The Impact of the Digital Transformation on Sports Journalism Talk Online

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the impact of the digital transformation on broadcast practices from a producer/studio participant perspective with a focus on sports journalism online. More specifically, the study targets changes in sports talk and interaction as producers re-shape their communicative activities to fit audiences’ new contexts of reception. It discusses how these changes in practices relate to some of the fundamental assumptions in current broadcast talk theory. The textual studies are complemented by interviews with six prominent Swedish media industry representatives in order to shed light on their perceptions of the broadcast to online shift given their respective experiences. The results show how producers/participants adapt to a more casual and relaxed interactional style and tone online than in ordinary broadcasting. The studied sportscasts also largely abandon the traditional broadcast address, as expressed in direct discursive address and looks-to-camera, for an orientation to screen devices where social media active audiences are to be “found,” although still having a traditionally positioned audience to attend to. Although sociability is still the structural principle for producers’ interactional choices irrelevant of platform, the strategies of how to achieve it are changing due to the digital transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Broadcasting
• communicative changes
• digital transformation
• interaction
• sports journalism
• online
• talk

Introduction

In an interview about his experiences of changing journalistic forms in the wake of digital developments, a well-known Swedish sports journalist ponder the effects of digitisation on broadcasting’s audience address:

Of course, traditional TV is affected by the technological development of which web TV is a part, with another kind of (audience) address, that I believe. Even though it’s something which has snuck in rather than someone having said “now we’re going to do it like this.”

He refers to how the shift from broadcast to online (web) TV production formats has led to shifts in how audiences are talked with both online and in regular broadcasting. Although his reason for the changed audience address is “technological developments” in general, we argue, in line with broadcast talk theory (Hutchby 2006; Scannell 1989, 1996, 2000; Tolson 2006), that it is also due to altered perceptions of audiences’ contexts of reception as TV is distributed on the web for access on any number of interactive screen devices, often used simultaneously. Based on the analyses of three web sports journalism formats, as well as on interviews with industry representatives, this paper aims to identify some of the significant interactional changes that have occurred from broadcasting to online. The changes in practices will both be understood in relation to well-established broadcast practices as well as to altered perceptions of the audience as expressed by the media industry representatives. The main questions guiding this paper’s areas of exploration, which will be dealt with in an integrated manner, are:

1. In what ways have fundamental journalistic practices of producers’ and audiences’ sports talk and interaction changed in the transition from broadcasting to online, and how do these changes in practices relate to current broadcast talk theory?

2. What are industry representatives’ and programme producers’ general perceptions of the transition from broadcasting to online, specifically when it comes to the journalistic practices it promotes in sports talk and interaction?

The paper’s ambition is dual. First, we will address some of the main ideas in broadcast talk theory regarding how talk and interaction is designed and organized as TV is produced for the web. We will suggest relevant revisions given the online interactional adjustments that we have observed. A few studies have targeted new media applying the broadcast talk framework (see e.g. Tolson 2010; van Es 2017; Ytreberg 2009) but have only partly challenged some of its core assumptions and concepts (notably regarding liveness and authenticity). Second, we also contribute to knowledge about how sports journalism practices change for online audiences.

Background

It is hardly debatable that television is undergoing fundamental changes due to the digital transformation, although it is necessary to consider culturally specific conditions before stating it as a general fact (Enli and Syvertsen 2016). In the Swedish media context, “web TV” (here referring to live online programming produced by both established print and broadcasting houses) has become an online TV format which nowadays compete with, as well as complement, ordinary broadcast programming. Although launched earlier, web TV got a particular boost from 2013 and onwards. This was the year when the two main Swedish tabloids launched their missions to produce substantial live online video material as a strategy to break out from their print identity and attract a wider audience. It has since become increasingly popular with 22% of Swedes watching it on a regular basis; over 40% in the 15–24 year old span (Facht 2016), and the numbers are consistently rising. Web TV has thus become a valuable resource for print media such as the tabloids to vastly broaden their online presence and increase their attractiveness, while also providing the traditional broadcasters with additional ways to distribute their multiplatform productions.

