Podcast #2 Women in Media

The podcast discusses the lack of media coverage for women's sports, with only 5% of coverage dedicated to women's sports compared to 90% for men's sports. The study reveals that there has been little change in the coverage of women's sports over the past 30 years, with men's sports still receiving the majority of coverage. Gender bias and sexism continue to dominate news and highlight stories on women's sports. However, there is some positive news, as viewership for women's sports is increasing, with more Gen Zers and Millennials watching women's sports. The Women's College Basketball Championship in 2023 had record viewership, surpassing the men's championship. The podcast emphasizes the need for more support and recognition for women in sports, and calls for a change in the media's coverage of women's sports. Hello and welcome back to my women in sports podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. So today I'm going to discuss media and how media reports on women's sports throughout the years. So I just want to go back and mention how last episode I said that 90% of all sports coverage are men. Women sports receives 5% and horse and dogs get 3%. So first I just want to jump in that I am going to go over the study that was found for the past three decades. They analyzed and tracked the quantity and quality of coverage of women and men's sports in televised news and highlight shows. It really reveals little change in the quantitative coverage of women's and men's sports over the past 30 years. Men's sports especially the big three of basketball, football, and baseball still receive the majority share of coverage whether in season or out of season. When a women's sports story does appear it usually is a case of one and done. A single woman's sports story obscured by a cluster of men's stories that precede it, follow it, and longer in length. Social media posts and online sports newsletters coverage through a bit more diverse in some ways mostly reflected these same pattern gender asymmetries. Gender bland sexism continue to dominate pattern in 2019 TV news and highlights stories on women's sports. Three themes of this is gender bland coverage including nationalism, asymmetrical gender marking coupled with local parochialism, and community service charitable contributions. So in this study including in 2014 there were zero lead stories that focused on women's sports. Of the 251 broadcasts we analyzed in 2019, five of them opened with a story on women's sports. All five were in the month of July and all focused on the US women's national team winning the World Cup. Of the 93 online newsletters in our sample, eight led with a story about women's sports. Four of these articles appeared on ESPN, three were on ESPN.com and one was on CBS Sports. So we see that these tables that they show us we see that in 2009 there were 1.3 coverage on Women's Sports Center and it jumped to 5.7 percent in 2019 because I already mentioned the women's US soccer team winning the World Cup. Online and newsletters were about 8.7 percent women and Twitter was 10.2 percent was higher than any TV news and Sports Center. So I think the most interesting part that I found about all this is the in season and out of season. Even when women's sports were in season and the men's sports were not in season, the men still somehow got way more coverage. I look at this table and it's March, July, November and for WNBA on the ESPN sports and on KABC, KNBC and KCBS we have zero stories for March and November and nine stories total in July. That's when WNBA is in season in July but for the NBA on the same networks for March and November when they are in season they have a total of 94 in March and 81 in November. In July when they are out of season they have a total of 72 stories. I just think that this is very interesting and just kind of shows the whole picture. This is in 2019 that even when they're out of season they still get way more coverage even when there's nothing going on when they should be focusing on the WNBA because they are actually in season and they actually are playing their sport. So yeah I just think that's pretty ridiculous but it is what it is I guess. Now I'm going to move on to a little bit of a better news for us. The first ever network to focus on female athletes is the Women's Sports Network. We have one out of a lot 251 broadcasts but they offer 24-hour streaming of original programming, competitions, documentaries, and on a daily studio show called Game On. I also wanted to switch shifts a little bit and talk about viewership and how things are going now because that study was in 2019 and things have changed. So in 2022 we saw that the viewership is steady on the rise for women's sports the WNBA postseason saw 22% increase in viewership year after year. I just think that this is so much needed and and this just shows that more and more people are getting invested in the WNBA. I didn't think if you went up to 100 people and asked if they could name two or three professional women basketball players they could probably maybe tell you one and I just think that needs to change. I mean these women give up their entire lives to play the sport that they love and the least that we can do is recognize them for their hard work. But I also want to talk about that there is a study conducted by the National Research Group and that 39% of Gen Zers are watching more women's sports than they were a year ago along with 29% more of Millennials. I think this also just shows that more people are getting interested and that it's worth watching. I also want to talk about the Women's College Basketball Championship this year 2023. The viewership averaged 9.92 million viewers peaking at 12.6 million. The most watched women's college basketball game to date. The game was also the most streamed sporting event on ESPN and the viewers doubled from 2022 when South Carolina played UConn. And the men's championship only had 4.69 million viewers. I think this shows a lot that women's games are interesting. People want to watch them. They want to be invested in them. I know me personally the past two three years I have been very interested in women's basketball especially. And now I know the players. I watched them every year and I watched them go into the WNBA. And it's the same as men's basketball. It might be a little bit different. Yes they're women and they play a little bit different than men. Of course they do. But I don't think that means that we should only watch men because you like the way they play better. The women deserve to be supported. They deserve to be you know go to their games and root for them for what they're doing. I know I've just been mainly talking about women's basketball but I think that this can go towards all women's sports golf tennis hockey anything really. I think we see it all around the players field and that it's just it's obviously almost discriminated against that women just don't get the same treatment as men do in sports. I think that if the media would give women sports the chance to you know show them what they're made of like many people would be interested and get interested. I think we see that a lot with golf. I know personally I'm should be I'm pretty bad at this but I don't know a single woman pro golfer and I could probably name 10 men because as a slight fact that women golf is not in the media. You don't see that every tournament on TV like you see with men. And I just think that you know if we just gave them a chance they would prove to you and to everyone that you know they're worth watching. They're worth tuning into. They're worth paying the freaks amount of money that so many people pay to go watch NFL teams. You know like people pay so much money to go to NBA games NFL games all these things and can we just give women even a slightest chance to just watch them on TV. Just tune into their matches. Just tune into their games and get invested in these women's lives. You know they put in as much work sometimes even more than the men because they have to prove themselves every single day that they can do it. They can you know get the NIL deals you know are worth being paid the same amount as men. And so I think just to wrap this up at the end of the day women's sports deserve more. They do. We do see a good trend going up but it's not near as much as I think that they deserve and that's needed to you know change things. Everything needs to be changed eventually and this is something that needs to change. So that will be all for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I will be back in two weeks. I am hoping to get an interview with a couple people very soon so that will be uploaded in two weeks but I want to thank you again for tuning in. Thank you for listening to my me rant about this. I'm very passionate about this. I think a lot more people should be. I think a lot more people should be more dedicated to fighting the good fight. And yeah I just thank you so much for listening and I will see you in two weeks. Bye.