“It’s Dude Time!”: A Quarter Century of Excluding Women’s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows

The longitudinal research for this study was first gathered in 1989, with follow-up studies conducted in 1993, 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014, with each report from these studies published in the year following the data gathering. The Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles (1990, 1994, 2000, 2005), now called the LA84 Foundation, published the first four reports. The University of Southern California’s Center for Feminist Research (2010) published the most recent study. The research reports, intended as public advocacy social science research, were widely distributed, reported in the mass media, featured in documentary films, used by organizations like the Women’s Sports Foundation, and taught in schools of journalism.

The research from past iterations of this study was also disseminated in various scholarly publications (Cooky, Messner, & Hextrum, 2013; Messner, Duncan, & Cooky, 2003; Messner, Duncan, & Jensen, 1993; Messner, Duncan, & Wachs, 1996; Messner, Duncan, & Willms, 2006). The study has also been replicated by scholars both inside and outside the United States (Koivula, 1999; Turner, 2014). The ongoing study contributed to a growing body of scholarly literature that explores the implications of gender inequitable and gender-biased coverage in sports media (e.g., Adams & Tuggle 2004; Bernstein, 2002; Billings & Young, 2015; Caple, Greenwood, & Lumby, 2011; Cooky, Wachs, Messner, & Dworkin, 2010; Daniels, 2009; Eastman & Billings, 2001; Etling & Young, 2007; Farred, 2000; Kane, LaVoi, & Fink 2013; Kian, Vincent, & Modello, 2008; Koivula, 1999; LaVoi, Buysse, Maxwell, & Kane, 2007; Rightler-McDaniels, 2014; Sheffer & Shultz, 2007; Tuggle, 1997; Turner, 2014; Webber & Carni, 2013; Whiteside & Hardin, 2012). This body of research, which includes studies of the coverage of live televised sports events, print, online, social, and televised news media coverage of sports as well as the implications of media coverage for women’s sports, consistently find that, with minor exception for quality of media coverage, particularly during the Olympics (Billings & Young, 2015; Hardin, Chance, Dodd, & Hardin, 2002), and for some collegiate-based media outlets (Kane & Buyssee, 2005; McKay & Dalliere, 2009), the vast majority of media coverage centers on men’s sports and male athletes. For example, in their recent study comparing coverage of ESPN’s SportsCenter and Fox Sports 1’s Fox Sports Live, Billings and Young (2015) found that each program featured women’s sports coverage less than 1% of the time, with some “modest gains” during the month of February during the Olympics. Moreover, women’s sports continues to be covered in ways that convey the message to audiences that women’s sport is less important, less exciting, and, therefore, less valued than men’s sports (Cooky et al., 2013; Greer, Hardin, & Homan, 2009).

Our central aim of this study is to examine change and continuity over time. As such, in 2014, we replicated previous iterations of the study. The design and methods of data collection and analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) were identical to those of the 1989, 1993, 1999, 2004, and 2009 studies (see Cooky et al., 2013). As with prior studies (see Cooky et al., 2013), several research questions inform the 2014 study: In what ways do televised sports news media cover men’s and women’s sports events? What is the amount of coverage given to men’s sports and to women’s sports? Do the production values of men’s sports differ from that of women’s sports? If so, how? What is the quality of commentary of men’s sports? What is the quality of commentary of women’s sports? Are women’s sports covered in ways that highlight athletic competence or in ways that trivialize women’s sport? Does the coverage focus on the competitive aspects of women’s sport, including games/matches, game highlights, scores and statistics, outcomes, and significance? Does the coverage sexualize, trivialize, or portray women as objects of sexualized humor? Does the coverage focus on women as wives, girlfriends, and mothers? Has the coverage of women’s sports in this data sample changed or remained the same since prior data collection years? In other words, what are the continuities or discontinuities in the coverage over the past 25 years?

In Stage 1 of the data collection and analysis, we recorded each broadcast of the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. sports news and highlights segments on the local Los Angeles network affiliates (KCBS, KNBC, and KABC) and the 11 p.m. broadcast of ESPN’s SportsCenter. Also following the methodology of previous iterations, the sample was stratified by sport season and included three 2-week blocks (the second and third calendar week of each month) of televised news: March 16–29, July 13–26, and November 9–22. In addition to the local affiliates, we recorded 3 weeks of the 1-hr 11 p.m. ESPN SportsCenter broadcast. These 3 weeks corresponded with the first week of each of the three local network news segments: March 16–22, July 13–19, and November 9–15. As with previous iterations of this study, during our March sampling period there were fewer 6 p.m. news broadcasts from KCBS because their parent network (CBS) broadcasts the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s basketball tournament games, which frequently preempted the news broadcasts.