As is the case for other countries, the Swedish media industry is collectively occupied with trying to understand where “the audience” is, what it wants, and how to best reach and communicate with them across platforms. For example, in its annual report from 2016, Swedish Public Service TV (henceforth SVT) stresses the need to keep adapting to the online “central trend” if they are to be continually relevant in the future. This is to be achieved by recognising modern audiences’ expectancies, by making use of technologies in order to treat audiences as individuals rather than a collective, and by “understanding and get to know” audiences (Sveriges Televisions 2016).

Digital media developments change both the production and reception of journalism. On the production side, media workers have seen their journalistic job roles becoming more intergrated, and new skills are required in order to enable an active engagement with co-creating, co-producing audiences (Malmelin and Villi 2016). On the reception side, audiences increasingly consume content online using a variety of technical devices to do so. This is especially true for media sports audiences. So-called second screening is growing globally in popularity (Boyle 2014; Cameron and Geidner 2014; Galily and Ilia 2014; Giglietto and Selva 2014). More and more sports content is streamed digitally (Ienco 2016), and big television sports events are considered to be prime second screen territory (Yorke and Greenwood 2014). Some argue that ordinary television will remain the medium of choice for many sports fans and complementary devices are simply seen as addons (Boyle 2014). Others suggest that second screening may provide a more intense experience than solely watching one screen (Selva 2016). Either way, the extensive use of multiple screen devices reshape the ways that audiences access, consume and interact with audiovisual material (Sørensen 2016). Sports journalism, at least by some of our industry representative interviewees (working as a digital media consultant and sports director at SVT respectively) is seen as particularly suited to adopt to online conditions and maintain public interest and attractiveness.

One of the recurring aspects that is discussed concerning the digital transformation is the changing relationship between producers and audiences afforded by technical developments (Pearson 2010). Generally speaking, it is argued to hold the potential for improved opportunities for more active participation and interaction between producers and consumers (Cleland 2011; Hutchins and Rowe 2012; Jenkins 2006; Pearson 2010; Rowe, Ruddock, and Hutchins 2010). Much of the focus regarding the digital transformation and its effect on the relationship between producers and users of media sport lies on what goes on at the users’ end with a focus on “the connected sports fan’s” (Rowe 2014) activities. Likewise, studies on second screening more often than not deal with the motivations and drives of users, for instance, when it comes to engaging in simultanous media consumption (e.g. Cunningham and Eastin 2017; Shim, Shin, and Lim 2017). This paper therefore sheds light on the yet underresearched changes brought about by the digital transformation from a producer/studio participant perspective with a specific eye on sports journalism interactions online. It should be noted that it is not an audience study per se, but a study of how perceptions of audiences structure the design and organization of talk and interaction. Mediated sports here provides the empirical case on which to study communicative changes between platforms, although the industry interviewees reveal that shifts of the sort that are focused here are also, more or less, applicable for what is going on more generally in journalism.

We choose to not engage in depth in the debate whether sports broadcasting/online sports is to be considered as constituting journalism, but rather quite straightforwardly assume that it is. It is a professional practice enacted within journalistic institutions by sports journalists who, also on digital platforms, adhere to professional norms and ideologies. For example, McEnnis (2016, 967) shows that in the relatively new journalistic practice of live blogging, sports bloggers retain “core journalistic values and beliefs of balancing objectivity and subjectivity, immediacy, providing a public service and editorial autonomy.” Boyle (2006, 2012) claims that traditional views of journalistic hierarchies, where sports journalists are often placed at the bottom (inhabiting “the toy department,” Rowe 2007), are outdated. Rather, the practices and experiences of sports journalists are, by and large, similar to those of journalists in general, not least in the wake of digitisation (Boyle 2012). As will be shown in the results section, these statements are both validated – and not – in our own findings. They are validated in the sense that sports journalists with successful web TV experiences are recruited for primetime broadcast productions and are treated as online forerunners. At the same time, some find that an “old image” of sports (that is, a lesser kind of journalism) still operates within the profession as a whole. Although not a main focus of the article, the issue of sports journalism’s role within journalism, and its impact on journalistic practices more widely, will be addressed in the discussion. Next, the basic communicative principles of broadcast talk theory will be presented in order to then examine how some of its key features have altered in light of the digital transformation.

