A Rhetoric of Sports Talk Radio by John D. Reffue a Dissertation
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A Rhetoric of Sports Talk Radio by John D. Reffue A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Co-Major Professor: Eric M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. Co-Major Professor: Daniel S. Bagley III, Ph.D. Elizabeth Bell, Ph.D Gilbert B. Rodman, Ph.D. Date of Approval: November 28, 2005 Keywords: media studies, popular culture, performance studies, masculinity, community © Copyright 2006, John D. Reffue Acknowledgements I would like to begin by thanking my parents, David and Ann Reffue who supported and encouraged my love of communication from my very earliest years and who taught me that loving your work will bring a lifetime of rewards. Special thanks also to my brother and sister-in-law Doug and Eliana Reffue and my grandmother, Julia Tropia, for their love and encouragement throughout my studies and throughout my life. To my committee, you are my heroes in more ways than all of you know. Thank you, Eric Eisenberg, for rescuing me and for helping me to see this project through to the end. The seeds of this dissertation were planted in your class by your words and I cannot thank you enough for helping me complete this journey. Thank you, Dan Bagley, for your perpetual confidence and positivity, for your honesty and energy and for motivating me to dig deeper and see things from multiple perspectives. Thank you, Gil Rodman, for your thoroughness and candor, and for the way you blend the two better than any educator I have ever known. Thank you, Elizabeth Bell, for your warmth and genuineness and for helping me to add the intellectual ingredients and perspectives that made this dissertation so unique. All four of you have touched my life forever. I feel very fortunate that I was able to include a friend of almost 20 years as the outside chair of this committee, my fellow member of the Rider University Class of 1990, Judithanne Scourfield McLauchlan. Thank you, Judy for being a part of my life both then and now. Thanks also to the following members of the Rider University Communication Department faculty who first taught me how to learn and think about this discipline and why it means so much to the world we live in: Howard Schwartz, Rick Turner, Barry Janes, Pam Brown, Bosah Ebo, and especially Myra Gutin who gave me the confidence to pursue advanced study of the field and who did so with a most graceful combination of logic and love. My masters degree studies at Syracuse University introduced me to rhetoric, and also introduced me to what it means to be a teacher and a member of a scholarly community. My thanks and gratitude to faculty members Jack Barwind, Ken Johnson, Jim Helmer, Arthur Jensen, Craig Dudczak, Amos Kiewe, Jane Banks, Kate Andrews and Rick Wright. Special thanks to my advisor, Paul Ried and to John C. Adams for introducing me to rhetoric and helping me make sense of it. My colleagues at Hillsborough Community College have been a constant source of inspiration to me. Thank you Barabara Goldstein, Sylvia Marion Carley, Bob Chunn, Lydia Lyons, Kathryn Wyly, Carolyn Adams-Wallace, Eric Joost, Steve Johns, Keith Berry, Marie Colaianni and especially Jim Perry for your support and encouragement. I would like to thank the faculty of the USF Communication Department for being the best model I have ever known of an academic family. Thank you to my classroom professors Art Bochner, Carolyn Ellis, Carol Jablonski, Marsha Vanderford and David Payne, who along with my committee members reminded me that what we are teaching and learning is enriching the lives of people every single day. Special thanks to Keysha Williams for her help in making sure all my paperwork was complete and where it needed to be. My fellow graduate students have provided me with limitless support, encouragement and much needed humor for many years. Thank you Jay Baglia, Elissa Foster, Krista Hirschmann, Matt Johnson, Robbie Shumate Polston, Beth Goodier, Nigel Malcolm, May Gao, Angie Day, Wendy Adams-King and Deborah Walker and very special thanks to J. Emmett Winn, Robert Kreisher, Michael Arrington, Adi Thelen, Laura Ellingson and Elena Strauman for their friendship, collegiality, great good humor and love. Finally, to the three people I love the most in the world, my wife and partner Sherri Kincade and my children Thomas Reffue and Jessie Reffue, my thanks and love to all of you for reminding me every day what matters most. Table of Contents Abstract iii Chapter One - Introduction 1 Why Sports Talk Radio (Player Introductions) 3 Talk Radio as Dramatic, Public, Discursive Form 6 Sports Talk Radio as Public Discourse: Communitas and Confrontation 10 Sports Talk Radio as Masculine Space and Style (The Locker