One Game, Two Arenas

TV Sports

TV SPORTS ARE A LOT LIKE marriage. Male and female fans may find themselves sitting on the same couch cheering or jeering the same team, but they're essentially viewing two different events: his and hers.

Men and women approach and respond to television sports in different ways, a team of researchers reports in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media (Vol. 35, No. 2). Television producers may use these differences in scheduling sports events. Couples may want to do the same to keep the home team intact.

In telephone interviews with 707 adults in Los Angeles and Indianapolis, Walter Gantz, Ph.D., and Lawrence Wenner, Ph.D., found that:

o Men spend more time than women watching the sports segment of local newscasts, reading the sports section of newspapers, and talking about sports on a daffy basis. Over 50 percent of the male viewers rated themselves 'very knowledgeable" about sports versus 18 percent of females.

o Men watch sports to relax, follow a favorite team, see athletic drama, get psyched up, let off steam, and have something to talk about.

o Women, on the other hand, are more likely to watch for companionship, joining friends and family already gathered around the set.

o While viewing, men typically talk about the game, yell out in response to action, down snacks and drinks, and put off household chores.

o Women work as they watch, and limit their intake of junk food.

o Men are more likely to watch post-game news coverage or follow the action in the newspaper. A winning team puts men in a good mood and prompts them to drink to celebrate the victory. But a losing team sometimes turns men into brooders who avoid their families while recovering.

Men focus more on the moment of victory and defeat. Women show "a deeper interest in the athlete and the sport," adds Walter Stipp, Ph.D., NBC's director for social and development research.

During the 1992 Summer Olympics, for example, NBC aired soft features about the athletes and their trainers in the morning, when more women watch TV. But late at night, NBC included more "hardcore" sports coverage to attract the high numbers of male viewers watching then.

Such programming could stress a modern marriage, says Gantz, a professor of communications at Indiana University. Still, there are many rabid female sports fans and they act just as their male counterparts do. He suspects that in the end it's the level of "sportsfanship," not gender, that determines TV viewing behavior. Score!

Photo: Man and woman watching television. (ARCHIVE PHOTOS)