JunkFy (2024)

16/11/2021

‘It was the best five years of my life!’ How sports programs are keeping disadvantaged teens at school
Participation in specialist sport programs keeps teenagers from low socioeconomic backgrounds at school and boosts their maths grades. This is what I found in my PhD study.

Being engaged in learning can set people up for success in the rest of their life. This is why experts see it as one of the main goals of early adolescence.

Students tend to be engaged with school in the primary years, but their engagement decreases in secondary school. So educators are trying to find ways to help students maintain that early engagement.

My PhD research explored the influence of specialist sporting programs on the educational outcomes of students attending schools in low socioeconomic areas of Perth. Specifically, I was interested in how participation in these programs affected the students’ academic performance and level of school engagement.
What are specialist sports programs?
Students who participate in specialist sporting programs specialise in one sport in place of a range of elective subjects in years 7-10. Enrolment is open to all students, including those who live outside a school’s catchment area, and selection is generally based on:

a high level (or potentially high level) of sporting ability and coachability

a positive attitude toward sport and school (in primary school)

a good record of behaviour and attendance.

The selection criteria are a way for the school to clearly communicate their expectations from the very beginning. They are about encouraging the continuation of students’ positive behaviours into secondary school, rather than trying to solve the problem of disengagement down the track.
Specialist sport programs are available in a variety of forms across Australia (including South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland). Some take an elite pathway approach, while others focus on participation. They are increasingly being developed in both public and private schools.
On average, schools allocate around four hours of class time per week to specialist sports programs. In years 7-10 this time is split evenly between practical and theoretical work. In years 11 and 12 there is roughly a 70-30% practical-theoretical split.

Practical sessions focus on developing skills and students’ fitness levels. Theoretical sessions cover topics such as biomechanics and physiology, rules and tactics, and nutrition and sport psychology.

16/11/2021

CBC commitment to men’s hockey: At best a missed opportunity for women’s, at worst a slap in the face
The multi-year, multi-platform broadcast deal recently inked between the CBC and the Canadian Hockey League might be good news for fans of men’s junior hockey, but for women’s professional hockey, it is at best a missed opportunity and at worst a slap in the face.

As media executives invest scarce production dollars into even more men’s hockey, audiences for women’s hockey have often been left watching either exhibition tournaments live or poorly produced, hard-to-find games online.

The chicken and egg argument around the low-to-no media coverage for women’s sports goes like this: broadcasters claim they can’t make the investment in high-quality production for women’s sport without a guaranteed audience to sell to advertisers while athletes, activists and academics argue that audiences cannot be built without broadcaster investment.

If there is no media coverage for women’s hockey, does that mean there is no audience?
What came first? Investment or audience?
As a sports scholar and TV/media producer, I bring a unique perspective to this argument. In my academic research I found an enthusiastic, engaged audience for Olympic women’s hockey that says they don’t watch the professional women’s games because they don’t know when or where to find them.

Is this the fault of the viewers fault or the broadcasters for failing to muster, mobilize and monetize this audience-in-waiting? As communication and culture researcher Ryan Phillips argues, the audiences for men’s hockey didn’t just simply appear. Instead, CBC spent 50 years investing in its construction, building and eventually expanding the audience to include women. This happened not just through the broadcast of individual games, but through a commitment to develop the brand using every opportunity and platform available.

Scott Stinson, a sports columnist for the National Post, described something similar with men’s junior hockey, crediting the crew’s passion for and belief in the game for its success as a ratings-winning television event.
It takes more than a token broadcast
Women’s professional hockey hasn’t received anything close to this level of broadcaster investment or commitment.

The now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) received sparse game coverage from Sportsnet and arguably lacklustre promotion. The Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) formed in the wake of the CWHL demise has only the occasional game broadcast on NBCSN, CBC Sports, CBC Gem and Sportsnet.

The U.S.-based Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), formerly the National Women’s Hockey League, saw two of its 2021 tournament games broadcast on NBCSN, but otherwise relied on its streaming deal with Twitch.

While some reports indicate views measuring in the tens of thousands and even over a million, the league’s two Twitch channels have more than 30,000 and more than 6,000 followers on each, with views for most games in the hundreds.

The 2021-22 season looks better for the PHF. As it enters into an exclusive partnership with ESPN+, the platform promises to broadcast 60 regular-season games, including the Isobel Cup playoffs, and other special events.

Women’s professional hockey on Canadian TV
All sport media is struggling as platforms move from conventional broadcast to online streaming. But the issue discussed is often about transitioning audiences rather than building them.

There are benefits to conventional broadcasting, particularly in a corporate infrastructure that has multiple media strands for cross-promotion. Sport, with its “live” nature fits well with television scheduling and, crucially, the costs of production to output a polished show happen up front. Broadcasters mitigate the risk of that investment through airtime and audience eyeballs sold in advance to advertisers, hence the chicken-and-egg problem.

But, television production is always a risk. There is never a guaranteed audience.

Unlike many other industries that buy and sell products, television and media content before production is a concept, well thought out, tested and scrutinized, but still a concept. Broadcasters try to mitigate the risk by licensing international formats (like The Amazing Race, The Bachelor or Big Brother) that promise a tried-and-tested audience, albeit one from another market.

For original content, one way to mitigate risk is to develop programming featuring celebrities, social media influencers or personalities with fame, notoriety and followers who can help build audiences.

JunkFy

16/11/2021

16/11/2021

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