In Stage 2, the research assistant (third author) received training on coding data, so as to ensure continuity in the analysis with past iterations of the study. The third author viewed all recordings and independently coded the quantitative and qualitative data for the month of March. Two undergraduate research assistants also received training on the quantitative coding and independently coded quantitative data for March. The percentage agreement (calculated using Holsti’s formula) for inter-rater reliability on the quantitative codes (including visual and verbal commentary) was determined to be approximately 95%, well above what is considered an acceptable level of concordance (Fleiss, Levin, & Paik, 2005). We included all categories in this measure, rather than calculate individual reliability scores for each code, as most codes were easily determined, for example, type of sport and competitive level. While few, any discrepancy in coding was resolved through a discussion with the authors until consensus was achieved. Once inter-rater reliability was established, the third author and the undergraduate research assistants completed the quantitative coding for the July and November broadcasts.

The study’s codebook drew upon previous iterations of the study and included over 20 distinct codes including gender of sport (male, female, and neutral), type of sport (basketball, football, golf, tennis, etc.), competitive level of the sport (professional, college, high school, youth, recreation, etc.), type of coverage (main, ticker, and score box), and time of the segment (measured from the start of an individual segment reported in total minutes/seconds, segments were defined based on the type of sport covered, timing of segment ended when either the competitive level of the sport changed or the gender of the sport changed). Codes were also included to quantify production values (coded as yes/no), including the presence or absence of music, graphics, interviews, and game highlights. We also coded the name, race (we acknowledge the limitations of determining race based on visual cues), and gender of each broadcast’s sports anchor, ancillary anchor, and/or analyst. As in 2004 and 2009, most of the 2014 sports news and highlights programs (with the continued exception of KABC) in our sample included a continual running “ticker” at the bottom of the TV screen. The ticker’s written text displays game scores, headlines, and breaking sports news that may or may not be reported through the main conventional verbal commentary and visual images. We analyzed the ticker coverage for gender, time of the segment, type of sport, and competitive level of the sport.

In Stage 3, the third author independently viewed all recordings and, sensitized to themes from the quantitative findings, qualitatively analyzed the commentary, including visuals and verbal commentary. In Stage 4, the first author viewed all recordings and further developed the qualitative analysis from Stage 3 to confirm and expand upon the themes. In Stage 5, the first author ran descriptive statistics on the coded data. The first and second author then compiled an interpretation of the quantitative and qualitative results.

As with previous iterations of our study, viewers of the news and highlights shows in our sample rarely see any mention of women athletes or women’s sports. Among the three local network affiliates, only 3.2% of coverage was dedicated to women’s sports. As Figure 1 shows, however, there is considerable difference in this regard among the three network affiliates we studied, with KABC devoting 5.2% of its main broadcast coverage to women’s sports and KNBC 3.9%. Over the same 6-week sampling period, KCBS included only one story on women’s sports—a scant 0.2% of its total sports news time. ESPN’s SportsCenter did no better, devoting a paltry 2% of its hour-long highlight show to women’s sports.

How do these 2014 findings compare with past studies? As Figures 1A and 2 illustrate, the three local affiliate news shows together devoted about 5% of their main broadcast coverage to women’s sports in 1989 and 1993. In 1999, their coverage of women’s sports jumped to 8.7%. The coverage of women dipped slightly in 2004 to 6.3% and then plummeted to its nadir of 1.6% in 2009. The slight increase to 3.2% in our 2014 findings indicates that the news shows’ coverage of women’s sports remains substantially lower than its coverage in 10, 15, 20, and 25 years ago. SportsCenter’s coverage, over the 4 time periods it was included in our sample which spans 15 years (1999–2014), has remained remarkably flat, never rising above 2.5%, and in 2014, women’s sports on the main broadcast coverage hovers at a paltry 2.0% of the total broadcast coverage.

