Vancouver's Prime Time Olympic Glory On

What’s The Gendered Story? Vancouver’s Prime Time Olympic Glory on NBC James R. Angelini, Paul J. MacArthur, and Andrew C. Billings Previous Olympic media studies have shown that NBC’s Winter Olympic telecast is far more likely to promote and advance men athletes and sports than women athletes and sports (see Billings, 2008b), and this study of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic telecast again reveals gender divisions. Analysis of all 64 hours of NBC’s prime time telecast revealed that (a) when excluding mixed-gender pair competitions, men received more than three- fifths of the remaining airtime, (b) 75% of the most-mentioned athletes were men, and (c) sportscasters again employed dialogue differences in key areas including that men were more likely than women to be portrayed as succeeding because of their experience, while women were more likely than men to be depicted as succeeding because of courage and failing because they lacked commitment. Contextualization is also offered related to intervening factors such as (a) Olympic participation rates and (b) U.S. medal successes by gender. As the proliferation of cable networks and online video continues to cause audience fragmentation, the Olympic telecast remains one of the few events that can consistently draw large international audiences. Worldwide, the 2010 Winter Games were shown in 220 territories, reaching an unduplicated cumulative audience of 1.8 billion viewers, and averaging 90.4 million viewers in prime time (International Olympic Committee, 2010)—lending further credence to the claim James R. Angelini (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware.His research interests include the cognitive processing of media with separate foci on sports and advertising. Paul J. MacArthur (M.P.S., Syracuse University) is an associate professor and Chair of the Public Relations and Journalism Department at Utica College. His research interests include mediated sports, cable television, media law, media history, and sports history. Andrew C. Billings (Ph.D., Indiana University) is a professor and the Ronald Reagan Chair of Broadcasting at the Department of Telecommunication & Film at the University of Alabama. His research interests lie in the intersection of sports media, megaevents, and identity. © 2012 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56(2), 2012, pp. 261–279 DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2012.678515 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online 261 262 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/June 2012 that the Olympics are the ‘‘biggest show on television’’ (Billings, 2008b, p. 1). For its part, NBC Universal provided more than 835 hours of Olympic coverage across five networks and a Web site, with 193.5 (23.2%) of those hours on the NBC broadcast network (NBC Universal, 2010a). NBC Universal’s five-network 190 million cume for the 2010 Games (NBC Uni- versal, 2010b) surpassed Super Bowl XLIV’s (153.4 million) by 24% (Dougherty, 2010). NBC’s prime time coverage of the Olympics averaged 24.4 million viewers— 2.2 million more than the combined prime time average of FOX, CBS, and ABC for the same time period (NBC Universal, 2010b). This success led Dick Ebersol, then chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, to proclaim, ‘‘The Olympics have yet again proved the power of the big events on network television’’ (NBC Universal, 2010b, para. 2). One possible reason for the telecast’s popularity was the preponderance of com- pelling stories in Vancouver. The Games began tragically when 21-year-old Geor- gian luger, Nodar Kumaritahsvili, was killed on the first day during a practice run. More positive stories took shape in the form of Simon Ammann tying Matti Nykänen’s record of four gold medals in ski jumping and Torah Bright winning snowboard halfpipe gold less than 3 weeks after missing the Winter X Games due to multiple concussions. U.S. skiing teammates Julia Mancuso and Lindsey Vonn provided a moment of minor controversy with some tame verbal jousting (see Davis, 2010), and Apolo Ohno accumulated historic career medal numbers for both short track speed skating and a U.S. Winter Olympian. With an abundance of gripping stories, and 17 nights to tell them, NBC had again hit episodic television gold. What stories NBC chose to tell, and how it told them, is particularly interesting when analyzed through a gendered lens. No other telecast featuring women’s sports approaches the broad reach of the Olympic Games. For example, the finals of the 2010 NCAA Women’s basketball tournament averaged 3.5 million viewers (ESPN, 2010), roughly 14% of the 2010 prime time Olympic average. Additionally, women traditionally account for the majority of the Olympic viewing audience (Billings, 2008b), a rarity in sports programming, Thus, the Olympics offer a unique megasporting opportunity in which women represent the majority of viewers and women athletes have, by far, their biggest media platform. One might assume that these two facts would mean that