scholarly journals Sports Television and the Continuing Search for Alternative Programming

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Branden Buehler

The American sports television industry has scrambled to adjust to the loss of live sporting events in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic – a scramble clearly evidenced in programming schedules suddenly filled with replays of older event telecasts. However, rather than focus on the apparent novelty of this type of substitute coronavirus programming, this article instead argues that the loss of live sporting events represents the amplification of a problem television networks have already been grappling with for years: how to fill an ever greater number of outlets with sufficient year-round programming given a finite amount of live events. That in mind, this article proposes that many of the programming strategies that networks have turned to in the midst of the pandemic, including the expanded coverage of transactions (e.g. coverage of NFL free agency) and the increased scheduling of documentaries (e.g. The Last Dance), have been familiar extensions of previously established alternative programming solutions.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-574
Author(s):  
Branden Buehler

The American sports television industry has scrambled to adjust to the loss of live sporting events in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic—a scramble clearly evidenced in programming schedules suddenly filled with replays of older event telecasts. However, rather than focusing on the apparent novelty of this type of substitute coronavirus programming, this article, instead, argues that the loss of live sporting events represents the amplification of a problem that television networks have already been grappling with for years: how to fill an ever greater number of outlets with sufficient year-round programming given a finite number of live events. With that in mind, this article proposes that many of the programming strategies that networks have turned to in the midst of the pandemic, including the expanded coverage of transactions (e.g., coverage of National Football League free agency) and the increased scheduling of documentaries (e.g., The Last Dance), have been familiar extensions of previously established alternative programming solutions.


IEE Review ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 226
Author(s):  
Gerald L. Wells

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
Quinlan Miller

This article reconstructs queer popular culture as a way of exploring media production studies as a trans history project. It argues that queer and trans insights into gender are indispensible to feminist media studies. The article looks at The Ugliest Girl in Town series (ABC, 1968–69), a satire amplifying a purported real-life fad in flat chests, short haircuts, and mod wigs, to restore texture to the everyday landscape of popular entertainment. Approaching camp as a genderqueer practice, the article presents the program as one of many indications of simultaneously queer and trans representation in the new media moment of the late 1960s. Behind-the-scenes visions of excavated archival research inform an analysis of the series as a feminist text over and against its trans misogyny, which evaluates and ranks women based on their looks, bodies, and appearance while excessively sexualizing and even more stringently appraising, policing, and punishing trans women, women perceived to be trans, and oppositional forms of femininity. The program captures both the means of gender regulation and detachment from it, the experience of gender embodiment, and the promise of presenting and being perceived as many genders. Ugly is an awful word in the way it is usually wielded, but it can be reclaimed. Examining this rarely cited and often misconstrued Screen Gems series helps to demonstrate a more equitable distribution of creative credit for queer trans content across the television industry and the subcultures it commodified in the 1960s.


Author(s):  
Thomas Borstelmann

This book looks at an iconic decade when the cultural left and economic right came to the fore in American society and the world at large. While many have seen the 1970s as simply a period of failures epitomized by Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, global unrest, and disillusionment with military efforts in Vietnam, this book creates a new framework for understanding the period and its legacy. It demonstrates how the 1970s increased social inclusiveness and, at the same time, encouraged commitments to the free market and wariness of government. As a result, American culture and much of the rest of the world became more—and less—equal. This book explores how the 1970s forged the contours of contemporary America. Military, political, and economic crises undercut citizens' confidence in government. Free market enthusiasm led to lower taxes, a volunteer army, individual 401(k) retirement plans, free agency in sports, deregulated airlines, and expansions in gambling and pornography. At the same time, the movement for civil rights grew, promoting changes for women, gays, immigrants, and the disabled. And developments were not limited to the United States. Many countries gave up colonial and racial hierarchies to develop a new formal commitment to human rights, while economic deregulation spread to other parts of the world, from Chile and the United Kingdom to China. Placing a tempestuous political culture within a global perspective, this book shows that the decade wrought irrevocable transformations upon American society and the broader world that continue to resonate today.


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