ABC Sports: The Rise and Fall of Network Sports Television by Travis Vogan (review)

With abc sports : the rise and fall of Network Sports Television, Travis Vogan offers a valuable perspective on the supposed "bad objects" of television, specifically network television and sports television, illuminating the intricacies of their relationships as well as the enduring cultural narratives that these industries negotiate and produce. Critics and scholars initially dismissed television due to its mass appeal and overt reliance on commercial structures, while sport has been similarly marginalized in the academy as either a meaningless diversion or, worse, a loaded reflection of hegemonic ideologies and capitalist formations. To ignore these fields and their ultimate interdependence, of course, elides particularly crucial spaces where cultural norms and values are articulated, contested, and reinforced. In an era in which sport has been directly constructed by and understood through its mediatized representations, Vogan is wise to identify that the evolution of sports in the latter half of the twentieth century is a vital arena not only for those interested in sport but for media and cultural studies scholars as well.

Building on his previous institutional histories of formative sports media entities in Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media and ESPN: The Making of a Sports Media Empire, Vogan effectively demonstrates ABC Sports' influence on the future of televised sport as well as the trajectory of television itself. Launched in 1961 and led to prominence by Roone Arledge, the long-running sports division of a once-lagging broadcast network left an imprint on genres, production practices, and aesthetic principles beyond just the world of sports. From rendering ABC the "network of the Olympics" to pioneering Monday Night Football, ABC Sports became a key player in a competitive landscape that would soon view exclusive rights to premier sporting events as a surefire means to advertising dollars, branding power, product differentiation, and audience loyalty. Even in an increasingly postnetwork era, these long-standing logics continue to guide industrial strategies and spending.

Incorporating marketing materials, trade discourses, interviews, and archival sources, Vogan crafts a chronological history of the network's sports division from the 1960s to the mid-2000s, when the Walt Disney Company shifted its sports branding focus and programming to cable and ESPN. This approach provides readers with a concrete and productive case study that contextualizes overarching political-economic trends related to deregulation, conglomeration, and convergence. It also captures the anxieties and tensions involved when a tried-and-true network-era staple is forced to adapt and reinvent itself for a multiplatform era when audiences can no longer be relied upon to gather around the television set at an appointed time and sit through commercials. Vogan excels in conceptualizing these developments as the prerogative of real human beings tasked with navigating complex production cultures and exercising relative autonomy within distinct institutional mandates, standards, and pressures.

Through this lens, iconic moments in sports (and television) history, such as Tommie Smith and John Carlos's protest at the 1968 Olympics, the Black September terrorist attack during the 1972 Olympics, the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, and the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" at the Winter Olympics, are all reconstructed through the day-to-day operations and decisions made by those charged with capturing and translating these events for the public. Reporting on social issues that foregrounded national as well as racial and gender politics gave the division and its parent network a claim to respectability that served to fortify its public service credentials and distance itself from the "Vast Wasteland" connotations of some of its fictional programming (e.g., Westerns). The topical newsworthiness of ABC Sports' major event coverage would catapult Arledge to the role of president of ABC News, where he deployed many of the technological, stylistic, and narrative innovations initially implemented at the sports division.

Indeed, Vogan convincingly details the ways in which ABC Sports impacted the network's programming across multiple genres and consequently...