Moreover, the dearth of coverage of women’s sports is evidenced by the low number of segments (i.e., stories) in our sample. Of the 934 local network affiliate news segments (over 12 hr of broadcasts), 880 were on men’s sports (or approximately 11½ hr), 22 segments (or nearly 18 min) were on gender-neutral sports (e.g., a horse race, coverage of the Los Angeles [LA] marathon, and a recreational sports event), and only 32 segments (about 23 min) featured women’s sports. SportsCenter’s numbers were similar. Of the 405 total SportsCenter segments in our sample (nearly 14 hr), 376 covered men’s sports (slightly over 13 hr), 16 segments were on gender-neutral sports (just over 20 min), and only 13 segments featured women’s sports (approximately 17 min).

As in past studies, there was little or no difference between the 6 p.m. and the 11 p.m. editions of the three local network affiliate news shows, in terms of coverage of women’s sports. Also consistent with past studies, the November period of the 2014 sample included the least amount of coverage of women’s sports. There was no coverage of women’s sports in the month of November on the local network affiliates and only 44-s of women’s sports coverage (two short segments on University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball) on ESPN’s SportsCenter. The scant coverage of women’s sports was clustered in the March (3.0%) and July periods (4.6%).

Although news and highlights on women’s sports are still few and far between, the technical production and framing of these stories have improved over time. Unlike our early studies, when most women’s sports stories were short verbal-only reports, many women’s sports stories in 2014 supplemented verbal commentary with on-screen graphics and game footage in ways similar to reports on men’s sports. However, we found that men’s sports were presented with far more enthusiasm and excitement, the commentators consistently deploying vocal inflections, high-volume excitement, and evocative descriptors. Listening to commentators describe a women’s sports event was usually like hearing someone deliver a boring afterthought, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. Watching stories of men’s sports was frequently akin to watching that classic 1960s “Batman” TV show—(Bam! Pow!)—with viewers treated to plenty of visual action accompanied by a barrage of exciting spoken action descriptors. We collected many of the common action descriptors deployed by news and highlights commentators when presenting men’s sports and present in the following paragraph. The reader should imagine male sports anchors delivering these descriptors in an excited, modulated, rapid-clipped, amplified voice—often literally yelling:

Bingo, a thriller, rabid fans, smoked a laser, a battle, big shot, huge, threw down the dunk, hit an absolute bomb, awesome, exciting, smoked one to right field, ripped a double, drilling a ball to center field, unloaded a hit, clawed their way back into the game, a commanding lead, draining a great shot, he nails it, going full throttle, dialed in and in complete control, sending a rocket over the wall, punished the opponent, mowed down the batter, toe-to-toe battle, flying through the air, a great grab, sensational, really unbelievable, a great one, attacking, drilled one from long-range, a heavy-weight clash, a thunderous dunk, amazing, simply mind-blowing, on fire, picture perfect, explosion, revved up and ready to go, gorgeous dunk—bam, spectacular, unbelievable, another beauty, electric, dominant, brilliant, outstanding, a master of the position, incredible, forceful, a weapon, a rock star, like a man possessed, that is just stupid good, instant awesome!

Such colorful commentary, so common in nearly every story about men’s sports, plays an important role in generating excitement and ongoing interest in men’s sports (Messner, Dunbar, & Hunt, 2000). SportsCenter is particularly adept at maintaining this level of enthusiasm for men’s sports, a typical example of which came from their July 14, 2014, description of highlights from the MLB All Star Home Run Derby, during which one of the anchors says that a player brought José Bautista some Gatorade, “just to cool him down a little bit because he was on fire!” Later in the same segment, the sports anchor discusses a Giancarlo Stanton’s hit, “Wow! Take another look at this one. He just absolutely destroys them! You can see the speed on that swing in real time. And you just stand and admire a shot like that.” One of Stanton’s home runs is described as “an absolute bomb.” As viewers are treated to more footage, Yoenis Céspedes is described as hitting “bomb after bomb after bomb,” and a sports analyst gushes, “Céspedes kept getting better and better, and the home runs kept getting longer and longer and the numbers got bigger and bigger.”

By contrast, when women’s sports were covered at all, they were typically couched in what can only be described as a “matter-of-fact” style of commentary, akin to the July 26 KABC story we opened this article with of women’s beach volleyball, a segment that was presented as a brief and bland afterthought, with the accompanying commentary, “… if you have nothing else to do.…” Frequently absent from such women’s sports stories were the commentators’ voluminous vocal inflections, exclamatory descriptions of athletic successes, and heartfelt laments of failures that saturate the commentary in men’s coverage. The general lack of an excited tone and agentic language in most of the reporting on women’s sports helps to mark women’s sports as less interesting and, in many instances, even boring.