Room of the Air) 14 Purpose of this Study 18 Methods: Establishing The Lines of Scrimmage 19 Methods: Rhetorical Criticism, Dramatism, and Close Textual Analysis 22 Outline of Chapters 27 Chapter Two - History and Development of Sports Talk Radio 29 Earliest Sports Broadcasts: The Representative Anecdote 32 Sports Talk Radio Takes Shape as Reflexive Opportunity 36 Loudmouths and Masculinity 39 The Birth of WFAN: Lots of Watts and In Your Face 44 The Sports Radio Explosion: Cementing the Form 47 Welcome to the Jungle: THE Representative Anecdote 51 The Format Today 54 History is Written Everyday 56 Chapter Three - The Jim Rome Show as Rhetorical Forum 59 Purpose of this Chapter 63 From Clones to Karma: The Jim Rome Show 64 The Jim Rome Show’s Intertextuality 68 Intertextuality and Performance Competence 76 Intertextuality and Social Identification 83 Intertextuality and Social Critique 89 Moving Beyond Translation and Analysis 93 Chapter Four - Local Sports Talk Radio as Rhetorical Forum 100 Purpose of this Chapter 102 WDAE: Local Radio’s Uphill Climb 106 Steve Duemig: Local Access and Education 107 Local Sports Fans as Academic Subjects 114 Coaching Sports Fans 116 Masculine Autocrat 120 i Criticism as Instruction 121 Positive Reinforcement 123 The Masculine Coach and the Woman Athlete 126 Deferring to the Coach 131 Summary 134 Chapter Five - Conclusions and Implications for Future Research 137 Findings of this Study 140 Community, Identity and Sports Talk Radio 142 Caller/Host Relationships 144 White Invisibility and Cultural Authority Over Race and Class 145 Sports Talk Radio and Gender 154 Directions for Future Research 161 Concluding Thoughts 163 References 167 Bibliography 176 About the Author End Page ii A Rhetoric of Sports Talk Radio John D. Reffue ABSTRACT Sports talk radio is a broadcast format that has grown exponentially through the 1990’s and into the early part of the twenty-first century. Academic publications about the format, especially qualitative analyses, have been extremely limited and previous radio content researchers have called for a more in-depth study of talk radio, in particular the relationships between and among callers, hosts and the listening audience. This study examines sports talk radio as a format separate from political talk radio programming. An evolution of the format from its roots as a broadcast novelty to the modern day stand-alone genre is traced, including an examination of select individuals who pioneered the genre and advanced it against high industry skepticism. From September 13, 2004 though September 17, 2004, programming was tape recorded both from a nationally syndicated sports talk radio program (The Jim Rome Show) and a locally broadcast program (The Steve Duemig Show). Calls from listeners of the shows were transcribed to isolate patterns and recurring themes that may be emblematic of the format specifically. In the case of The Jim Rome Show, callers were found to employ specific strategy to gain favor with the host and ultimately become celebrated parts of the show in their own right. The concept of intertextuality is iii introduced to help describe the strategy used by callers to Rome’s show, the highest rated nationally syndicated sports talk show in the country. Additionally, local sports talk programming is examined to isolate how callers utilize that format to deepen their experiences as sports fans by using the format as a vehicle toward empowerment. Issues of identity, both individually and as a community, come together in the study of local sports talk radio as callers, hosts and the listening audience strive together to become members of a “real” sports town. Finally, implications for future research are discussed, including predictions of how sports talk radio will continue to influence the sports themselves and deepen and change what it means to be a sports fan in the modern era. iv Chapter One Introduction On October 7, 1988, shortly before 6:15 p.m., I sat alone in a cramped dormitory room in Lawrenceville, New Jersey listening to a piece of broadcasting history: I’m Alan Colmes. Thank you. God bless you. And for the last time, this is 66, W-N-B-C, New York. Let’s do the countdown. 10-9-8- 7-6-5-4-3-(sound of familiar NBC xylophone jingle in background) 2-1. (in distance) You heard the countdown…it’s over (groaning followed by subdued applause). I made time that day to be near a radio when the legendary New York City flagship station of the NBC radio network signed off for the last time. I have always had a deep appreciation for the history of radio, and on that day, it was important for me to bear witness, to be present at a death. It was something I wanted to do alone. WNBC was the last of a dying breed, the last major AM station in New York to play music.