Theoretical Framework

Horton and Wohl (1956) were the first in media and communication studies to address the qualities of communication between producers/performers and television audiences in their theory of para-social interaction. The basic idea is that when television performers act as if they were face-to-face with audiences, mimicking face-to-face interaction with verbal and non-verbal cues, they create communicative bonds with the audience. This they described as a possibility for “intimacy at a distance.” By stressing the para-social dimension, they wanted to capture the (illusory) experience of being involved in a conversational give-and-take with a television personality although the medium did not really permit any “real” social interaction. That viewers actually still have such experiences from watching television has been confirmed in more recent empirical studies (Hartmann and Goldhoorn 2011).

The notion of broadcasting’s sociable capacity in line with Horton and Wohl’s theory has later been developed within the so-called broadcast talk framework. Broadcast talk research starts from a very simple question: Why do we really watch television or listen to the radio when we are not forced to (Scannell 1996)? One may think that the answer is rather self-explanatory: “because I am interested in a particular programme content on offer so I choose to tune in.” However, broadcast talk stresses other reasons for becoming involved in programmes than content itself. A key aspect is that media producers orient to audiences in the ways in which they shape their talk. The forms of communication, i.e. the talk and interaction occurring in the shows, must be organised so that it relates to people in “specific, inclusive and cooperative ways,” as Hutchby (2006, 11) aptly puts it.

What this implies is that intended listeners and viewers are crucial structural components in the organization of talk (cf. Hutchby 2006). By making use of interactional devices from everyday life, television producers can create sociable bonds with audiences. To some extent this assumption contrasts with the thinking of Sociologist John B. Thompson (1995) who sees broadcast communication as “quite different” (Thompson 1995, 98) from ordinary interaction in face-to-face situations. Thompson describes producers and recipients as involved in what best could be termed “televisual quasi-interaction” and “quasi-participation” with one another. It is a form of interaction which lacks fundamental forms of reflexivity and reciprocity, and where the recipients’ reactions cannot be taken into account by producers as a constitutive feature.

A crucial component that has formed the broadcast talk perspective is the historical research on BBC radio that Scannell and Cardiff (1991) conducted, and which led them to consider the basic characteristics of broadcast communication. One key feature for all broadcasting is the self-evident situation that producers do not share the physical space with its audience so they cannot see or hear their reactions, as also pointed out by Thompson (1995). Broadcasters are thus talking to an absent and anonymous audience (Heritage 1985). Early (and thus inexperienced) broadcasters had to invent ways of communicating which would keep audiences tuned in. What they found through testing different ideas was that the talk should be “conversational in tone rather than declamatory, intimate rather than intimidating” and that “the personality of the speaker should shine through his words” (Cardiff 1980, 31; cf. Scannell 1996; 2000). What these early broadcasters did was to imagine the absent audience in the context where they normally listened to the radio, namely, in their homes. Consequently, they adapted their communication to “the fireside world of the family” (Cardiff 1980, 31). The result was an ideal that stated that broadcast talk should appear lively and come across as spontaneous and colloquial.

The conversational and familiar style also implies that audiences are personally addressed. This is something discussed by Scannell (2000) through the notion of the “for-anyone-as-someone structure.” This is a way to handle the seemingly contradictory condition that broadcasting is both mass communication, aimed at many, and at the same time creates a feeling of being for the individual member of the audience: “it is always, at one and the same time, for me and for anyone” (Scannell 2000, 9). This so-called double articulation is made possible through the communicative forms and modes of audience address that broadcasters employ. For example, a newsreader appears to be speaking directly to “me” in my home, or wherever I happen to be watching. This “me” experience is constructed through a mode of address where the newsreader’s look is held steady on the camera while talking, which simulates the eye contact we often have in everyday conversations. The “trick” that the look-to-camera performs is that even if we are aware that there are many others watching the same thing at the same time, we still get the feeling that we are personally recognised and addressed.

