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changes in each other’s administrative structures and patterns of ownership,
and with new (perhaps supra) state policies on sport and media.
It is easy, in an orgy of technophilia, to imagine that new machines and
capabilities will sweep away the old, but historical knowledge teaches that
technological changes have been a constant feature of the media sports cultural
complex, and that these are always moulded by social, cultural, economic and
political factors. We have also learnt not to underestimate the importance of
the sports media as a force within culture, or the wide-ranging repercussions
of the cultural items that pass within and through the force field of sports texts
and their associated meanings. The sports media are both an index of wider
changes and an influence on them, part of the eternal dialectic of social pro-
duction, reproduction and transformation. A brief update on the ‘future
present’ of sports media will aid, finally, in an understanding of the direction,
pace and nature of change in the media sports cultural complex.

From consumer to auteur

In most of the foregoing discussion it has been recognized that, whatever
the uses, meanings and gratifications of media sports texts, the process has
generally revolved around the acceptance or rejection of already created
material for persons constructed as audiences by professional media organiza-
tions. I have already discussed (in Chapter 4) the use of existing print technolo-
gies to produce the amateur or semi-professional print sports texts called
fanzines. Analogous activities can involve the video recording of sports contests
for training and/or entertainment purposes, taking photographs for sale to
team members and their families, phoning in sports reports and results of
events not covered by the professional media to radio stations, as well as the
perennial sports club newsletter (and not, of course, forgetting the formidable
powers of the Zybrainic Sportswriter). New media technologies, however,
aided by the intermeshing of telecommunications, computers and broadcasting
(Wejbora 2003) and the ‘key processes of digitization, convergence and inter-
activity’ (Boyle and Haynes 2003: 96), expand the possibilities of cultural pro-
duction into areas normally associated with consumption, enabling fans to
produce their own custom-made texts out of the raw material supplied. The
passive sports media consumer may become both all-powerful media auteur
and athlete ‘replicant’. As one men’s magazine contributor (with a rather
depressingly predictable focus) puts it:
Imagine you’re watching one of your favourite sports, like female mud
wrestling. With the Internet, you’ll be able to zoom in on a contestant,