It can be argued that the media heavily influences how society functions. Everyday, we are exposed to media in many forms, from picking up a paper or magazine and watching our favourite TV programmes or football match. More recently, the internet has driven media in new directions and it far more common for people to share their lives through public media gateways like You Tube. Conventional media methods such as billboards are also thriving, and on every street corner we are constantly reminded that we need to buy a coke or that latest mobile phone.
Media is big business. But business, (if you'll allow the economics 101 lesson) is driven entirely by supply and demand. Economics after all is the consumption of goods and services. And consumers, give or take, are split down the middle. Half are men, and as luck would have it, the other half are women. So why, is sports media coverage so male dominated? Is it that women, or men for that matter, simply don't want to watch women in competitive sports? Or are women unfairly represented by the media machine?
In order to answer these questions we come back to supply and demand. Well, no-one can argue there is no supply as women compete in all manner of sports. There are womens football and rugby leagues for example. Women also play championship golf on the same courses as men. The list could go on but it illustrates the point and satisfies our question of supply. Now we come to demand. If the womens FA cup final had been screened in the same prime time slot as the mens, how many of us would have turned on our TV's to watch? How many us know that the women's 2006 US Golf Open champion was Annika Sorenstam, even though this was indeed televised by Sky in High Definition?
What do you think of womens sports coverage? Would you like to see more? Do you think there is enough demand? If not, why not?
Let the debate begin!
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Posted by jo, at 22:53 on Tue, Jun 26th
i think that there is some coverage of womens sports i would like to c more but i am sure if there was a call for it or a gap in the market so to speak then people like richard branson would have picked up on it by now and made some money!