Even though we feel personally addressed due to the interactional choices made by the producers/participants of broadcasting, we can also get a sense of experiencing something together with others as the for-anyone-as-someone structure simultaneously, as Scannell (2000, 9) puts it, “expresses we-ness.” A key feature for this feeling to be established is broadcasting’s ability to create liveness. If we consider a major sports event like the FIFA World Cup; it is an event that is carefully planned in advance, broadcast live, and has a large part of the world avidly watching at the same time. In Stephanie Marriott’s (2007, 76) words, viewers of such an event want “to be swept away into a moment which is transpiring simultaneously with the now of one’s engagement with it; it is to be in the event even as the event endures.” Liveness creates a sense of shared experiences, inclusiveness and belonging among audiences (Bourdon 2000; Ellis 2000). Liveness can be the result of transmitting something “live” as in the case of a football match, but is equally the result of a communicative achievement by the participants who through their performances convey a sense of “now.” For example, this can be done by talking scripts into being, that is, to perform scripts as if they constitute the “fresh talk” (Goffman 1981) of everyday face-to-face conversations. Broadcast talk, then, need to appear lively and spontaneous (Scannell 1996), as if produced in the moment of its utterance in order to adhere to a liveness ideal. Liveness should therefore not be reduced to the technological performance of television’s ability to transmit “live,” but be equally seen as the result of a social construction in which producers and viewers/users are jointly involved (cf. van Es 2017).

Some of the theoretical underpinnings of broadcast talk will, in the following, be examined in light of the transition to online interactions. After a presentation of data and methods, we will first give some examples of how audiences’ altered reception contexts re-shape industry representatives’ perceptions of what “works” online and what does not work in terms of content and design. We will then pinpoint two specific communicative shifts in sports talk and interaction when going from broadcasting to online with bearing on the theoretical framework presented above. These shift include going froom quasi-interaction to real-time reciprocal interaction, and from liveness to superliveness.

Methodology and Data

This paper brings together and develops some of the main results of several case studies conducted within a research project focused on the reinvention of print and broadcast media with the use of web TV in Sweden (Eriksson and Fitzgerald 2019; Kroon 2017; Kroon and Eriksson 2016; Kroon Lundell 2014). The textual studies from which examples will be taken follow the so-called broadcast talk strand of research where forms of talk are treated as fundamental to the way a certain media work (Hutchby 2006; Tolson 2006). Talk (and multimodally expressed contributions in interaction) thus constitute the primary focus of analytical attention. The focus lies on what social actors (both producers and users) do in talk and interaction in order to form “communicative relationships” (Scannell 1989) with audiences, using discursive and non-discursive means. The three empirical cases from where examples are drawn consist of a webcast called The Warm-Up (Sw. Uppvärmningen) from 2011, produced by SVT, and the webcast PrimetimeVM (PTVM) (and its connected hashtag expressenvm), produced by the tabloid Expressen during the FIFA World Cup 2014. Also, the webcast Superlive produced for Fotbollskanalen.se [thefootballchannel.se] by the Swedish Channel 4 Broadcasting Group is included. In addition, informant interviews with six prominent Swedish industry representatives were conducted in 2017 to gain insights into producers’ views on the impact of the online development and of audiences in a changed media landscape. The interviewees were chosen for their extensive experience and instrumental influence in terms of online enterprises in the current transformative phase in both public service and commercial media companies, a majority of them, specifically, from online sports ventures. Three of the interviewees had been directly involved in the analysed web productions, the others had significant experience from producing material for the web. Four of interviews were conducted at their respective place of employment, one at a public venue, and one via e-mail. The face-to-face encounters followed a semi-structured questionnaire and lasted from 45 min up to an hour. The interviews were anonymised and transcribed, and the provided citations have been translated to English by the authors.

