Gender and Televised Sports Coverage

1. Gender and Televised Sports Coverage Presented by: Kelly McMullin, Bryden Boudreau, and Greg Gilroy

2. Importance of sport in society • Competition  Provincials (grade school), Nationals (CIS / AUS, NCAA), Olympics • Enjoyment  to play and to watch & past time hobies • Brings people together  friends and family for Stanley Cup or Superbowl • Revenue  Rogers taking over TSN (all NHL / Hockey Night in Canada) • Claim to fame  (female vs. male athletes) --- mark mcmorris vs. • History  females introduced to olympics (1900s – summer olympics), golf was first played sport (1567 Mary Queen of Scots played in place of her husband after his death, played in tournament) tennis was first organized womens sport (1884 wimbledon– singles – still huge today)

3. Problems with sport and gender involving televised sports coverage • Womens sports receive little to no coverage • Research done by Mesner, Cooky, and Hextrum (1989-2009) showed that in fact womens sports coverage from 3 network affiliates aired less than 2% of total airtime on women and sport. • Mens sports received 96%, while the remaining 2% was gender neutral • Unfortunately these results for women have been shown to be falling lower and lower as years progress considering in 2004, 6.3% of airtime in televised sports coverage was devoted to women and in the 2012 article (cite) it was reported that a mere 1.4% of airtime was dedicated to female sports coverage (2.1% in 2004. 2.2% 1999) • Ticker lines – in proportion of “ticker time” devoted to womens sports was 4.6% which was more than triple the thin air time devoted in their main broadcast ****** Mesner, Cooky, and Hextrum (1989-2009) NBC & CBS

4. SportsCenter • Devoted very little time to womens sport and nearly 100% of the time the broadcast started with a mens sports story. (over a 6 week testing span, early evening & late night) • The only time in the year is when we see this type of coverage for females tends to be during an Olympic year, especially during the winter Olympic year (cite mine). • Men’s sport is often aired more frequently during the year due to more professional sports opportunities for male athletes, during the winter olympics there are still more sporting opportunies for males • During any other time of the year most coverage is spent on hockey, football, basketball, and baseball. • video clip of sports centre top ten • Only time women seem to get “lead” stories is if something wrong happened such as line brawl (canadian women & usawomens hockey team exhibition game -- ) or if it is a game chaning play (eg. Last quarter buzzer shot) • Ticker time: 2.7% to womens sports which is down from 2004 8.5% (Mesner, Cooky, and Hextrum (1989-2009) • Video clip to back up argument --- olympic reel

5. Womens sport in decline and why? • More emphasis and money is being put towards funding of male teams such as booster clubs from alumni for university sports (marketing sponsers for nhl) • NCAA schools and march madness tournament – female tournament at the same time, no coverage (males aired & prolined) • Media coverage focuses more on mens sport that are out of season more than womens sports that are in season (hockey trades in post season etc) • The most common theme that arises when women are shown in sport media is when they are a wife/ gf, shown as a sexual object such as in a magazine, ring girls in MixedMartialArts, as well as cheerleaders or women performing in revealing outfits