Page 221 - Sport Culture and the Media

202 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

When we take into account all the other print and broadcast media sports
texts, from documentaries to full-length feature films to radio commentaries
and newspaper sports columns, sport’s amoeba-like cultural capacity to divide
and re-form is formidable. This dynamic, ever-changing quality of media sport
has to be monitored constantly, and in the next, closing chapter we shall
take a detour into a future showing urgent signs of waiting to be born. In 1970,
Raymond Williams (1989: 95) opened a television column with the statement
‘There’s always the sport. Or so people say, more and more often, as they
become sadder about what is happening to the rest of television’. Three decades
later, it is necessary to ask whether sport on television is perhaps in decline and
a source of angst rather than eternally buoyant and a relief from sadness.

Further reading

Barnett, S. (1990) Games and Sets: The Changing Face of Sport on Television. London:
British Film Institute.
Bergan, R. (1982) Sports in the Movies. London: Proteus.
Bernstein, A. and Blain, N. (eds) (2003) Sport, Media, Culture: Global and Local
Dimensions. London: Frank Cass.
de Moragas Spà, M., Rivenburgh, N.K. and Larson, J.F. (1995) Television in the
Olympics. London: John Libbey.
Real, M. (1996) Exploring Media Culture: A Guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Whannel, G. (1992) Fields in Vision: Television Sport and Cultural Transformation.
London: Routledge.