Global Television Formats

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TELEVISION FORMATS ANDCONTEMPORARY SPORT

Tony Schirato

Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the relation between television formats and developments in television-mediated sport. More specifically, it will consider how the logics, imperatives, narratives and technologies of television-as-formats transform a series of physical activities into something both other and more than itself. At a basic level and by way of exemplification, the simple division of sport into live and studio based formats (a development that has only become commonplace over the last fifty years) constitutes a significant extension of the field, producing and requiring new forms of analysis, knowledge, discourses, categories of expertise, modes of address and technologies ...