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 upon sport coverage
The press in both countries are subject to less restriction from government. Sport coverage in the British tabloid press is dominated by a very small range of sports, with football typically providing more than half of the content. While some sport events, such as the Olympic games and the soccer World Cup, win huge audiences, the audience for much television sport is not, by television's standards, large. Part of the appeal of sport for television producers is its cheapness. It can fill hours of the schedule at relatively low cost. A substantial amount of television sport, lacking major audience appeal, is outside peak time television, in the afternoon, or late at night.
Media institutions enter into dealings with the institutions of sport, and television is typically the dominant partner in the relationship, providing revenue and dictating the terms of the exchange. Media institutions also have to compete with each other, which BBC did very effectively during the establishment of ITV in the 1950s, reinforcing its claim of 'BBC for Sport' by signing up key sports, producers and commentators on long-term contracts. During the 1960s and 1970s BBC sustained its service with coverage of major events and a wide range of sports. However, more aggressive competition from ITV during the 1970s became a greater challenge. Weathering this, the BBC preserved its dominance until the end of the 1980s, when the satellite channel Sky Sport, with a growing power to outbid anyone else for the rights to major events, began to emerge as a much more serious competitor to terrestrial television. From the 1980s, the rise of satellite and cable began to restructure the television audience, launching dedicated sports channels, and producing a shift from large, fairly heterogenous audiences, to smaller, more homogenous ones. Developments in video recording, slow-motion, satellite transmission and digital technology over the years have had a major impact on enhancing the ability of television sport to produce spectacular entertainment Much early media research centred on political messages and on the measurement of attitude or voting intention. However, attempts to 'prove' this variant of the stimulus-response model, typically found that media messages were more likely to produce reinforcement than change in attitude. While the media did not appear to have fabulous powers to determine what people thought, it did, however, appear to have a power to determine what people thought about. Consequently, research began to focus on the role of cultural producers as gatekeepers and agenda-setters examined the ways in which information is controlled by press and public relations departments, and investigated the ways in which production practices and professional ideologies can serve to marginalize press coverage of women's sport.
The production of media messages typically involves hierarchization, personalization, narrativizing (posing the question 'Who will win?') and framing; establishing key events, key stars and framing the event for an audience.1989 case study of television skiing describes the need of producers to make the event look more dramatic and 'make course look faster'. Whannel (1992) takes a historical the approach in identifying the formative moments of the conventions of commentary, visual coverage and programme construction. The changing shape of conventions and practices of structuring sporting events for television can on occasion be traced through the writing of practitioners, and cricket is well served here
Jeremy Tunstall's (1977) study of specialist journalists outlines the ways that they function both as competitors and colleagues. Sports reporters tend to have far more contact with their competitors on other papers than they do with their colleagues on the same journal. Group solidarity and shared interests conflict with loyalty to a particular paper. In an under-resourced medium such as radio, the media professional often occupies a more isolated position. Journalists are often well aware of the gap between 'reality' and the media rendition of it. Accounts by media sport professionals provide useful evidence for the professional ideologies that frame production practices. Production practices can become taken for granted by media practitioners, and are naturalized very readily; tracing such practices in their formative moments can be instructive, revealing the choices that were later to solidify as professional commonsense. The conventions of commentary at the BBC, involving personalization, building audience interest and heightening drama were laid out by de Lotbiniere (1949) in a highly influential document that became the bible of commentary during the 1950s. Camera positions and cutting styles were established by processes of trial and error (see Wolstenholme, 1958) and only later, in the 1960s, became conventionalized. Sports journalism as a profession was, In large measure, a product of the late nineteenth century, as sports magazines appeared in significant numbers, and newspapers began including dedicated sports sections. Accounts of the careers of journalists and commentators reveal much about the attitudes underlying the formations of these professional practices. The focus on stars, the construction of dramatic interest and the relative marginalization of expertise, are all common features of media sport journalism