impact on the range of sports covered In the USA free market forces are not subject to as much restriction, but there are still laws, rules and regulations that impact ...

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