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- Exhibition explores islands as sites of possibility…
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- What will Ella Van Beynen show at New Zealand Fashion Week…?
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- Ministry of Awesome and Ara create new innovation hub
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- TVNZ honours Best Documentary in NZBS
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- Manawa building blessed in Christchurch’s Health Precinct
- Ara hub Te Kei wins Canterbury award
- 1.8k Ara students to move to the Health Precinct
- MBIE contracts Ara to assess Pacific Island labourers for work in New Zealand
- Meaningful work (experience) for ICT students
- Following a pattern: Students collections rack-ready for FORM
- “Networking is key” for tertiary students
- Face & Space offers new opportunities in Oamaru
- Kahukura awards keep coming: Property Industry Green Building award
- Electric Vehicle hub buzz at Ara city campus
- Face to face delivery moves up a level with LightBoard
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- Ganesh fished from the Avon: Eco showcase 2018
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- Memorial Garden officially opened
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- Three qualifications for twenty-two year old nurses
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- Lights, camera, action! – NZBS backs youth film competition
- Educating nurses for the health sector since 1973
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- NZBS team takes most ever wins at Christchurch 48HOURS
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- Excellent outcomes for Canterbury Tertiary College (CTC) delivery at Ara
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- It’s not fear/fair! Trying to spell, Kiwi-style, when you’re dyslexic
- Te Reo – sweating the small stuff
- Well women birth better in primary level care, study says
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- Chengdu visitors bring engineering scholar
- EQ engineering takes top pitch
- Poster student for Medical Imaging
- New food processing programme backed by industry
- Electric result
- SIGNAL ICT Graduate School officially opened
- At home in Hiroshima – and speaking like a local
- From factory floor to running Scotland’s best cafe
- Dual nursing qualification attracts men to nursing
- Prime Minister opens Kahukura
- Radio’s love affair with rugby
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- Bing Dawe and his sculptural birds fly at Ara
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- Chasing Pluto’s shadow: Timaru students meet NASA pilot at Ara
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- Top global speaker on Internet of Things in health, business and design
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- Students to access top Weta facility
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- Scholarship recipient proud to win in memory of much-loved nurse
- Youth Guarantee success celebrated at Ara
- Working with women award well deserved
- PM scholarships send 10 on Japanese cultural immersion
- ShadowTech – getting girls into tech mode
- Meeting the business innovators at Inspire Canterbury
- Ara raises $2,400 for families of sick children
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- Pasifika Strategy launched
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- Ara reports growth and confidence
- Ara students take away prizes at Salon Culinaire
- “A challenge we can all meet” - eco solutions
- The Common Touch of NZBS students
- Careers Expo for South Canterbury
- Heat is on cooking students at Salon Culinaire
- Moving stories told at Pegasus health scholarships event
- Christchurch Careers Expo – ask the right questions
- Ara primary industries restructure
- New nurses from Ara snap up the jobs
- Resilience and rebuilding – Māori nursing hui at Ara
- Ara Council Chair changes
- Ara introduces new scholarships for 2018
- Ngāi Tahu recommends new member to the Ara council
- Students sing the praises of new O House accommodation
- The Indian advantage - visit evokes ambition and passion
- Ara delivers digital technology for two schools
- One bug at a time – Anteater Ara graduates inspire at Autumn Graduation
- Shiny new coffee machines herald upgrades at Oamaru Campus
- Whakatau to welcome new Māori students to Ara
- Aotearoa Bike Challenge success
- Ara Cookery students go international for latest assessment
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- Ara students pitch in to repair Alzheimers facility
- Colourful hands-on experience at Holi
- Farm life has plenty to offer young people
- Ara first in world to use virtual reality for X-ray training
- Idea + skills + gallery >> artwork @ Ara
- Timaru bakery opens days after last class
- Coast to coast winner had ‘zero expectations’
- Ara leads polytechnic sector - top ranking in NZQA report
- Ara grows relationships with Japan
- Ara Chief Executive retirement announced
- Ara leaders get down to business in Timaru
- Ara and Māori Hands On Education
- New city student accommodation opens at Ara
- All Ears workshop music sheet free
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- South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce and Ara announce new online training model
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- Historic Timaru building has 18 new designs
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09 Aug 2017
#media #sport #rugby #research
Listening to the sports news on popular radio stations, you might think that sports equals rugby in New Zealand. Sure we love the All Blacks, but what happened to the many other sports that New Zealanders excel in?