In our sample, there were a small number of exceptions that showed that commentators are capable of generating some enthusiasm for women’s sports stories. For instance on KABC’s July 24, 11 p.m. report of a WNBA game, the commentator declared, “the Mercury hotter than the weather! Diana Taursai setting the pace with 18 points, and DeWanna Bonner? Was boomin’ from here, there, and everywhere!” And on March 25, KNBC delivered a high-quality, local angle story on the Cal Poly Pomona women’s basketball team’s ascent to the Division II Final Four. With accompanying action footage, the commentator declared, “Just give that ball to Janet Blackwell and get out of the way! She scored a game high 35, lifting the Broncos into the Division II Final Four, with an 81-61 win over Edinboro.” Footage of the team celebrating afterward was shown. Combining good technical production with enthusiastic reporting, this was one of highest quality segments about women’s sports in our local network affiliate news sample.

On several of the rare occasions when commentators mustered high technical production along with enthusiastic delivery for a women’s sports story, they also infused a level of ambivalence into the story’s frame. One of the longest (2:37) and high-quality segments on women’s sports in our sample was a July 22, KNBC story covering former USC (college) and LA Sparks (professional) basketball star Lisa Leslie’s induction into the women’s basketball Hall of Fame. The story featured some visual player footage and included respectful commentary that noted Leslie’s many championships and awards. At the end of the segment, however, Leslie is shown holding her baby, as the commentator reports that Leslie “… retired from the league in 2009, and now she enters the Hall of Fame!” Footage of her dancing on the court with her child is shown as she says, “Being a wife and a mom is just my favorite title. People always ask me if I miss playing basketball and I’m like, absolutely not, because I love being a wife, cooking and being home. I’m kind of a stay at home mom even though I have about ten jobs.” She laughs as the segment ends. Similar versions of this story ran on the July 19, 11 p.m. broadcast (37-s) and again on the July 22, 11 p.m. broadcast (63-s), which represented nearly half (4:17 of 10:30 min) of the total main coverage of women’s sports on KNBC in our study. Thus, an ambivalent story about a prominent, successful female athlete that framed her accomplishments alongside motherhood was the dominant representation of women’s sports, both qualitatively and quantitatively, on KNBC.

SportsCenter’s July 18th broadcast ran an in-studio interview with WNBA star Candace Parker, similar to the Lisa Leslie story in its length (1:38), its high quality, and also in its gender ambivalence. The segment opens with game footage clips of Parker scoring a basket, along with commentary from the game, “Wow! Candace Parker! What a move!” Another clip of Parker holding a trophy above her head is shown. A graphic with her picture and “Candace Parker” in text along with the Sparks logo appears across the screen. The camera then transitions to interviewer Stan Verrett with Parker (in a dress and full makeup) in studio sitting in two chairs. As she is interviewed about the recent season and about her WNBA team’s financial vulnerabilities, an on-screen graphic appears at the bottom of the screen showing Parker’s statistics, including 2-time WNBA most valuable player and 3-time All Star. The interviewer then asked, “We always see you with your daughter, Lailaa [Parker, off camera, replies, “Yeah”], How do you balance being the centerpiece of a franchise with being a centerpiece of a little girl’s life as well?” Parker replies, “It’s a lot of work. It’s the hardest job I’ve had to do, but you know, seeing her smile and realizing, you know, when you walk through the door, basketball doesn’t matter. She just wants me to be mom.”

