Contemporary Sport As Media Spectacle: Mass
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Schirato et. al., Int J Journalism Mass Comm 2015, 2: 112 https://doi.org/10.15344/2349-2635/2015/112 International Journal of Journalism & Mass Communication Review Article Open Access Contemporary Sport as Media Spectacle: Mass Media and the Transformation of the Field of Sport Tony Schirato* and Noah Zhang Department of Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Avenida da Universidade,Taipa, Macao Abstract Publication History: Received: May 25, 2015 This article is concerned with the mass media-sport nexus, and its role in shaping and transforming the Accepted: September 07, 2015 field of sport in what we can call its contemporary phase; this will be taken to refer to the last forty years Published: September 09, 2015 or so, in which time the relatively incipient and equivocal relationship that sport developed with the mass media during the first sixty years of the twentieth century became a symbiotic relationship. Keywords: Mass media, Sport, English, Revenue Introduction how this has transformed both the field sport and its place within and From its beginnings in mid-nineteenth century English public relation to the wider social field. schools-inflected sport has tended to represent itself as autonomous, inalienable and utopian; both a world within itself (a space that allows Prior to the Second World War the mass media had a limited people to escape from everyday seriousness) and a kind of exemplar relation with and impact upon the field of sport. Newspapers had of what the wider social field should be like (often articulated in terms reported upon and had become associated (through various forms of the notion of a level playing field). The field of sport continues to of sponsorship) with sporting events since the last decade of the refer back to its foundational values, but these references have now 19th century, and continued be tolerated, although generally kept at taken on a variety of functions that would have been unimaginable arm’s length, by sports administrators. However generally (and most or anathema to the English patrician classes of the 1860s, such as pronouncedly in Britain and the Commonwealth) the field of sport was featuring in mass media promotional campaigns. It may “go without highly suspicious of other forms of the mass media. Radio dominated saying” [1], but it still needs to be said, that: live sports coverage in both the USA and the UK, but whereas in the United States television won audiences with its telecasts of boxing and the popularisation of sport, down from the elite schools (where college football in the 1940s and 1950s; it cut into radio audiences its place is now contested by the ‘intellectual’ pursuits imposed by to the extent that while it had been an “essential part of daily life” in the demands of intensified social competition) to the mass sporting America in the 1930s, by the end of the 1940s “the average American associations, is necessarily accompanied by a change in the functions listened to the radio for only twenty four minutes a day” [3], in Britain which the sportsmen and their organizers assign to this practice, the changeover was a much more gradual process. This was partly due and also by a transformation of the very logic of sporting practices to the status and influence of BBC radio, but probably more so because which correspond to the transformation of the expectations and of the relatively slow development of a national transmitter system: demands of the public in correlation with the increasing autonomy once this was in place growth was rapid, to the extent that whereas in of the spectacle vis-à-vis past or present practice. The exaltation the “early 1950s less than 5% of households” possessed television sets, of ‘manliness’ and the cult of ‘team spirit’ that are associated with by the 1970s “this was the proportion of those that did not” [4]. playing rugby - not to mention the aristocratic ideal of ‘fair play’ - have a very different meaning and function for bourgeois or This did not at first translate into wide and consistent live television aristocratic adolescents in English public schools and for the sons of coverage of mass spectator sport in the UK. As we noted, there was a peasants or shopkeepers in south-west France [2]. suspicion on the part of many sports administrators that such a move would have a detrimental impact on attendances: this had been the This network of mass media-inflected relations and practices case in the USA with boxing telecasts, which had contributed to falls allowed sport to connect with, take advantage of and renew and in attendances at Madison Square Garden of up to 80% in the 1940s promote itself through, ‘outside’ dispositions and promote itself [5]. While there had been a remarkable post-war (and pre-television) through, 'outside' dispositions and imperatives: sport continues to increase in