NEW SPORTS AND NEW TEAMS COMING TO A CHANNEL

NEW SPORTS AND NEW TEAMS COMING TO A CHANNEL

NEAR YOU The effectively limitless expansion of cable television has opened new

possibilities for televised sports. The Classic Sports Network showed there was an audience for watching old classic ball games (interested in watching the 1960 World Series or the 1990 Super Bowl again?). College Sports Television (CSTV) devotes 24 hours a day to college sports, particularly the so-called minor sports not already captured by the major networks, ESPN, and Fox Sports Net. Thus, for the first time, a broader audience can see football or basketball from largely unknown conferences, as well as all sorts of collegiate sports previously absent altogether from television, including baseball, lacrosse, track, soccer, volleyball, and others. (Gregory, 2003a).

Sometimes the major sports price themselves out of a major network TV market and newer sports can take their place. For example, after NBC lost $300 million on the last two years of its contract with the NBA, it replaced them with the much more affordable Arena Football League (AFL) in 2003. This gave a much-needed boost to the indoor football league, which had been around since 1987, but had languished without major TV exposure (Gregory, 2003b).

In spite of what one might think, some of the most popular sports in terms of attendance are not particularly popular on television. Two of the top American sports in gate receipts are NASCAR auto racing and horse racing, yet, until quite recently, they have been seen by large audiences on TV only in the very top contests like the Indianapolis 500 and the Big 3 of thoroughbred racing (Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes). There are also considerable regional differences in sports interest (see Box 6.4).

Institutional Changes. There have been some dramatic structural changes in the institution of sport due to television. For example, the 59 baseball minor leagues in the late 1940s were down to about 15 leagues 30 years later. The chance to see major league baseball on television all over the country largely destroyed the appeal and thus the financial viability of the minor leagues. A parallel development occurred with the soccer leagues in Great Britain after the onset of TV. Even the attendance at American pro football and major league baseball was at first reduced by regular TV broadcasting (blacking out TV in local markets moderated this trend

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more than compensated, eventually actually increasing stadium attendance through the interest generated from seeing the games on television. The old American Football League (AFL) was saved from bankruptcy in 1964 by NBC’s offer of $42 million for a 5-year TV contract (Guttman, 1986).

BOX 6.4

GEOGRAPHICAL DIFFERENCES IN SPORT There are huge international differences in what sports are popular, both

in terms of participation and TV watching. The two most popular TV sports in the United States do not command much worldwide interest. Baseball is very popular in some of East Asia (especially Japan and Taiwan), the Caribbean, and northern Latin America as far south as Venezuela but remains largely unknown in Europe, Africa, and most of Asia and South America. There are a few occasional exceptions, such as the professional Italian league, and there are some indications that interest in baseball is spreading into Europe and southwest from Japan into east Asia.

Football is big in the United States and Canada but practically nowhere else, although the name football is often used for soccer, with American football referring to the U.S. variety. Some current efforts to export it to Western Europe are having modest success. Bicycling as a major sport has long been immensely popular in France and Italy; the fact that the American Greg LeMond won the Tour de France several years beginning in 1986 was completely unprecedented and helped to increase interest in the event and the sport in the United States. In Britain and some former Commonwealth countries like India, Pakistan, some Caribbean nations, east Africa, and South Africa (but nowhere else), cricket is popular. Bullfighting is popular on the Iberian peninsula and Northern Latin America but nonexistent elsewhere.

Even within the United States and Canada there are considerable regional differences in sports preferences. Throughout Canada and the extreme northern United States, hockey is the major sport. U.S. hockey teams depend heavily on Canadian talent. Even at the college level, hockey far eclipses football and basketball in quality and popularity at schools like the University of Maine and the University of North Dakota, which regularly send their graduates to the NHL. Although college football is popular all over the United States, it is particularly so in the Midwest and South; in Canada and elsewhere outside the United States, big-time collegiate sports are nonexistent. Basketball is most popular on the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast and especially in the state of Indiana, a unique state which begins interscholastic competition in elementary

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school and regularly draws college recruiters from all over the country. Women’s field hockey is popular in the Northeast U.S., as is jai alai in south Florida. Obviously, winter sports like ice skating and snow skiing are more popular in colder climates.