Results

Understanding the “New” Context of Reception

The digital transformation has been an ongoing process to which media companies have gradually adjusted and contributed to for a number of years. However, industry representatives are still very much preoccupied with understanding the wants and needs of audiences in order to attend to these preferences in satisfactory ways, preferably ahead of the competition. A major part of this understanding is done via analyses of clickable items, but, as several of the interviewees explain, also by perceiving of audiences actions in front of the screen(s). Online technologies have fostered behaviours that have come to split audiences into basically two sections defined by their (imagined) consumption-oriented postures; those who “recline” and those who “lean forward.” A reclining behaviour, the programme director at SVT explains, is when you have not really decided what to watch but switch channels rather aimlessly until you find something you like.

That behaviour seems stronger than I thought. It seems to explain some of the TV behaviour at least among the older audience. (…) I myself can think, although I’m some kind of extreme consumer of digital media, I can acknowledge that kind of nice feeling when you just lay yourself down on the couch and just- oh here’s a programme about motorbikes; I hadn’t thought about watching that but, eh, it just keeps on rolling.

Forward-leaning audiences, on the other hand, actively choose something they want to watch online and have less patience when it comes to finding something interesting, as the TV director at the tabloid Aftonbladet is very aware of: “If you are online you want to see directly, ‘what kind of thing is this?’ because you don’t have a lot of time really.” That a different kind of time logic and narrating style operate online is underscored by the sports director at SVT:

If you are in a news service section the video has to be under a minute or people won’t start it. You don’t start a five-minute item and walk around listening to it. (…) But you may start something that is 37 s if it’s like, “see the dream goal that … ” “Aah, but that I have time for.” So there are completely different ways of narrating for the linear as opposed to web TV. And we have thought that we can apply rather a lot of our traditional ways of narrating to the web world and that’s not how it is.

So, generally speaking, industry representatives verbalise the need to attend to both reclining and forward-leaning audiences in a cross-platform media environment, and they use discursively formulated images of the reception context to guide their format choices and recommendations. They also acknowledge the need for broadcasters (and tabloid TV producers) to adopt their ways of quite concretely performing in “the web world.” We will now present examples of how this understanding of the reception context of online audiences have impacted on well-established practices of broadcasting from a more detailed communicative point of view.

From Televisual Quasi-Interaction to Real-Time Reciprocal Interaction

Primetime VM was a live webcast produced and distributed by the Swedish tabloid Expressen aimed at providing commentary during the FIFA World Cup in 2014. The newspaper did not have any rights to show the football matches, but still chose to launch a novel format where games were commented on which was streamed live from their website’s sports section. The PTVM case (for an elaborated analysis see Kroon 2017) challenges the fundamental communicative practices of ordinary television on two basic accounts in relation to broadcast talk theory: (1) that the look-to-camera is a fundamental resource for building sociable relations with audiences, and (2) that sociability (here understood as the formation of successful communicative relationships between producers and audiences) is solely the result of the producers’ communicative activities in relation to an absent audience.

Normally, in a sports programme (and of course in many other genres), there are two dominant look orientations in relation to audiences. Either you talk to camera in a frontal shot “looking” at the audience, or, if there are guests present in the studio, there is a mutual bodily and discursive orientation between them as they engage in dialogue. However, once match commentary starts in PTVM, the interactive set-up on camera changes to a situation where the host, the expert commentator and pundit are shown in a frontal shot, each with a laptop in front of them (although the pundit’s laptop/screen is not always visible, Figure 1). The camera shot is split three ways to convey three isolated physical spheres for the participants, this although they are sitting next to each other in the same studio.

Figure 1. Print screen of the regular set-up of PTVM during games.

The dominant look orientation within this interactional set-up is what Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) label an indirect one where the viewer is not the object but the subject of the look. No, or very little, visual contact is made between the studio participants and the audience throughout the ninety minute game. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 124) call the image construction above one that offers the represented participants to the viewers “as items of information, objects of contemplation, impersonally, as though they were specimens in a display case.” As mentioned in the theory section, the look-to-camera, in broadcast talk theory (see also e.g. Goffman 1963; Goodwin 1981), has been seen as central to the producer-audience relationship, and a crucial interactional resource in the construction of conventional TV’s “for-anyone-as-someone structure.” Scannell (2010, 45) elaborates:

The look-to-camera from a speaker typically in the studio (but also news reporters from remote locations) implicates a recipient who turns out to be, in each case, “me.” That is to say, when I turn on the TV and find the newscaster, the talk show host, the quiz show host, or the game show host talking to the camera, I experience this as if I am being addressed, as if he or she is speaking to me personally.

