A Brief History of Sexism in TV Coverage of the Olympics [View all]

[boston bean]

Years of research show that prime-time coverage of the Games gives male athletes more screen time and speaking opportunities—especially in the Winter Olympics.

For some Olympic fans, spotting and calling out sexism in Olympics coverage has become a sport in itself—and the past two weeks of Sochi coverage have certainly kept those vigilant fans busy.

NBC's primetime coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi has drawn criticism for the way commentators and analysts cover female athletes, and plenty of viewers found last night's broadcast of the women's ski halfpipe particularly irksome for the way it repeatedly referred to skiers as "girls" instead of women.

Skiing hasn't been the only event under fire, either. Speed skating, curling, hockey, bobsled, snowboarding—you name it. Last week, in one of the bigger dust-ups, NBC skiing analyst Steve Porino said, in a segment about how extreme the courses are for skiers, that the female athletes do "all of that while in a Lycra suit, maybe a little bit of makeup—now that is grace under pressure." The Washington Post rounded up tweets of upset viewers, who felt the remark paid unnecessary attention to athletes’ appearance, while Josh Levin at Slate wrote that onlookers should be "pretty angry" because "everyone knows there’s a double standard with regard to female athletes and how they’re expected to look pretty while performing amazing athletic feats."

But the double standard Levin mentions isn’t a new phenomenon. For years, academics and scholars have analyzed the way Olympic television coverage treats female athletes, from commentary just like Porino’s remarks, to less obvious metrics like visibility and screen time in certain events. Below are some of the most notable findings from several studies.

2002: "A Large Step Backwards"

The Olympics are too massive of an event to show in their entirety during primetime, which means NBC, as the exclusive U.S. broadcaster, has a lot of choices to make when putting together two weeks of programming. And after paying billions for the rights to air the Olympics—Comcast, NBC's parent company, shelled out $4.38 billion for the rights to all the Games between 2014 and 2020—plenty of dollars are riding on making sure those choices attract the largest audience possible.

More at link:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/02/a-brief-history-of-sexism-in-tv-coverage-of-the-olympics/284003/