Page 51 - Sport Culture and the Media

32 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

supports the idea of local loyalty by counting towards legislated quotas of local
audiovisual media content (Cunningham and Miller (with Rowe) 1994).
For all this valuable emphasis on predictability and loyalty – to the extent
that many sports in the media take on the appearance of sought-after brand
names with a high recognition factor (Lash and Urry 1994) – sport also
possesses the highly desirable quality of novelty and unpredictability. Media
discourse before, during and after sports events is variously about prediction,
judging what has been predicted against what is actually unfolding, and then
reflecting on and seeking to find explanations for what has transpired (Eco
1986). In other words, while, for example, ‘live’ sport on television may have the
stylized and easily anticipated quality of the soap opera genre (see Chapter 6),
it is always capable of a surprise outcome that refuses to follow slavishly a
script that has been apparently prepared for it (Harriss 1990). This ‘uncertainty
principle’ of sport – and hence media sport – explains why result fixing, like a
boxer ‘taking a dive’ or a soccer goalkeeper deliberately letting in a goal, is so
scandalous. In sport’s famous clichés, ‘it’s never over until the fat lady sings’ (in
this case a scenario borrowed from opera) or ‘the game is never over until the
final whistle’ (a tautology masquerading as wisdom). This ‘emergent’ quality of
sport in the media helps meet the perpetual audience need for something new
and different alongside what is familiar and known. It also provides the media
with the cornerstones of news gathering and delivery – constant updates,
reported results, highlights, behind-the-scenes information, and so on. Sport,
then, stands at the confluence of the two principal functions of the mass media
– news and entertainment – and is carefully structured into the ‘softer’ spaces
of news bulletins and newspaper sections. It simultaneously supplies the
material to be reported on and a substantial component of the infrastructure
of reporting. As content, sport can absorb copious quantities of media space
and time. A test cricket match, for example, is a single sports event that can
occupy a television schedule from morning to early evening, followed by some
packaged late night highlights and frequent news updates and reports, for five
six-hour days. Variations on the same sports story can appear on the front,
features and ‘op ed’ pages of newspapers, as well as in the regular sports
sections, supplements or ‘tear-outs’.
It is little wonder that the relationship between sport and the media (espe-
cially television) is commonly described as the happiest of marriages, with both
institutions becoming mutually dependent in an increasingly extensive and
expensive exchange of exposure and rights fees for sport in return for compel-
ling content and audience capture for the media (Rowe 1996). Like all enduring
relationships, however, there are many points of tension, power plays, negoti-
ations, compromises, disagreements and secrets. Both parties can also claim
that they are dominated by the other. So, while media companies may complain