Page 79 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

68 • Sport, Media and Society

Walker, Jo Potter and Gavin Peacock) looked ill at ease, with all three crammed
onto one sofa, unable to look at each other comfortably when speaking. Logan oc-
cupied a matching sofa facing the others. All were casually dressed. There was no
England logo visible in the background, which was dominated by pink, picking up
themes from the title sequences. Unlike the pundits of the men’s match, who were
assumed to be familiar to the audience, each of the women’s match pundits—all for-

mer players—were identified by graphics giving details of numbers of games played.
The graphic identifying Potter, for example, read ‘made England debut in 2004, 13
appearances, 1 goal’. The most experienced pundit, Peacock, was the most animated,
and he provided the analysis of the action. Despite some humour, there was less
banter than during the men’s match discussion and more use of camera angles to
heighten interest.
Since 1975, the conventions for televising football appear to have only been re-
fined rather than altered substantially. Numbers of cameras may have increased, but

largely, the angle of shots they provide remains constant. Close-ups are more fre-
quent, and title sequences feature sophisticated graphics. Women’s football is shown
with more regularity, and the style of production approximates men’s football. Nev-
ertheless, the relatively short history of women’s football on British television re-
sulted in uneasy, inexperienced pundits during the half-time discussion. It appears
that women’s football is not yet given the same polished production quality that the
BBC affords the men’s games. Despite technological innovations, conventions in the
televising of sport appear resistant to change, indicating that these conventions carry
high connotative value.

Case Study: Narrating the Nation through Olympic Spectacle

Television is inseparable from the staging of sports megaevents such as the Olympic
Games. Hogan (2003) reported that the sale of Olympic broadcast rights was the big-
gest source of revenue for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and local or-
ganising committees. Jobling (2005) recorded that 300 channels broadcast the 2004
Olympics to 220 countries and territories, providing 2,000 hours of coverage a day
to 3.9 billion people. The huge international audience enables the host nation to con-
struct an image of itself through the opening ceremony which acts as ‘an extended
advertisement . . . to promote tourism, international corporate investment, trade and
political ideologies’ (Hogan 2003: 102). Hogan (2003: 102) observed that Olympic
opening ceremonies ‘are elaborately staged and commercialized narratives of nation’
that take place amidst the cultural and political dynamics of globalization which
appear simultaneously to threaten the nation and rekindle nationalist assertions of
identity. The discursive constructions of the nation that result are, therefore, threaded

through with gaps and fissures in meanings, as various material and ideological ten-
sions compete with each other. Arguably, this is the source of the affective power of