This year’s 2012 Olympics Games, hosted by London,
were broadcasted by channel Nine which ended a 5 consecutive games rule by
channel Seven. This historical event has now become part a world dominated by
consumerism, a world motivated by the flows of capital. What should be a
celebration of national identity and a celebration of elite sportsmanship has
since become a battle of the media empires for advertising space and airtime
ratings. How has this affected the tradition and history of the game as well as
the way we view the sport and these athletes in the modern day.
The media empire is affecting all national events whether
it be the Olympic games, the soccer world cup, the rugby etc and we are now
seeing what is known as a monopoly when it comes to the broadcasting of these
events. There was once a rule known as the duopoly rule which prevented one
organisation from owning more than one station in the same area that provided a
similar type of service as well as preventing companies from owning more than
one AM, FM or TV station in the same area (Pringle et al 2006 p234). This rule
promoted fairness and healthy competition as well as the diversity of
viewpoints that comes from having more than one organisation dominating the
news shelves. These rules have since relaxed and as a result of the lack of
competition the quality of information is starting to suffer. This is obvious
from the poor reception in regards to Channel Nine’s broadcast of the Olympics.“Why
bother to become more efficient? Sometimes producers can make more money by
simply raising prices” (Straubhaar et al 2002, p40). This point also leads into the way a lot of services operate
nowadays; one that particularly stands out in my mind is the charging for
online newspaper subscriptions. Newspapers haven’t traditionally made their
money from selling papers but rather from the advertising space. Now that they
are online and there is no physical paper, saving the industry tones of money
in printing and distribution, they are deciding that they can get more money
out of consumers by making them pay for a subscription fee. The paper is not
better by any standards, the articles have to be shorter to fit the online
format and the process is now cheaper than ever before but the desire of the
industry to increase their flows of capital was one that could not be over
looked.
There was another way to watch the Olympic’s in
Australia and that was through a payed subscription. This gave consumers choice
but the product was essentially the same. We were merely paying for what we should’ve
had on free to air TV. This is the beauty of the monopoly, they can charge what
ever they want for what should be an essential service, the flows of
information. The flow of capital has become the primary concern of the modern
media. One thing that stands out in my mind from the Olympics were all the ads
that were supposedly for the Olympics but doubled as ads for Coca-Cola,
McDonalds, Visa etc. These companies tried to use the love audiences had for
the events and their country as a way of moving stock and selling products. Hasn’t
this made the Olympics seem trivialised? The immense access to so much media
and sporting has degraded the importance of the Olympics to a large degree and
it’s unlikely that it will ever become as important as it once was. Some
athletes even considered refusing to compete in this years Olympics due to
financial reasons and lets not forget all of the controversies surrounding this
years Olympics including certain members of the Australia swim team being
banned for online behaviour.
Sporting events are less and less becoming about the
sports and more about the celebrity status of the elite athletes that compete
in them. “Sport business is an estimated $213 billion industry; of this figure,
advertising is 14.1 percent, spectator spending is 13.4 percent, gambling is
9.7 percent, media broadcasting rights is 3.6 percent, and endorsements is 1
percent” (Hyman et al 2009, p1). There is no doubt that the sporting industry
capitalises on the celebrity of sports stars to increase the flows of capital.
Whether it’s an elite golfer endorsing a sugary sports drink, or an elite
basketballer eating a greasy cheeseburger, these and many other examples have
helped to spread products on a global scale whether the product is even used by
the athlete to perform at peak levels or not. This works because “In addition to being well known and
famous, celebrities are attractive, likeable, and trustworthy – at least in the
minds of the public to whom the advertising message is directed” (Leslie 2011, p45).
But lets be honest, they didn’t get to the top by eating too many of those
cheeseburgers or sugary waters. The celebrity culture is also one that has
become a hot topic of interest for discussion. These types of topics include a
scandalous affair, what kind of car someone is driving, a drug or over the top
party habit/lifestyle among many other areas of interest for audiences. Many
people would argue that this has taken away from the essence of what the
Olympics are really about and that is the sports themselves and getting behind
your nation in the spirit of competition and sportsmanship’s.
So have we really lost anything or is this just merely
the way of preserving an ancient tradition in the modern era? Although this is
the way that these kinds of events are all moving and you cant blame brands and
organisations for trying to capitalise on that the consumer is the one
suffering. Whether its an advertisement on TV aimed at children about drinking
a certain drink to perform well in sport, over years of hard work and training,
which is deliberately misleading naïve audiences who will them blame the
success of these athletes on genetics and natural talents when they fail to see
instant results. Or whether it’s having to pay extra for a service which should
free such as the flows of information on our online subscription and pay TV
services. These monopolies need to end, as lacking competition is what’s
driving the consumer focus into the ground. Consumers don’t understand that the
mass array of publications out there are generally coming from the same 2 or 3
people. The same views are merely being churned through different mediums to
reach a mass audience. Organisations need to start looking after their consumer
because one day another competitor may enter the race and leave them all high
and dry
References
Joseph
D. Straubhaar, 2001. Media Now With Infotrac: Communications Media in the
Information Age. 3rd Pkg Edition. Wadsworth Pub Co.
Peter
Pringle, 2005. Electronic Media Management, Fifth Edition. 5 Edition. Focal
Press.
Michael R. Hyman and Jeremy J. Sierra , January 1, 2009, Sport
Celebrity Idolatry: A Problem?
Larry
Z. Leslie, Larry Z 2011, Celebrity in the 21st Century: A Reference Handbook,
ABC-CLIO
