A Silo of Their Own: The Compartmentalization of Media Coverage of Women’s Sports, 1989-2024

Abstract

For the last thirty-five years, the Gender in Televised Sport Report has analyzed the quantity and quality of coverage of women’s and men’s sports on televised news and highlight shows. After providing an overview of shifts in the sport media landscape and outlining several key changes to the 2024 sampling procedures, we contextualize the most recent iteration of our longitudinal study in relation to thirty-five years of shifting representations of men’s and women’s sports in televised news and highlight shows. Our findings point to a siloing effect of high-quality coverage of women’s sport. Although high-quality coverage of women’s sports exists on emergent and niche platforms, legacy networks primarily interrupt their regularly scheduled broadcasting of the men’s “Big Three” when rare and record-breaking moments occur in women’s sports. Since men’s sports remain the default topic within “mainstream” coverage, we conclude by discussing how the siloing of women’s sports to niche outlets may limit opportunities for audience-building in women’s sports.