Of course, it is true that not all looks in broadcasting are directed at the camera, but if it is not, it is oriented to someone, or something, else that is happening in the studio to which the person wants to draw the audience’s attention. In PTVM, however, the participants seem to “offer” themselves up for observation but nothing more. It is as if their looks are for “none other” than themselves, excluding audiences, seemingly ignoring any need for relationship-bonding. The extended non-look was introduced also in The Warm-Up in their 2010–11 productions where the host and expert sat staring at their computers. However, in their case, their webcast being one of SVT’s earliest trials of such a set-up, they felt the need to comment that they were engaged in “boring TV” as a discursive marker to audiences, signalling that they knew they broke the norm of regular broadcasting. The ways in which other channels (notably the main commercial competitor) over-used (in the host’s opinion) the look-to-camera when engaging in dialogue was furthermore made an extensive topic in one webisode and mimicks of “weird” looks were acted out for viewers to comment upon.

Four years later, in 2014, when PTVM is produced, the non-look is more boldly performed without any excusing comments of being boring. At first glance, the non-look invites the audience to nothing more than talk radio on camera. If producers really want to bridge the gap between themselves and audiences, and, as The Warm-Up host says, “produce programmes for and with audiences,” how can this look be understood? The “me” address that has been so crucial (Scannell 1996) seems most arrogantly abolished in this web context. However, one could argue that this type of non-look is recontextualised from other web practices such as YouTube Let’s Play videos where play-throughs of video games are documented together with humorous or critical commentary from the gamer. In that sense, it is a look that is recognisable for experienced web users and therefore accepted, and perhaps even expected, in this particular context.

Also, what the participants on camera are doing as they watch their screens is, firstly, to follow the matches from the broadcaster’s streaming services while commenting on events for the benefit of the audience. So, the screen-intent look is here a prerequisite for there to be any football commentary at all. Second, they keep tabs on the hashtag expressenvm that they launch at the start of the webcast series to which they invite users to contribute. This is another reason for not treating the non-look as a bond-breaker between producer and the audience, but in fact treat it as a relationship-building device in this particular interactional setting. In a sense, the participants are actually seeking the audience’s “gaze” as second screening users are writing tweets and posting them for the amusement of the producers and peers who often pick them up in conversation. When the producers watch their (multiple) screens, they are thus watching not only the matches, but what the audience is doing in a very concrete way. Likewise, the audience is busy watching and writing themselves on their screens, in a forward-leaning way, so no look-to-camera is necessary. The apparent non-look is really a re-directed audience-oriented look as audiences have “shifted” from their reclining couch posture to being active on second screens and in the twitter feed.

It follows from these observations that in these types of online set-ups across platforms, audiences are not absent but active partners in the construction of sociability. Technology allows them to become active and “present” in interaction. The potential for interaction (Tolson 2006) that a “good evening” and a look-to-camera have historically performed in broadcasting in order to achieve sociable relations with audiences from the producer side is here replaced, and /or complemented with active audience engagement in tweets directed at the producers. In addition, a specific communicative audience activity in the PTVM hashtag is the “home picture” (Figure 2) which is posted along with welcoming phrases and comments about needing it to be “nice and clean in the living room” for “the guests” (i.e. the producers on camera who can “see” into the users homes). The home pictures display how the users have arranged the screens and what has been prioritised on the bigger screen; the match or PTVM? The home pictures are noted and picked up in conversation by the studio participants who acknowledge the “presence” of a user having “arrived” as if greeting an old friend who walks through the door.

Figure 2. Print screen of “home picture” showing screen arrangements and extra props during PTVM game commentary as posted on twitter.

