What's The Gendered Story? Vancouver's Prime Time Olympic Glory on NBC

Abstract

Previous Olympic media studies have shown that NBC's Winter Olympic telecast is far more likely to promote and advance men athletes and sports than women athletes and sports (see Billings, 2008b Billings, A. C. 2008b. Olympic media: Inside the biggest show on television London : Routledge.. [Google Scholar] ), and this study of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic telecast again reveals gender divisions. Analysis of all 64 hours of NBC's prime time telecast revealed that (a) when excluding mixed-gender pair competitions, men received more than three-fifths of the remaining airtime, (b) 75% of the most-mentioned athletes were men, and (c) sportscasters again employed dialogue differences in key areas including that men were more likely than women to be portrayed as succeeding because of their experience, while women were more likely than men to be depicted as succeeding because of courage and failing because they lacked commitment. Contextualization is also offered related to intervening factors such as (a) Olympic participation rates and (b) U.S. medal successes by gender.