Susan Tyler Eastman

Sportscasting and Sports Reporting The Power of Gender Bias

Comparison of the sportscasting on ESPN and CNN and sports reporting in The New York Times and USA Today revealed the very high degree of embedded favoritism toward men’s sports and men athletes, even at times when major women’s sporting events were peaking in newsworthiness. The quantity of gender bias was significantly greater on ESPN’s SportsCenter than on CNN’s Sports Tonight, perhaps because of the somewhat different audiences they target. In addition, the amount of gender bias—measured three different ways—in the respected The New York Times also far exceeded that of USA Today, a disheartening finding about America’s so-called newspaper of record. Week-by-week crossmedia comparisons demonstrated the much greater marginalization of women’s sports in the electronic media, suggesting that newspapers provide a somewhat more positive model for sports journalism.

Biased Voices of Sports: Racial and Gender Stereotyping in College Basketball Announcing

The words of sportscasters−repeated hundreds, even thousands, of times by different announcers in similar ways−provide a conceptual frame for the sports experience, and that mental frame has partic...The words of sportscasters−repeated hundreds, even thousands, of times by different announcers in similar ways−provide a conceptual frame for the sports experience, and that mental frame has particular importance because fans often apply it to nonathletic situations. Contrary to assertions by some critics, analysis of 1,156 descriptors in sportscaster commentary during 66 televised mens and womens college basketball games showed no significant difference between the proportions of commentary and proportions of participating Black and White men players, but showed some overemphasis in comments about White women players. Predictably, Black men players tended to be stereotyped as naturally athletic, quick, and powerful, while White men players continued to be touted for their hard work, effort, and mental skill. The same racial stereotypes also appeared in the commentary about women basketball players, but few gender stereotypes emerged. Thus, increases in the numbers of Black and women game announcers may have lent balance to quantities of coverage by race and gender, but traditional racial stereotypes continue to pervade sports commentary even when gender stereotypes appear to be diminishing.

Gender Parity in the Olympics Hyping Women Athletes, Favoring Men Athletes

Despite claims that the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta were “the Olympics of the Women,” analysis of the producing network’s on-air discourse showed no significant gains in parity for women. Comparison of over 20,000 mentions of names, sports, and associated descriptors in successive Olympics (1994, 1996, 1998) revealed that the proportions of mentions of women and men athletes and women’s and men’s sports stayed at approximately the same imbalanced levels from one Olympics to the next. Despite changes from one producing network to another, despite separate analyses of commentary by hosts and venue reporters and of profiles and promotion, despite comparative analysis of adjectival descriptors, results demonstrated a drop in women’s overall salience in 1996 and no improvement over time. The results demonstrate conflicts between official network goals and their implementation as well as some of the ways network discourse creates conspicuous frames for media events to meet commercial needs.

Selective Representation of Gender, Ethnicity, and Nationality in American Television Coverage of the 2000 Summer Olympics

Past research of American Olympic telecasts has suggested that gender, ethnic, and national biases may hide within prime-time network telecasts. Analysis of host and reporter commentary in the 2000 Sydney Olympics confirmed that men athletes, Whites, and Americans continued to be the most-mentioned and most-positively portrayed in the television coverage, yielding more than their fair share of coverage. Analysis of gendered coverage showed that men were characterized as being more athletic and more committed than women athletes, and, in addition, men received over half of all airtime and of all mentions of athletes. Analyses of ethnicity showed that White athletes were portrayed as succeeding because of commitment, whereas Black athletes succeeded because of innate athletic skills. Analyses of nationalism found that the most-mentioned athletes and half of all athletes mentioned were American participants. Such differential treatment has significant implications for the development of American viewers’ self-identity, particularly for children and teenagers.

Televised Sports and Ritual: Fan Experiences

Examination of idiosyncratic sports rituals engaged in by viewers of televised sports revealed complex patterns of negotiation and participation in the televised events. In addition to being well-recognized tools for defining group membership, personal rituals revealed the creation of multistranded connections between fans and teams or players, despite separation by an electronic wall. Personal rituals revealed a balancing of the need for suspense with a need for reassurance, and extended to superstitions and part-play/part-serious efforts to influence game outcome. Exploration of private sports-viewer rituals illuminates the ways individuals alter their experiences of televised sports in order to gain social and cultural empowerment.

Promoting prime‐time programs in megasporting events

Analysis of 677 promos for prime‐time series carried within 1993 and 1994 sporting events on the major broadcast networks showed that most on‐air promotion had a modest impact on program shares and ratings: about one‐third of shares went up, over one‐half stayed flat, and less than 10% went down. A six‐part model incorporating lead‐in shares/rating, three structural factors, and two presentational factors collectively accounted for about one‐third of the variance in promoted prime‐time series’ shares and ratings.

Diverging Discourses: Gender Differences in Televised Golf Announcing

Previous analyses of sports telecasts found disparities between the ways male and female athletes were portrayed by on-air commentators, but no previous analysis has examined gender differences within professional golf telecasts. Examination of 34,881 descriptors within 243.5 hours of televised PGA and LPGA golf located 2 dozen critical differences in the ways male and female golfers were portrayed. Most crucially, women were more likely than men to be described in terms of why they succeeded or failed, whereas men were more likely than women to be depicted with personality or physical attributes, a notable change from earlier research findings for other sports. Comparison with the findings in 9 seminal studies of sports announcing showed that golf commentary is distinctively different from other types of sports commentary. The results counter the previously identified female stereotype of implied physical weakness, while potentially exemplifying a newer stereotype of female golfers achieving because they are lucky.

Manufactured conflict in the 1992 Olympics: The discourse of television and politics 1

Textual analysis of U.S. television discourse during the 1992 Winter Olympics supplies a rich source for deconstructing the creation of national “enemies” and “friends.” Scripted and off‐the‐cuff remarks to the television audience by network hosts and commentators reveal an ideology reflective of unfolding U.S. foreign policy at the time of a disintegrating Soviet Union and the economic rise of Germany and Japan. CBS and TNT commentary was analyzed by decoding the neutrality of the mention of a countrys name and by weighing valence and power dimensions of accompanying remarks. Results demonstrate how political nationalism is woven into the fabric of international sports discourse, which couches team and individual performances in terms of the performances of their nation‐states in relation to the United States.

Coping with grazing: Prime‐time strategies for accelerated program transitions

Strategies to speed up the flow of viewers between prime‐time programs were adopted by the television networks in the early 1990s. This study compared the types and lengths of transitions between time prime‐time programs for the four broadcast networks in two seasons, 1992‐93 and 1993‐94. Results showed that all four networks had increasingly adopted production strategies for program starts, endings, and breaks that accelerated audience flow between programs, and while the proportion of all practices increased over time, the four networks had focused their attention on different parts of the transition process. Results showed that the network in third place and the networks targeting the youngest viewers utilized more of the accelerated program transitions. Transitions intended to increase inherited audiences and discourage channel changing may be another significant factor in structural theories of audience flow.

On-Air Promotion Effectiveness for Programs of Different Genres, Familiarity, and Audience Demographics

This analysis of 4,469 promotions carried in on-air promos during prime-time and weekend sports television programs established the impact on prime-time ratings of frequency of promotion, distance, construction, and length. The analysis also examines the impact of these promotion variables for programs of different genres, targeted to different genders and ages, and with different degrees of familiarity. Whether the promotion aired in weekend sports or inside prime-time made little difference to the overall results, but notable differences emerged for programs of different genres, familiarity, and audience demographics. The findings apply to industry practices and contribute to refining salience theory.