These two stories on Lisa Leslie on KNBC and on Candace Parker on ESPN were long segments with very high production values and respectful commentary. Both Leslie and Parker were featured because of their dominance and stature in the sport of women’s basketball. But we found it notable that each piece eventually meanders to the theme of motherhood. Scholars have noted how professional women’s sports are frequently framed by commercial interests and media in ways that highlight women athletes’ heterosexual attractiveness and/or roles as mothers (Kane et al., 2013). “Other” women—those who are single, or who are lesbians, or who might not be viewed as conventionally attractive—are rarely given the same attention by media, sports promoters, or advertisers (Cooky et al., 2010). It is difficult to imagine a sports anchor or journalist questioning a prominent male athlete—say, a LeBron James or Derek Jeter—“How do you balance being the centerpiece of a franchise with being a centerpiece of a little girl’s [or boy’s] life as well?” Yet, as with previous iterations of the report, the framing of women as mothers is quite frequent, and yet it is a far cry from the overtly sexist and insulting stories that were found in our studies of 15 and 25 years ago. However, such framings of high-profile, successful women athletes, when juxtaposed with the fact that such issues are rarely, if ever, brought into stories about men athletes, reveal a gender asymmetry that subtly communicates ambivalence about women athletes (Duncan & Hasbrook, 1988). Indeed, we began to see this shift from overt sexism to ambivalence in our 2009 study, where we observed women athletes increasingly depicted not as sex objects or as jokes but as mothers, girlfriends, or girls next door (Cooky et al, 2013). When contrasted with the excited commentary and agentic tone utilized in the coverage of men’s sports, this ambivalent delivery further marginalizes what little coverage of women’s sports exists within the broadcasts, and as we noted in our 2009 study, does little to build audiences for women’s sports and reaffirms men’s sports as the institutional center of sports (Messner, 2002).

During a November 14, 2014, broadcast of SportsCenter, the sports anchor introduced the show’s NHL analyst, exclaiming, “It’s dude time!” While it is common for sports anchors to present ice hockey as one of the more extremely aggressive masculine sports, the sports anchor’s comment made us wonder, when are these shows not “dude time?” After all, nearly all of the segments we analyzed on SportsCenter and on the local network affiliate newscasts covered the major men’s sports. Moreover, sports news and highlight anchors remain, as in the past, racially diverse but mostly male. Table 3 indicates that of all the news and highlights shows we analyzed, over 95% had male anchors and coanchors at the helm (all of the women anchors in our sample appeared on KCBS, which included 11 of its 74 sports broadcasts anchored by a White woman and 2 by a Latina woman).

As Table 4 shows, at 14.4%, women are only slightly better represented as ancillary reporters on sports shows. During our sample period, sports shows (most often SportsCenter) also included “sports analysts” in the broadcasts, 96% of who were men.

“Dude time,” therefore, is created in news and highlights shows by a nearly constant configuration of three intertwined patterns: (1) almost entirely men’s sports content, (2) delivered almost entirely by men commentators, and (3) deploying an amplified, excited style of delivery. Together, these patterns give SportsCenter and the local network affiliates’ sports news shows the consistent feel of what we refer to as a “mediated man cave”—a place set up by men for men to celebrate men’s sensational athletic accomplishments. Based on the dearth of coverage of women’s sports across a quarter century of analysis, it seems apparent that, similar to the sports talk radio studied by Nylund (2004), women are not welcome in the mediated man cave of televised sports coverage. Indeed, KNBC’s March 22, broadcast included zero coverage of women’s sports but did include a message to women fans: don’t get too close to the action. In a segment about the men’s hockey match, Columbus Blue Jackets versus Montreal Canadiens, viewers see a woman fan banging on the glass and cheering. She suddenly gets sent flying back into her seat from the force of two hockey players colliding into the glass. The shot is replayed several times, in slow motion and from multiple angles, as the commentator says, “the force of that sends the fan flying back into her seat. Hockey is a tough sport for players and fans, and you gotta’ bet she’ll think twice about getting that close again!”

More than four decades after the passage of Title IX, girls have dramatically increased their participation in youth and high school sports (Miller, Melnick, Barnes, Farrell, & Sabo, 2005; Sabo & Veliz, 2008). Yet stubbornly persistent conservative gender ideologies, structured inequities, and sex segregation continue to limit girls’ challenge to boys’ hegemony in sports (Cooky, 2009; Messner, 2011; Musto, 2014). As a tidal wave of girls’ and women’s participation from youth sports to college sports continues to swell, the waters of women’s sport leadership as coaches and athletics directors have receded (Acosta & Carpenter, 2015; Messner, 2009). The larger picture of girls’ and women’s progress in sport, in short, looks less like a stalled revolution than a picture of the unevenness of social change, with truly dramatic, perhaps even revolutionary changes continuing in some sectors, while little or no change happens in others.

