Abstract
Sport played a significant part in the growth of television, especially during its emergence as a dominant global medium between 1960 and 1980. In turn, television, together with commercial sponsorship, transformed sport, bringing it significant new income and prompting changes in rules, presentation, and cultural form. Increasingly, from the 1970s, it was not the regular weekly sport that commanded the largest audiences but, rather, the occasional major events, such as the Olympic Games and football’s World Cup. In the past two decades, deregulation and digitalization have expanded the number of channels, but this fragmentation, combined with the growth of the Internet, has meant that the era in which shared domestic leisure was dominated by viewing of the major channels is closing. Yet, sport provides an exception, an instance when around the world millions share a live and unpredictable viewing experience.Citation
Whannel, G. (2009) 'Television and the transformation of sport', The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 625 (1), pp.205-218.Publisher
Sage JournalsAdditional Links
http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0002716209339144Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
0002-7162ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1177/0002716209339144