Television sports/films about sports/outdoors/and sports talk shows constitute a major genre in terms of audience size, particularly for championship sports coverage of the World Series, Superbowl, Final Four, NBA championships, Stanley Cup, World Cup, Triple Crown, Indianapolis 500, and golf/tennis/marathon/track/championships. These sports championships — many of which are annual events — can be thought of as “media events” (Dayan & Katz, 1992) — in which the techniques, commentary, and promotion hype the broadcast as a special, unusual event “that we have all been waiting for.” For example, coverage of the Super Bowl builds on its history by showing highlight clips of previous Super Bowls to create a sense of its prestige. The Super Bowl functions as a social event in the lives of many Americans, who structure parties around viewing of the game.

Television sports coverage combines two competing genre forms — journalism that attempts to provide background information about players, coaches, policies, contract negotiations, and strategies — and promotion that attempts to promote or dramatize sports in order to attract an audience (Brookes, 2001). This promotion often takes the form of building up conflict between opposing teams, as well as using instant replays, slow motion, and computer graphics to visually dramatize the coverage. The focus on promotion was evident in the NBC coverage of the 2000 Olympics, which focused more on appealing to American audiences by covering primarily American athletes and by providing dramatic background biographical stories about these athletes, a focus that sacrificed balanced journalistic coverage of the Olympics.

Sports coverage also emphasizes the “personal” side of players’ lives, emphasizing how players or teams as the underdog have overcome adversities — injuries, racial/sexist prejudice, or “down” times — to go on to become a star. This theme of succeeding against all odds serves as the basis of sports films such as The Natural, Hoosiers, Raging Bull, the Rocky films, Major League, White Boys Can’t Jump, and Remember the Titans. What these films often do not portray is how various institutional forces and systems — the media, sports-equipment industry, competitive high school/college sports programs, and false beliefs about “making it” in professional sports serve to define athletes’ experience. Hoop Dreams, a documentary about two African-American high school basketball stars, portrays the ways in which these students’ lives are shaped by these various systems.

One of the issues in media coverage of sports is how they portray instances of violent actions in which players may deliberately injure another player or when players are simply injured given the violent nature of certain sports. Portrayals of violence are often excused or rationalized with a “boys will be boys” discourse of masculinity.

Media Awareness Network lesson: Violence in sports

A related issue concerns the coverage of females in sports media, something alluded to in Module 4. Females are often portrayed more in terms of their appearance and attractiveness as opposed to their athletic abilities, while males are portrayed in terms of their physical skills and strength. Much of this is due to the relatively high percentage of male reporters and “commentators” compared to female reporters and “commentators,” resulting in a largely masculine discourse perspective on sports.

Education Media Foundation: Playing Unfair: The Media Image of the Female Athlete

Media Awareness Network lesson: Media Coverage of Women and Women's Issues

Women’s Sports Foundation: lots on links on coverage of women in sports

Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport

Game Face: What Does the Female Athlete Look Like?

FemmeFan: for female sports fans

Zine: Girl Jocks Rule

Lesson: history of media coverage of women in sports

One of the important subgenres of television sports is professional wrestling, a popular television genre, particularly for adolescent males, who often make their own backyard video versions that mimic the show.

World Wrestling Entertainment

National Wrestling Alliance

ProWrestling.Com

Yahoo.com Directory: Wrestlers

From an audience perspective, Henry Jenkins (1997) argues that the appeal of professional wrestling is that it builds on traditional melodramatic conflict between good versus evil in which working-class adolescent males identify with the “good” wrestler who seeks revenge against the chicanery and trickery of the “bad” wrestler, who represents the traditional authoritative forces who seek to limit or control these males. Jenkins also argues that the highly participatory nature of the audience role allows males to express their emotions in a safe manner.

Another subgenre is the “outdoors” television show related to providing useful information about hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and gardening.

dmoz.org: Recreation: Outdoors

Yahoo.com: Television Shows: Sports

Yahoo.com: Television Shows: Outdoors

And, a subgenre that supports the sports industry is the largely (but not exclusively) male sports talk show. While it draws on the daytime talk show format, it differs from the often-therapeutic discourses of these shows by avoiding personal matters and focusing on sharing sports information or ”stats.”

HBO’s On The Record

The Tim McCarver Show

Foxsports.com

The shows also provide a lot of visual drama by replaying game highlights, often for the purpose of promoting a team. Much of the talk revolves around issues associated with a celebration of “competitive spirit”/“team-work.”

There is also an important relationship between sports and advertising or promotions in which sports stars and teams are used in ads or use to promote certain products or events.

Media Awareness Network lesson: Sports Personalities in Magazine Advertising

The New York Times Learning Network: Clayton DeKorne, Getting In the Game
Exploring Interactive Relationships Between Television Shows and the Internet

The New York Times Learning Network: Abby Remer and Alison Zimbalist, Kicking It Around
Evaluating Perspectives on Women's World Cup Soccer: A Language Arts Lesson.

Webquest: Extreme Sports

For further reading:

Baker, A., & Boyd, T. (Eds.). (1998). Out of bounds: Sports, media, and the politics of identity. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Creedon, P. (Ed.). (1994). Women, media and sport: Challenging gender values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rowe, D., & Rowen, D. (1999). Sport, culture and the media: The unruly trinity. London: Open University Press.

Smith, R. (2001). Play-by-play: Radio, television, and big-time college sports. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Sperber, G. (2001). Beer and circus: How big-time college sports is crippling undergraduate education. New York: Owl Books.

Wenner, L. (Ed.). (1998). Mediasport. New York: Routledge.

Whannel, G. (2001). Media sport stars: Masculinities and moralities. New York: Routledge.

White. G. E. (1998). Creating the national pastime. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Module 7: Word document

Different Perspectives on Genre Study

Audience-based Approaches to Film/Television Genre Study

Critical/Ideological Analysis of Genres

The History and Evolution of Genres

Devising Genre-analysis Activities

Different Genre Types

Action/Adventure

The Western

Gangster/Crime

Detective/Film Noir

Comedy

Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Horror/Monster

Suspense Thriller/Spy/Heist

Soap Opera

The Talk Show

Sports

Game Shows/
Reality TV

Animation

Comics

Graphic Novels

Teaching Activity

References

Teaching activities on genre developed by students in CI5472, Spring, 2004