Page 23 - Sport Culture and the Media

4 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

registered by the conscious and unconscious self, as at the moment of waking,
will be of sport.
This is a picture of a sports impregnated world that does not rely on actual
engagement in physical activity. People do so, of course, and in large numbers –
but to nothing like the extent that they watch, talk and read about it (McKay
1990; Brown and Rowe 1998). It is increasingly hard to remember a time
when sport and the media were not deeply entwined in a relationship of such
systematic intensity that it has been characterized as a ‘complex’, with any
apparent primacy given to sport or media varying between Jhally’s (1989)
conception of the ‘sports/media complex’ and Maguire’s (1993) notion of the
‘media/sport production complex’. The adjusted formulation used in this book
is that of the media sports cultural complex, which signifies both the primacy
of symbols in contemporary sport and the two-way relationship between
the sports media and the great cultural formation of which it is part. As I
have noted above, the sights, sounds and ‘feel’ of sport are everywhere –
shrilly piping out of televisions and radios, absorbing acres of newsprint, and
decorating bodies whose major physical exertion has commonly entailed
walking between different leisurewear stores in suburban shopping malls.
Media sports texts, of course, do not appear ex nihilo – that is, they are not
beamed in from outer space, already formed and with unknown origins. An
industrial infrastructure of daunting proportions manufactures them for us,
peopled by specialists who are unequivocally in the sports discourse business.
As a consequence, whether certified ‘sports nuts’ or the vaguely interested,
largely indifferent to or actively dismissive of sport, we are all required to
confront and negotiate the power and presence of the sports media.

Sport, Culture and the Media: structure and outline

In seeking to comprehend the phenomena and accomplish the task set out
above, Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity is divided into two
parts, which reflect the different emphasis on sports production and reception.
Part I, ‘Making media sport’, focuses on the organizational structures and
professional ideologies that shape the production of media sports texts. It
opens with an introduction to the field, ‘Understanding sport and media: a
socio-historical approach’ (Chapter 1), which provides a brief historical and
sociological overview of the developing relationship between sport and media
as a prerequisite for the production of media sports texts, showing how the
institutions became mutually dependent in an increasingly extensive exchange
of exposure and rights fees for content and audience capture. The heightened
prominence of sport in print reportage (including specialist sports, business