Page 113 - Sport Culture and the Media

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in the media and of males employed to cover sport in the media. This is obvi-
ously not a simple question of capitalist logic in operation – male media propri-
etors and executives are drawn no less than other men to the expression of
heroic, aggressive and competitive masculinity by associating themselves with
the popular contact sports of which their fellows are so enamoured. In fact,
there seems to be a strong streak of economic irrationalism in the desire for
some businessmen to win at all costs in the boardroom as a form of compensa-
tion for not ‘cutting it’ at the highest level on the sporting field (McKay and
Rowe 1997; Attwood 1998; Warren 2002). Yet, pressure to change this pattern of
male predominance in media sport is coming from various sources. Sport is,
somewhat belatedly, one of the important fronts on which battles for sexual
equality are being waged, with both governments and feminist groups demand-
ing an end to male exclusionism in sport (Jennifer Hargreaves 1994; Hall 1997).
Women workers in the sports media have mobilized to improve their positions
within media organizations (Cramer 1994), while women’s sports organiza-
tions have demanded more air time and column inches, sponsorship and broad-
cast rights revenues (Crosswhite 1996). To a lesser extent, sport is also emerging
as a site of contestation over gender and sexuality, with, for example, the Gay
Games offering a challenge to the longstanding association of sport and ‘hege-
monic masculinity’, Connell’s (1987) conception of physically assertive, white
male heterosexism that has historically dominated the institution of sport
(Krane and Waldron 2000; Symons 2002).
These have not, however, all been external pressures: within the media sports
cultural complex itself there has been a gradual realization that it is eco-
nomically and otherwise senseless to alienate a large proportion of a market,
which, if segregated too strictly on gender lines, would in the case of some
sports (like the football codes) be close to saturation (Miller 2001). This is even
without mentioning the key decision-making position of women in household
consumption. Then there is the potential of new media technologies to provide
more diverse sports fare, and the requirement for public and commercial broad-
casters who have been outbid for sports broadcast rights by their rivals to make
a virtue of necessity in ‘signing up’ some women’s sports like basketball and
netball. As a result, sports broadcast programmers and print editors have
sought (with signal success in sports like soccer and rugby league) to attract
substantial female audiences by adopting strategies such as overtly sexualizing
sportsmen (see Chapter 5), explaining arcane rules to the uninitiated, giving
greater and more sympathetic coverage of sportswomen, employing female
sports commentators and writers, and so on (Miller 2001). In other words,
commodity logic and cultural politics have interacted in new, intriguing ways –
although not always with impeccably ‘progressive’ outcomes (as evidenced,
for example, by the willingness of more women’s sports and of individual