Spordi otsereportaaž Vancouveri taliolümpiamängudel ETV, NBC, CTV, SVT, YLE, ZDF ja Eurospordi näitel
Date
2010
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
Sports Live Broadcast on the Vancouver Winter Olympics based on the coverage of
ETV, NBC, CTV, SVT, YLE, ZDF and Eurosport.
The main purpose of this bachelor’s thesis was to examine the genre of television live sports
broadcast. The comparison was based on the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics broadcasts on
ETV, NBC, CTV, Eurosport, SVT, YLE and ZDF. Focus was on the sportscasting and the
roles of reporter and expert. Both quantitative and qualitative content analysis was used when
comparing recordings of three different types of Winter Olympic events – ice hockey, crosscountry
skiing and figure skating.
It was discovered that diversity between broadcasting different events were more significant
than diversity between broadcasters. The main disciminating factor within the sport itself
was its pace. For example, figure skating is a lower pace sport and because of this the broadcast
turned out to be more conversational and there was less description of live action. As a
result, expert got more time in the broadcast. Ice hockey, to the contrary, has a higher pace, so
most of the time went into describing immediate actions leaving less time for expert’s commentaries.
Reporters’ and experts’ work was also influenced by the agreed share of their roles. It
turned out that the North-American broadcasts had thoroughly defined the role of expert and
this meant that experts were given more time to be involved in the broadcast. Contrary to this,
in European and especially in Estonian broadcasts the reporters often abandoned the role of
mediator and took over many traditional roles of expert. This meant that often reporter’s so
called expert opinion had doubtful value and experts themselves had a lesser role in the
broadcast.
According to the former Estonian sportscaster Toomas Uba (1968) the most important
role of the reporter is to be the mediator of the emotional tension curve in the sports broadcast.
It turned out that reporters have basically two methods to differentiate critical and less
intensive moments: first, faster and more intensive way of speaking versus calmer conversational
style, and second, more description of live action versus more background information.
Estonian Television broadcasts differed from other broadcasts mostly in the cooperation
of commentators. The main factor in this category for Estonian Television was the sound delay
and distance between reporter and expert. Both were caused by the fact that reporter was
commenting on spot in Vancouver and expert had to comment at the same time in Estonia.
From all the broadcasters analyzed only Estonian Television had this problem. It can be said
that this sort of different positioning of the commentators is a cheaper way of broadcasting,
but it sets unnecessary limits to commenting and hampers its quality.
Another negative aspect of Estonian Television broadcasts was the fact that all experts had
very little experience in sportscasting. This meant that the experts were bad talkers and the cooperation
of the commentators was rugged.
To conclude, one may say that the main flaws of Estonian sports broadcasts are related to
weak cooperation between commentators, poor training of experts and vagueness of experts’
role. At the same time, Estonian sports reporters do not differ much from sports reporters of
the rest of the world – the difference between sports events is much more significant than the
difference between reporters.