There is some tendency for television to lessen these regional differences, as people become exposed to sports not played in their community. The increasing popularity of soccer in the United States, especially among youth, and American football in Europe testifies to this.

In spite of the rampant growth of sports and television, there does seem to

be a saturation point. For example, the formation of the United States Football League in the early 1980s and the XFL twenty years later were colossal failures. There are also signs of tedium and lower than expected ratings as division playoffs and tournaments extend the seasons of different sports longer and longer. People often tire of baseball by late October or NBA (basketball) and Stanley Cup (hockey) playoffs still going on in June. Audiences for some major sporting events have been declining; although 56% of the viewing audience saw the 1980 World Series, only 25% saw the 1997 Series.

College Football. In college football, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) severely restricted the TV broadcast of games in the 1950s, in spite of some disgruntled schools and legal challenges on antitrust grounds. With the advent of very lucrative TV contracts in the early 1960s, far more games appeared on television, although this primarily enriched the few very strong teams and conferences and weakened many others. This trend was accentuated by the post-season Bowl games, which sold TV rights for multimillion-dollar deals as early as the 1960s. Power conferences like the Big Ten, Big Twelve, and Pacific Ten depend on Bowl appearances to recruit strong talent and Bowl receipts to finance their programs. The proliferation of post-season Bowl games and by now almost universal corporate sponsorship (Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Jeep-Eagle Aloha Bowl, Southwestern Bell Cotton Bowl, Insight.com Bowl) has opened new advertising and revenue opportunities. By the early 21st century, interest and attendance at some Bowl games had shown signs of declining, and there was growing controversy about bowl-team selection processes.

Although TV has brought big-time college football into the lives of many who never would have attended a game, it has been at the cost of heavily, even crassly, commercializing the football programs of the major schools, leaving them amateurs in name only. It has also drawn a large TV audience in part at the expense of small college and high school football, whose supporters often prefer to watch top-rated teams on TV instead of attending a

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local game in person. In recent years, increasing numbers of top college players bolting to the high-paying NFL before the end of their collegiate eligibility also concerned college teams. More and more critics are claiming that major men’s sports, especially football, are compromising what the university should be all about (e.g., Sperber, 2001).

Pro Football. Although college football had been around and popular since the 19th century, pro football was more like an athletic footnote on the U.S. sports scene before the age of television. When Pete Rozelle became NFL commissioner in 1960, the entire staff consisted of three people (Rader, 1984); by 1984 the same headquarters occupied five entire floors of a Park Avenue skyscraper. Pro football learned how to deal with television more adeptly and in a more unified fashion than did baseball. NFL commissioners Bert Bell and his successor Pete Rozelle negotiated craftily and with the sup- port of the owners, using local blackouts often enough to preserve stadium audiences but not so often as to engender fan resentment. The close-up focus of television, coupled with interpretation by the sportscaster, served to make

a previously opaque and uninteresting game fascinating to large numbers of new fans, who now were able to follow what was happening with the ball.

One of the most brilliantly marketed ongoing media events of all time has been the Super Bowl, which began in January 1967 after the merger of the NFL and the AFL the year before. By the early 1970s, the Super Bowl had overtaken the baseball World Series and the Kentucky Derby in TV audience size in the U.S. Unlike these other events, the Super Bowl was a creation of television, not a preexistent institution adapted to the new medium. Super Bowl Sunday practically became an annual January holiday, complete with ebullient media hoopla weeks in advance. The games themselves were frequently watched in over half of U.S. households, in spite of a string of very uneven and unexciting games during many of those years. The broadcast in itself became the event; what happened in the game was almost irrelevant. By the 1980s, major advertisers, paying top dollar for ad time, launched new ad campaigns with commercials presented for the first time during the game; this annual advertising debut became a significant spin-off media event. Networks alternated the privilege of broadcasting the game. A whole series of satellite events sprang up, such as numerous televised parties and pre- and post-game specials. This large audience is sometimes even used for other purposes, such as collecting “Souper Bowl” food donations for food banks and consciousness-raising about the rise of wife-battering during and after the Super Bowl. Wenner (1989) even argued that the Super Bowl pre-game show is a vehicle for subtle political socialization.

