Page 202 - Sport Culture and the Media

SCREENING THE ACTION || 183

When [Kerry] Packer’s Channel Nine finally wrenched Test cricket away
from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, it invested considerable
financial and technical resources into coverage. Some of the innovations –
aerial shots of field placing, split-screen comparisons of respective bowling
actions – were valuable contributions to a better view and a better under-
standing of the game. Others were little more than cheap production tricks
which had little to do with explaining a complex game to the uninformed.
At the most banal level came the introduction of a ridiculous cartoon
duck, which tearfully accompanied a batsman dismissed for nought (in
cricket terminology a ‘duck’) to the pavilion . . . Cartoon characters in
live sports have only one objective – to keep those with minimum interest
in the game (particularly children) tuned in. This is, no doubt, precisely
why Sky imported the same triviality into their coverage of the 1990
West Indies–England Test series (along with the excitable commentary of
Tony Greig).
(Barnett 1990: 169)

Barnett (1990: 169) also notes the use of ‘honey shots’ of ‘scantily clad young
women in the stands’ to dissuade heterosexual men not ‘riveted’ by the sport
from changing channels, the equivalent tactic to the sexualization of male
sports performers for heterosexual women. But the dramatization, ‘cartooniza-
tion’ and sexualization of television sport do not exhaust the repertoire of
techniques for keeping and holding large audiences. Sports authorities and
television companies have also devised new ‘telegenic’ forms of sport that lend
themselves well to fixed television schedules and reshape sports contests in a
manner that accentuates even more the melodramatic character of live sport.
Looking further at the game of cricket, for example, we can see that the
one-day form has been moulded well to the demands of television in terms of
its structure and guaranteed result. Unlike viewers of Test cricket, impatient
audiences with busy lives will not be required to watch at least thirty hours of
live action over five days only for the event to end inconclusively as a draw. The
one-day game, as distinguished from its traditional three-, four- and five-day
counterparts, allots a fixed number of overs for each side to bowl. The side with
the lower score after this allocation or which is dismissed before the other’s
score is reached loses. Draws are extremely rare, as they rely on the improbable
outcome of ‘tying’ the scores rather than the passage of time, and, even then, a
victor can if necessary be declared on a ‘count back’ (such as the number of
wickets lost). The rules are also varied to encourage more spectacular action,
such as hitting the ball adventurously in the air rather than more cautiously
along the ground. This aim is achieved through the imposition of fielding
restrictions, especially during the first fifteen overs (which in the traditional