The technological multi-screen set-up of both producers and audiences thus abolishes the (need for an) “absent audience orientation” and enables a joint live presence and a real-time dialogue. This mutually constructed interaction becomes the foundation for a tight-knitted community throughout the championship (Kroon 2017) which many users mourn long after it has finished: “#expressenvm ‘til I die!” (user tweet posted after the ending of the World Cup). Webcasts such as PTVM and The Warm-Up (and the Superlive format presented below) may on a superficial level seem to alienate audiences in favour of their own performed internal talk. However, the interactional development in PTVM shows that rather than alienating audiences, the set up attends rather effectively to forward-leaning audiences who want to join in and be a concrete part of the unfolding production. The type of sociability one sees materialised here is thus not the result of any quasi, one-way type of interaction, but a highly co-constructive one where both producers and users are active, thanks to the affordances of the multiplatform format and to (multi)screen technologies.

From Liveness to Superlivess in Talk and Interaction

Liveness, as in the ability to transmit real-time live events, is of course crucial also for online programming. Indeed, as Aftonbladet’s TV director confirms, the ability to break news quicker than any tableau-bound broadcaster is what attracted the tabloids to web TV in the first place. However, in addition to transmitting real-time live TV, liveness is also the result of the participants’ performances in the programmes, as well as audiences’ experiences of them. So, what happens to the performed aspect of liveness online?

The aforementioned webcast format The Warm-Up by SVT was the first attempt at producing live online interaction ahead of “the real” sports broadcast on regular television in 2010. SVT:s sports director recalls that the format where a host and expert commentator talked and acted as if off-camera in a playful, informal manner, integrating audience voices via twitter and facebook in conversation, was partly born out of a desire to get more airtime when there was none to be had because of fixed broadcast tableaus. Instead, they turned to the web for a 15-minute live webcast oriented around seemingly spontaneous talk about anything but sports. Talk and interaction revolved around seemingly unplanned and unscripted “pre-events” ahead of the regular TV schedule, including tooth-brushing and couch-lounging due to back problems (Figure 3). The format was deemed a “strike of luck,” she says. Audiences liked the tonality of the programme with the added bonus of it de-dramatizing the sports broadcast that followed on regular TV thereafter; “people had, you know, lowered their shoulders once we entered the big TV. Even if we were more authority-like, we were still warmer and nicer (…).” The host himself emphasises how the more personal and humorous tone of The Warm-Up came to influence the regular sports broadcast in so far as the participants brought with them “a joy and a relaxed tone” as well as a directness into the broadcast which had not been as self-evident before.

Figure 3. Print screen of The Warm Up crew’s relaxed activities during live streaming before the main TV broadcast.

That talk take on a more relaxed and spontaneous tone in online sports talk than ordinary sports broadcasts can be exemplified in some detail from an extract of Superlive. Superlive was a live webcast format produced exclusively for the web platform Fotbollskanalen.se [Thefootballchannel.se] by the Swedish Channel 4 Broadcasting Group. The show was streamed online on Thursday evenings during UEFA Europa League football matches which were shown on the broadcasting group’s regular broadcasting sports channels. It was essentially organised as a chat show with four participants including a host, two football commentators (journalists/pundits), and one invited guest (often a football player) sitting in a traditional TV studio (Figure 4). Their talk was based on video clips showing highlights from the ongoing Europa League games, but was also fueled by questions and comments posed by members of the audience on social media or via email.

Figure 4. Print screen of the main window of Superlive streamed online on fotbollskanalen.se [thefootballchannel.se].

Typically, a broadcast talk norm, even though mimicking everyday conversational styles, is that participants engage in a focused interaction (Goffman 1963) where they cooperate to sustain a joint focus of attention by taking turns and not interrupting each other. One communicative situation generally follows relatively orderly upon another in a clear and coherent fashion. Participants are also often disciplined by scripts in order to not risk hyper-critical audiences that pounce on speech errors and gaffes (Goffman 1981; cf. Ytreberg 2002). However, in sports in particular, with events unfolding that are of an unpredictable outcome and commented upon in the now, “planned improvisation” rather than strict scripting is what is enacted (quote from André Pops). In the online format Superlive, conversations are taken further on the improvisation scale, as the following extract shows (Example 1):