women represent at least half of the coverage; such an assumption would be wrong (see Billings, 2007). One might also assume that gender stereotyping would be less- ened because of the enhanced respect Olympic medal-winning women inherently demand; such an assumption would also be wrong (Billings & Eastman, 2002; Daddario & Wigley, 2007; Higgs, Weiller, & Martin, 2003). Previous work (see Billings, Angelini, & Duke, 2010; Billings, et al., 2008; Billings & Eastman, 2003; Eastman & Billings, 1999; Higgs & Weller, 1994; Tuggle & Owen, 1999) has shown that while women receive far more coverage in the Olympics than any other sports media event in the US, women still fail to receive equal clock-time and descriptions of women athletes are not free of gender differences, with scholars Angelini et al./GENDER AND VANCOUVER OLYMPICS 263 such as Billings (2008b) noting that the Winter Olympics routinely feature a larger clocktime gender gap than the Summer Olympics. As such, it is critical to investigate the self-proclaimed ‘‘flagship’’ of the NBC Universal Olympic enterprise—the prime time telecast—through a gendered lens to determine if coverage of women athletes progressed, regressed, or remained stagnant within the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic coverage. Related Literature Agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972) and framing (Goffman, 1974) theories have been used to enhance the understanding of gender-related coverage in broadcast sports (e.g., Billings, Angelini, & Duke, 2010; Billings & Eastman, 2003; Billings et al, 2008; Messner, Duncan, & Wachs, 1996) and are central to this study. Hypothesizing that ‘‘the mass media set the agenda : : : influencing the salience of attitudes,’’ (p. 177), McCombs & Shaw, quoting Bernard Cohen (1963, p. 13), argue that the media ‘‘may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its (audience) what to think about’’ (1972, p. 177). Frames are vehicles for producers to organize viewing experiences and are based on those producers’ perceptions of reality. Expanding on the concept of framing, Gitlin (1980), wrote, ‘‘Frames are principles of selection, emphasis and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters’’ (p. 6). He distilled media frames as ‘‘persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation of selection, emphasis, and exclusion : : : ’’ (p. 7). Gitlin argues that, ‘‘for organizational reasons alone, frames are unavoidable,’’ (p. 7) as they are neces- sary for media gatekeepers to efficiently decide how and what information convey to their audience. Information is infinite; airtime is not. Framing, consequently, is used to bridge the difference. NBC’s agenda setting and framing are utilized with the objective of maximizing ratings. This is then balanced, NBC argues, with the hopeful aims of authenticity and fairness to the global event and the ability to properly chronicle history (see Billings, 2008b). Regardless of NBC’s motives, by choosing which sports/athletes receive emphasis and which ones do not, the network suggests to the audience what is and is not important. For example, the network’s decision to give women’s snowboarding significant prime time coverage while omitting women’s cross-country skiing may be done for aesthetic (snowboarding is a more dynamic spectacle), programming (snowboarding draws more viewers), nationalistic (Americans have rarely fared well in cross-country), and practical (winners of cross country may not speak English, thereby providing poor interview potential) television reasons. This follows Gitlin’s model of selection (airing snowboarding in prime time), emphasis (profiling snowboarders and giving the sport significant airtime), and exclusion (lack of cross-country coverage). Yet, in so doing, NBC creates the impression that one sport and its athletes should take precedence over the other. 264 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/June 2012 Scholars have found gender to be a primary issue within media frames (see Hardin, Lynn, Walsdorf, & Hardin, 2002), particularly within sport, where the exclusion frame has frequently been implemented in regard to women’s sports. ESPN’s SportsCenter, for instance, typically devotes 1.4% of its airtime to women’s sports (Messner & Cooky, 2010). In Olympic telecasts, the exclusion function is not as drastically employed. Between 1996 and 2008, women received anywhere from 35.3% to 49.3% of the coverage (see Billings, 2008b; Billings et al., 2010). Nonetheless, the Olympic telecasts still emphasize men’s athletics at the exclusion of women’s. Still, the Olympics provides a rare opportunity for women athletes to be shown (and analyzed by scholars) in a much more robust framing focus simply because they are a substantial focus. Comparing televised men’s and women’s track and field coverage at the 2004 Games, Greer, Hardin, and Homan (2009), found the men’s treatment to be more dynamic in that, on a per minute basis, it contained more shot types, camera angles, and motion special effects.

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