In class we were asked two questions in our group, one asked, based on the 1993 study on "gender of audience building" what would the findings show if the study was done today and the second asked, based on the article by Messner how could audiences be constructed to reflect growth of girls and women in sport?
The first question was tough because there have been improvements in the coverage of women sports, but they still lack the quality coverage that men sports receive. For example most women sports are announced by little known announcers, or rookie announcers while men sports are announced by the best of the best such as Al Michaels, Joe Morgan, and many others just depending on the sport. This can also be looked at in a bias because to be honest I am not familiar with many women sport announcers and do not know if there are any really well known ones that announce for a lot of the big women sporting events. All in all though besides the fact that the ratio for women to men sports being broadcast is very large the quality and such of the men's broadcasts I would assume are much greater, with more cameras, more crew, and like mentioned before the best of the best announcing the game.
The second question Messner says show more women sports coverage on local news instead of the ESPN's and such that are on cable television because everyone may not have cable, so if you do not get ESPN or cable for that matter you are receiving very little if any women sports coverage (only exception may be during the Olympics). Another one of Messner's suggestions is a simple idea, just show more regular season and post-season women sporting events, and I do think this has been done, maybe not on main stream channels but ESPN2 has a lot of women sports on, such as the WNBA and woman's college basketball. So progress is being made, but realistically this is not where the money is and for main stream networks such as ABC, NBC, and CBS to telecast a woman's sporting event it has to benefit the companies also, and this is the main reason I think it is not being done more often.
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As for the announcers used in women's sports, I remember that Jay Bilas started by announcing for women's basketball games. Unfortunately, his talent was noted and he was soon "rewarded" by being moved into commentary on men's sports. I remember thinking at the time that he was a great announcer for women's games.
ReplyDeleteThe women's game is something that people do not care about and that is wrong. They get very little coverage on television and when they do it is not have the best announcers. Also there might be two games on t.v. on a Saturday and the men's game will have 4 maybe 5. Maybe the women's game should move to CBS and ABC as well to get more action.
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