The Olympics. Some immensely important sporting events, in terms of their TV impact, are the quadrennial summer and winter Olympics. Although

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these games have occurred in modern times since 1896, interest in them has soared exponentially since their broadcast on television worldwide. Olympic committees have been selling broadcast rights ever since the 1960 Rome games, and the Olympics have become totally dependent on television financially, a status that gives them a professional character that they never had before (Seifart, 1984). NBC paid a record $1.27 billion package deal for the rights to televise the 2000 Summer and 2002 Winter games.

Due to the traditionally amateur status of the Olympics, TV has popularized sports that have not otherwise been sources of large revenues. Most notable here have been all women’s sports, which have received a tremendous boost from Olympic coverage. Certain sports that have little audience elsewhere are very popular in the Olympics (e.g., gymnastics and ice skating). In such minor sports, television serves an important educational function: people learn about new sports from watching the Olympics. Sometimes this translates into their own participation in these activities. The Olympics have produced many heroes, including Nadia Comaneci, Bonnie Blair, Kristi Yamaguchi, Florence Griffith Joyner, Carl Lewis, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Bruce Jenner, Sarah Hughes, and Mary Lou Retton. Olympic stars, through the catalyst of TV, can be catapulted to athletic or show business stardom, to say nothing of economic security.

Sometimes the commercial pressure to pay back the enormous cost of the broadcasting rights may lead to low-quality television, with a high total ad time (up to 20 minutes per hour) and poor placement of ads (e.g., while hockey goals are being scored or figure skating scores are being announced). Olympic Organizing Committees have altered schedules so two top-rated hockey teams would not have to play each other until the finals. Starting with Calgary in 1988 and Barcelona in 1992, the games were lengthened to include three weekends of prime sports broadcasting time.

As with sport in general, emotional aspects of the athletes are often highlighted, leading to some criticisms that broadcasting the sport has become subordinate to televising the tearjerker (Carlson, 1996). More likely, this trend may reflect attempts to increase the numbers of women viewers. Probably the most notorious case of such soap opera coverage was the Nancy Kerrigan—Tonya Harding feud (“Dueling Figure Skaters”) of the 1994 Winter Games. Harding and her boyfriend were implicated in a knee- bashing sabotage attempt against Kerrigan. This nasty side issue almost eclipsed the actual skating competition, although it ironically delivered a record boost to the figure skating audience.

A more common melodramatic theme is that of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. During the 1996 Atlanta Games, NBC dug up, according to one count, about 140 heart-wrenching family melodramas and broadcast them (Carlson, 1996). Often they were brief, like diver Mary Ellen Clark’s cancer-stricken father meeting her at poolside. Sometimes they were

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more extended. Belorussian gymnast Vitali Scherbo, winner of six gold medals in 1992, stopped training for months to care for his wife Irina after her serious car accident. As she slowly started recovering, she insisted Vitali return to training for 1996. He did, but only received a bronze medal for group effort. NBC, however, celebrated the family by taking Irina and their daughter back to the crash site for an emotional visit. Is this sports coverage?

For all the fun of the Olympics, there still is a certain aura of seriousness in the media coverage. Occasional more light-hearted treatments can raise some eyebrows; see Box 6.5 for some unconventional aspects of local coverage of the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.

Olympic coverage may be used to further the host country’s political or economic goals. South Korea used the 1988 Seoul Summer Games to showcase its economic progress. Viewers learned during the 1992 Summer Games that residents of host city Barcelona speak Catalan, not Spanish, and identify more with their autonomous region of Catalonia than with the nation of Spain. Many former Soviet republics competed for the first time as independent nations in 1992 or 1996, the first year that every single independent country in the world, all 197 of them, had some presence at the Summer Games (Wulf, 1996). Coverage is not the same in all places. The way that the Olympics are broadcast may also reflect the national and cultural values of a nation. See Box 6.6 for an interesting contrast of U.S. and Brazilian Olympics coverage.

So far we have looked at how the media have changed the various sports themselves and the reality about them that we perceive. Next we examine several psychological factors that are directly affected by the perceived reality of media sports.