A whole new ball game: the symbiotic relationship between broadcast media and netball in New Zealand from cinema newsreels to high definition pay television

Margaret Henley

Department of Film, Television & Media Studies, University of Auckland

2012

University of Auckland

Department of Film, Television & Media Studies, University of Auckland

Email: m.henley@auckland.ac.nz

This thesis draws on an understanding of television production practice to document the long struggle for netball to achieve a frequency and quality of media representation which matched the importance of the game in New Zealand women’s lives and within New Zealand society as a whole.

It is a journey and outcome which is certainly unique and envied in the netball playing world and possibly unique for a women’s sport internationally. What is also unique is that netball, as a game designed to be played only by women, had to fight its own battles in its quest for primetime recognition. It had first to define itself as meritorious and then challenge the controlling hegemony to prove that the game was worthy of media attention – a valuable media property that had the capacity to create a significant and loyal audience.

As this thesis will argue its current position as a high rating major sport on New Zealand television is not one that just naturally evolved over time with the maturation of television broadcasting and changing social attitudes regarding gender equity, but was the product of resourceful tactics and socially astute struggle. The research undertaken for this thesis covers two interlinked aspects; the mediated images of the game with the main focus on the changing representation of netball on New Zealand television, and secondly the development of outside broadcast sport in New Zealand and its interface with netball. To understand the current media status of the sport it was necessary to go back to the founding narrative of the game and investigate its relationships with, and representation created by the broadcast media of cinema, radio and television. Radio and cinema are significant in their own right, but not a major focus of this study in contrast to television. However, they are considered necessary to an understanding of the sport’s place at the start of the television era in 1960 and its subsequent trajectory from being undervalued to discovered, developed and eventually achieving a strong television profile. It is impossible to separate the sport as a television product from sport as a cultural activity and throughout the research care had to be taken to place the development of the game within a social, technical, institutional and political context. It is only through consideration of this complexity of influences that the uniqueness of the journey of New Zealand netball to television primetime can be accurately assessed.

Keywords:

television, television coverage, media, media representation, culture, women’s sport, gender

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Qualitative

National

Sport

Women

Other setting

Amateur, Organised, Professional

Barriers, Delivery, Governance, Impacts- social, Management, Participation, Performance, Policy, Professionals, Volunteers

Netball

1310

March 20, 2013

March 20, 2013