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Televised Sport • 59

role that sound has come to play in the broadcast of sport. Contemporarily, micro-
phones placed along the touchline or even closer to the action, for example, on the
middle stump in cricket broadcasts, help render the ‘liveness’ of sport through sound.
Increased sound clarity made possible through developments in digital technology
heighten the effect of being close to, or even part of, the on-screen action.

Made for TV: the Construction of Sport for the Camera

In the mid 1970s, Buscombe (1975a) wrote about the televising of football in Britain.

An important part of his analysis was the identification of three types of ‘pro-fi lmic
event’:
• events which exist independently outside the control of television (e.g. foot-
ball)
• events produced expressly for inclusion in a television broadcast (e.g. studio
shots)
• graphics (including lettering, abstract designs and cartoons).

However, Buscombe reflected that the distinction between the first two types of events

would be at best difficult to make since television has been known to affect many kinds

of independent events, blurring the difference between what is real and what has been
created for television. Developments in the staging of megasport events such as the
Olympics make Buscombe’s observation ever more salient—sports that make it onto
prime time television do not occur independently of television; rather, the interests of
television are taken fully into account in constructing the event. For example, Rowe
(2004a: 183) discussed the way one-day cricket has been adapted to the demands of
television: ‘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.’ Moreover, the staging of sport events specifi cally for
television is only one way that the televising of sport confounds a simple distinction

between actuality and fiction. The wealth of intertextual evocations that accumulate

across the five channels of communication allow for generation of meaning to take
place without either the participation or intention of the producers of televised sport.

In no way can television be said to relay neutrally a ‘pro-filmic’ objective world.

Televised Sport: a Gendered Genre?

Reflecting on the observations made previously, certain features of the televising of
football construct a particular kind of viewing position for audience members to step
into. Although sport is typically thought to address a male viewer, it may also be
deliberately packaged to address or include other groups such as females or young