I watch sports just about every night. If there’s a good game on, I’m watching it. But since my Chicago teams are rarely on in Indiana, I only get to watch the nationally televised games. No big deal though for me because I watch sports for sports.
A big part of the experience for me is the analysis that comes with the game. I love listening to what everyone presenting the game has to say.
Maybe I watch more hours of sports than I used to, but I’ve noticed more women announcing nationally televised games. This is probably a bad thing, but I feet like as a kid, I’d gotten used to seeing women calling less publicized games on smaller channels.
This got me curious so I set out to see how women have been depicted on the analysis side of sports because it would really be a shame if women were being given worse opportunities in sports broadcasting than men. Jack Brickhouse once said, “Women have another dimension that men cannot give.”
It turns out that the sports broadcasting industry has been making strides in presenting women sportscasters. An article written by Sally Jenkins in 1991 talked about how women sportscasters were paid less than men and got less airtime.
American Sportscasters Online notes that this may have been because of the women’s rights activists of the day:
“‘Part of the blame is in the culture,’ says Jeannie Morris, who finds the feminists of the 90's not as aggressive as they were in the 70's. This means less pressure for the networks to hire females, as the women are not really fighting for the jobs anymore.”
Today, women get much more airtime than they did in the 90’s. American Sportscasters Online lists women pioneers like Suzyn Waldman and Gayle Sierens and credits them for starting women’s move into sports broadcasting. It also notes women like Linda Cohen and Hannah Storm who are regular sports analysts on channels like ESPN CNN and CBS today.
No comments:
Post a Comment