“You Gotta Appease the People Who Run This Place” Corporate Ownership and Its Influence on Sports Television Production

TLDR: This article examined the relationship between sports television reporters and producers and the corporate ownership of the regional sports network (RSN) where they are employed and found that sports television journalists and producers at this RSN must navigate an organizational setting that exerts a significant influence on their daily work.

Abstract: This research examines the relationship between sports television reporters and producers and the corporate ownership of the regional sports network (RSN) where they are employed. Through the ethnographic techniques of participant observation and interviews with news gatherers at an RSN in a major East Coast market, I provide an in-depth look at the increasingly complex and difficult relationship between ownership and sports journalists in this specific area of the sports–media complex. The study’s findings reveal that sports television reporters and producers at this RSN must navigate an organizational setting that exerts a significant influence on their daily work. Such issues and developments reveal the sports television workplace as increasingly complicated and problematic for those working in it.