Fair - According to recently published research in Communication & Sport (6/5/15) conducted by myself and colleagues Mike Messner and Michela Musto at the University of Southern California, in 2014 televised news media devoted ... 2-3 percent of its broadcast time to covering women’s sports. And, in fact, this was lower than the 5 percent of coverage women’s sports received in 1989. ... ESPN’s Sports Center’s numbers were similar. Of the 405 total SportsCenter segments in our sample (nearly 14 hours), 376 covered men’s sports (just over 13 hours) while only 13 segments, approximately 17 minutes, featured women’s sports.
According to a statement made by ESPN, their broadcast event coverage of women’s sports increased from 1,500 hours to 7,500 hours over the past five years. Yet, according to our research, Sports Center’s coverage of women’s sport has held steady at 2 percent since we added the program to the study in 1999. Indeed, given the tremendous growth in women’s sports, and in broadcast event coverage as ESPN’s numbers would suggest, one would expect to see an increase in news media coverage.
2 comments:
You failed to prove the 'more popular' part. Oh, or did I miss the 100,000 people showing up for the big softball game between rivals? And besides, no one who really likes sports watches sportscenter anyways. It mainly exists for bar tvs to show the latest slam-dunks to people who aren't really paying attention. And, its a pretty sure bet that ESPN studies closely which segments really raise their own ratings and follow that as a goal. Again, back to the point where you failed to prove the 'more popular' assertion.
UFC recently had women's matches for the 2 top main card fights on pay per view UFC 184. Women's MMA is fast approaching parity with men's MMA in popularity. The only thing slowing WMMA down is the pool of fighting talent is not yet large enough to cover most weight classes, and fill half of most fight cards.
http://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/meteoric-rise-popularity-wmma
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