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Australia's Lleyton Hewitt reacts to a point win as he plays Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus in their third round Men's Singles match at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008. AP Photo/Dita Alangkara
We often assume media interest is a barometer of a sports’ popularity. If it’s not at the forefront of priorities for newspaper editors and newsroom producers, then it must not be important and entertaining enough to warrant sufficient media and public interest.
But that logic, in my mind, is flawed.
Rather, it’s the media that is dictating the popularity of various sporting codes and events in Australia.
As an example, observe the current sporting focal point in this country – the Australian Open tennis.
In The Australian, Patrick Smith has written about tennis’ dwindling popularity, and while I fervently disagree with his opinions on the game’s entertainment value, he touches on an important note regarding the media’s role in the popularity of the sport at this time of the year.
He writes: “The Australian Open remains sustained only by a media that frets about what can fill its pages, what to kick off the TV sports news. As with the Sydney-Hobart yacht race, who really gives a damn? If the AFL and rugby league seasons could spread deeper into summer, tennis would be played out merely on the backcourts of the media and public consciousness. As it is, soccer is striding into this holiday vacuum of truly relevant sport.”
What he describes as a “hyped-up fortnight” will dominate the headlines and primetime free-to-air coverage to an extent that few other non-Indigenous sports can do.
There’s no mystery as to why this is so.
Tradition and habit are powerful forces, and many of us have grown up with the Australian Open tennis on Channel 7 each January. It’s ingrained in Australia’s consciousness.
Most of those thousands who tune into Seven’s night sessions won’t follow tennis through its convoluted season, rather it’s a yearly tradition to jump on the tennis bandwagon (to steal a popular phrase from football).
In light of what some, such as Smith, think of the game, there’s hardy been a suggestion questioning why the Australian Open is afforded a fortnight’s worth of prime-time television coverage, despite the fact that Australia hasn’t had a genuine Australian Open contender since the pre-Bec Hewitt days.
It seems set in the sporting constitution of the Australian sporting media that the Australian Open and tennis are guaranteed their spotlight each January.
Other sports would kill for such assurances, let alone such airtime.
What this example proves is how the media dictates the popularity of each individual sport. Without Channel 7’s coverage, for example, would tennis be the main talking point for so many Australians each January? It’s highly doubtful.
Their extensive coverage is not the result of a huge public demand for tennis or an indicator of its popularity rather it is the cause of that interest.
It typifies the power of the media – a concept we Australians should grasp beyond just sports, particularly to understand the agendas and fiscal factors at play in media organisations.
It should also act as a lesson for fringe codes that bemoan their own lack of coverage. They need to do a better job catering to the media in its various forms, so one day they too can hope to entice the sort of free-to-air coverage afforded to tennis.