Dr Brendan Reilly from the Ara Institute of Canterbury New Zealand Broadcasting School (NZBS) decided to investigate. He will present his findings at the Ara Research Week 14-18 August.
Reilly and NZBS colleague Karen Neill monitored sports news on the two highest rating, youth networked commercial music stations - The Edge and ZM – for one month in 2013. Then they repeated the exercise during the same month in 2016 and compared the results.
Sure enough, rugby dominated. On average, the stations had two sports stories per news bulletin; rugby and rugby league accounted for half of the sports news on the two stations.
Cricket, netball and football followed, collectively making up 35% of coverage.
So far, so cultural right? New Zealand is a rugby-mad nation, after all. But Reilly asked whether we love rugby because we hear so much about rugby? “Is rugby a universally popular sport with every demographic? Are they reflecting the interest of their target audience? Or are they reinforcing to their target audience?” he asks.
Perhaps rugby gets covered because the All Blacks are so successful? “What gets covered is not about succeeding,” Reilly says. “The Phoenix (football club) for example don’t win at all –and they get coverage. And the Warriors (rugby league team) haven’t made the top eight and they get lots of coverage. Whereas rugby will get a lot of back stories about the preparing for a game, in other sports you have to succeed on the world stage to get any sort of coverage whatsoever.”
And then what about the women? Beyond netball, radio goes silent on women’s sports, despite numerous international accomplishments. “Certainly the female audience are getting rugby pushed down their throats. If I have a look at The Edge in 2016 it’s completely dominated by male sports and yet both of those brands (with ZM) target females, which doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Why does it matter? Because, Reilly says, media sets the agenda, and commercial radio does this under pressure to be both popular and entertaining. Other sports get left behind, on air and off air too.
“The bigger issue is that there is a correlation between people being exposed to a sport, becoming interested in it, supporting it and playing it, which leads on to funding issues.”
Media can help a sport to grow – or not. “Sports covered by the media have important ramifications for visibility, leading to increased participation, funding, and the creation of celebrities, which are attractive to sponsors and can also contribute to increased gate takings leading to stronger financial positions for sports organisations running as a business,” Reilly and Neill concluded in their research paper.
“The narrow range of sports reporting is contributing to a generation with a narrow world view, and with the ongoing understanding of the news as a profitable commodity, there appears to be no end in sight.”
Reilly found several drivers behind the lack of diversity in sports coverage.
“Sports news comes from a centralised news service where one news product is pushed out to multiple brands. Being in a competitive market, and money being tight, they are not in position to make specific niche bulletins for individual stations.”
Added to the time and budget constraints is a rugby media machine that seems as highly trained as the players. “The problem with commercial radio is that the beast always needs feeding and you simply haven’t got the time to chase stories. It is vastly easier to go and talk to the rugby media machine, because you always know you’re going to get something.”
Smaller sports just can’t compete with rugby’s beefed-up off field resources.
Reilly tells his students at NZBS to try to address the imbalance. “Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that rugby or rugby league is a universally popular sport that captures everyone’s attention, look for opportunities, don’t be lazy and look for interesting sports stories.”
So while it seems the All Blacks will retain their dominance on the commercial radio waves, media is a landscape that can change quickly. So perhaps one day we might start hearing more about athletics, canoeing, equestrian, rowing, skiing, swimming and the many other sports that Kiwis also successfully compete in.
Research findings from It’s All Black: Youth and sports news coverage on commercial radio, by Brendan Reilly and Karen Neill.