What’s so good about being there?: Negotiating the audio visual chasm between attending the live event and reading the televised media sport experience.

Abstract

The televised sports event offers ease of reading for the dedicated sports fan and layers of accessible information for the casual viewer. It makes good commercial sense to offer a safe viewing haven for a range of viewing competencies. A high percentage of these viewers may only have watched the particular sport they follow on television and may never have played the game or attended a live event. As broadcasting of the game event becomes increasingly sophisticated, viewing pleasure and consumer satisfaction has become inextricably woven into a multi level engagement with the medium and the message. Should they attend a live sports event, they may find the relative democracy of the viewing experience overwhelming or severely lacking and turn to mediated options on offer at the live stadia. They feel cut adrift and disengaged without the support of the mediated text to help interpret their experience. This paper considers the way in which tertiary students studying media sport, interpret the ways of reading the live game and the mediated game experience on a personal and theoretical level. Examples will be taken from the two major sports on New Zealand television; men’s rugby and women’s netball. Extracts will also be analysed from a television production, ‘Full Credit’, made by the students where they have the opportunity to question media sport professionals on issues surrounding the construction of the media sport text and the production of the game event.