attendances at English soccer, cricket and rugby league commit to and perform in accordance with its foundational values, matches, by the 1960s: but it also functions as both a service industry and an extension of the *Corresponding Author: Prof Tony Schirato, Department of Communication, mass media. One of the more explicit examples of this development Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Avenida da Universidade,Taipa, is that most curious of phenomena, witnessed at rugby events such as Macao, E-mail: [email protected] the ‘Wellington Sevens’ competition in New Zealand where crowds, Citation: Schirato T, Zhang N (2015) Contemporary Sport as Media Spectacle: dressed up in outlandish costumes and performing in accordance Mass Media and the Transformation of the Field of Sport. Int J Journalism Mass with carefully choreographed moves and directions (signaled and Comm 1: 112. doi: https://doi.org/10.15344/2349-2635/2015/112 activated by the presence of television cameras), watch themselves Copyright: © 2015 Schirato et al. This is an open-access article distributed being watched by television audiences. In this article we will consider under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits how the relationship between the field of sport and the (predominantly unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the capitalist) mass media has been played out of the last forty years, and original author and source are credited. Int J Journalism Mass Comm IJJMC, an open access journal ISSN: 2349-2635 Volume 2. 2015. 112 Citation: Schirato T, Zhang N (2015) Contemporary Sport as Media Spectacle: Mass Media and the Transformation of the Field of Sport. Int J Journalism Mass Comm 1: 112. doi: https://doi.org/10.15344/2349-2635/2015/112 Page 2 of 7 the number of paying spectators was falling across the board, a contextualised (by the main commentators, special comments person, trend that continued in the 1970s and beyond … For 1969-70, for and sideline reporters) and broken down into multi-angled slow example, Football League attendances fell to 29.6 million, a drop motion ‘slices’; and where the frequency of time outs and changes of of 28 per cent in twenty one seasons, with the low point coming in possession allows for the insertion of numerous commercial breaks. 1984-5 when only 17.8 million attended, down 56 per cent from the Faced with declining participation numbers and revenue, squash post-war boom. In county cricket, a decline was evident by the early officials did everything to revamp the game for television, including 1960s with the ‘nadir’ reached in 1966 when ‘513,578 individuals introducing fluorescent balls and transparent walls and changing the went through the county turnstiles’, a mere 22 per cent of the crowds scoring system, but nothing really worked: most squash events are in in 1947. The rugby league Challenge Cup Final continued to draw more or less the same position as FIFA in 1954, which gave away the large crowds … but after the record crowd at Odsal for the 1954 television rights to the tournament in Switzerland “and considered replay, the fixture … failed to fill Wembley on thirty occasions. A itself lucky to get the publicity” [8]. more noticeable decline was evident in the league fixtures: by 1968- 9, attendances had fallen to 2.7 million, a drop of 60 per cent over There are numerous other effects and consequences of the televisual twenty one seasons … This was a time of the game’s catastrophic turn of sport. First, consider the issues of space and architecture and decline as a spectator sport … (and) examples can be multiplied their relation to sporting events and crowds: contemporary stadia across the other spectator sports [6]. are designed and built not just with the game or even the attending spectators in mind (although they must have their own easily visible Martin Polley identifies a number of reasons for this trend, including television screens for instant replays), but also to cater for the needs increase in available leisure activities, a switch to individual sports of sponsors, advertising and television cameras, and to encourage participation, the primitive state of stadium facilities and hooliganism consumerism and consumption. In short, the shape and contents of and crowd disorders; but clearly one of the most significant factors was stadia (a mixture of functionality and consumerist aesthetics) mirrors “the increasing amount of television sport which allowed potential both the heterogenous nature of the field of sport itself, and the logics spectators to sample a greater variety of events than they could ever and imperatives of the mass media spectacle: see live without having to pay or leave their own homes” [7]. The other side of the decline in live attendances from the 1960s onward there are few construction processes as those involved in the was a concomitant development of (predominantly televisual) interest building of modern stadiums.