The mass sports media is certainly a site of such uneven social change in gender relations. Over the past 25 years, we have witnessed impressive growth in the quantity and quality of live televised coverage of some women’s sports. Notably, when we began the gender in sports media study in 1989, there was almost no live coverage of women’s NCAA basketball—even the NCAA Final Four games were, at best, televised on late-night tape-delay shot, with extremely low production values. Today, ESPN, several national networks, and regional cable channels (like the Big Ten Network) broadcast many regular-season women’s NCAA games, and a large number of the women’s NCAA tournaments. What’s more, the production values of these broadcasts are improving dramatically, though still falling short in quality when compared with the broadcasts of the men’s games. Viewers can also regularly watch live televised women’s college volleyball, softball, and gymnastics, women’s professional tennis, WNBA games, and other sports.

However, such growing media attention to women’s sports, our study has shown, has not migrated to the nightly TV news or to highlights shows like ESPN’s SportsCenter. This has two broad implications. First, sports news and highlights shows are part of a larger media apparatus that actively builds audiences for men’s sports (Cooky et al., 2013). As long as these daily shows remain mostly silent about women’s sports, the building of enthusiastic and knowledgeable fan bases for women’s sports will remain stunted. Second, news and highlights shows’ continued silence about women’s sports has implications for broader gender relations (Daniels, 2009; Messner, 2002). Modern men’s sport has played a key historical role in bolstering ideologies of “natural” male superiority during a historical moment when girls and women have been moving affirmatively toward equality in many social institutions (Burstyn, 1999). The daily news and highlights shows’ failure to equitably cover women’s sports shrouds in silence women’s historic movement into sport and the impressive accomplishments of women athletes, thus retaining sport as a potent site for the reproduction of ideologies of male superiority.

In another example of uneven change, despite the deepening dearth of coverage of women’s sports in our study, we have found some notable changes in the quality of TV news and highlights coverage over the past quarter century. In 1989, TV news shows devoted only 5% of their time to women athletes. And when they did cover women, it often was commonly either in the role of comical object of the sports anchor’s joke or as a sexual object. In fact, these two roles were often overlapping and were given significantly more airtime than were serious and respectful stories about female athletes. For instance, in 1989 by far the longest single story (3 min, 50 s) on a woman in the 6-week period focused not on a female athlete but rather on “Morgana, the Kissing Bandit,” a woman with enormous breasts who had made a name for herself by running out onto baseball fields and kissing players. What was most striking about these local network affiliate news broadcasts was the confluence of, on the one hand, the conspicuous absence of coverage of women athletes with, on the other hand, the ways that women were consistently placed in the role of sexualized comic relief.

Twenty-five years later, some things have changed, while others have not. Similar to our observations in 2009, we saw little if any insulting and humorously sexualized stories about women athletes in 2014. Yet we found this “improvement” comes at a cost: the decline in the overall amount of coverage of women’s sports over the past 25 years. It would appear that the sports media covers women’s sports when it can do so in ways that conform to conventional gender norms that position women as either objects of men’s (hetero)sexual desire or mothers, wives, or girlfriends. We suspect that the toning down of overtly sexist treatment of women on sports news and highlight shows is a result of public calls (including, we hope, our past research reports) for respectful coverage of women’s sports. But a decline in overt sexism, while certainly welcomed by many, is not synonymous with respectful coverage.

What would respectful coverage of women’s sports on news and highlights shows actually look like? Not simply, we emphasize, a lack of sexist verbal abuse directed at women, but instead an active agenda of positive change that includes three policy benchmarks that producers, commentators, and sports anchors could achieve over the next 5 years:

Twenty-five years is a long time for so little change to have taken place in sports news and highlights shows, especially against the backdrop of massive gender transformations and reforms in other areas of sport and society. To begin finally to move themselves into the 21st century, ESPN’s SportsCenter and TV sports news shows should take the three above benchmarks into account in their future decisions about hiring, retention, and programming.

The authors wish to thank Margaret Carlisle Duncan, Wayne Wilson, Emily Fogle, Randi Kass, and Orasio Becerra for their assistance on this and previous iterations of the study. Marj Snyder, Don Sabo, and the Women’s Sports Foundation have been instrumental in providing support and we appreciate their advocacy efforts for improving the media coverage of women’s sports. Thank-you to anonymous reviewers for their insightful reviews. A special thanks to Larry Wenner for his continued support of this project.