Example 1

Table

G = male guest; J1 = female journalist; J2 = male journalist; H = male host
1	G	/ … / he gave us another week of holiday
2		but seriously we should have started training
3		on the first of December so we will keep on
4		training on our own for another week
5	J2	what a [chip
6	H	[HITS [THE CROSSBAR
7	J1	[OHOHOHOH
8	J2	what a [save
9	H	[OH WHAT A SAVE
10	J1	OIOIOIOIOI
11	J2	and right there I’ll throw in some breaking
		news
12		Prandelli has been sacked by Galatasaray

It is to be expected that sports commentators can, and indeed are expected to, perform their talk in a less scripted way than for example broadcast news presenters, but even more informal genres follow set conventions and established patterns of behaviour. The example above, although just a short extract out of a longer dialogue is shown here, points to several shifts, at least in degree, from ordinary broadcast sports talk norms. Animated reactions naturally occur in live sport commentating as part of a display of professionalism within an experiential mode (Marriott 2007), but are normally part of a flow of talk which goes from calm commentary to a build-up of action, reaction and analysis, and back to calm commentary (cf. Scannell 2014). Here, though, the participants do not have fixed discursive roles but mix discursive material of a more personal character with game commentary and self-proclaimed breaking news and organize it within a “play frame” (Bateson 1953). In such a frame, sequences of talk appear very spontaneous and contains jokes, banter and laughter reminiscent of the humorous talk that occurs in ordinary conversations between friends (Coates 2007). Similar collaboratively produced humour (as observed in studies of online football text commentary), has a multi-purpose function such as bonding, expression of solidarity to the group and entertainment (Chovanec 2012.).

Broadcasting’s discursive ideal of talk appearing lively, spontaneous and colloquial, to us, is here brought to a new level of personability and immediacy. The dialogues come off as being oriented to “superliveness” (Kroon Lundell 2014) rather than to merely liveness. Superliveness (not to be confused with the format name Superlive in Example 1) is not only talk that is seemingly unscripted and sociable, but highly so, with a substantial degree of displayed leisure, fluency, informality, and unpredictability. The interaction is seemingly unfocused both in terms of content and delivery. The joint focus of attention is not on commenting on a single event, but on the collective performance of delivering effortless talk and banter to audiences, the latter whose voices are also, on occasion, integrated in talk. In a similar fashion, The Warm-Up likewise made use of a superliveness orientation as they adopted a seemingly off-guard mode somehow preceeding the liveness of “real TV.” This was partly achieved by acting as if the camera was not filming (yet), getting “caught” in what looked like off-guard moments. If ordinary liveness requires a spontaneous, relaxed, authentic and personal feel in the ways in which audiences are addressed, The Warm-Up and the Superlive format intensify these values in every respect to convey that this is something other than ordinary live TV; that is, something more spontaneous, more intimate, and more conversational, and by doing so perhaps also distancing the talk from its local institutional environment (cf. Clayman and Heritage 2002).

Discussion and Conclusions

The argument throughout this paper is that the transition from broadcasting to online productions has prompted the media industry to rethink how they perceive of audiences’ behaviours and desires, based on their knowledge about altered reception contexts as well as the affordances of (screen) technologies. Here, we have specifically used Swedish sports programmes online to study the actual effects on talk and interaction in the wake of a changed attitude towards audiences. Just as in the early days of broadcasting (Scannell and Cardiff 1991), producers attempt to understand how and where audiences consume programmes and then try to adjust them accordingly. As has been shown in this paper, this entails quite concrete shifts in norms of talk and interaction. These communicative alterations impact back on broadcasting which seems to adapt to a more casual and relaxed interactional style and tone more broadly. The interviewees who act as sports programming hosts claim that their broadcasts have become more easy-going and personal. However, The Warm-Up’s host acknowledges the danger of promoting too casual an address. Bold deviances from the current norms may run the risk of losing the seriosity and trustworthyness on which their public service reputation relies. The same caution is voiced in the commercially based online context where studio hosts recognize that web TV has enabled a broader interactional repetoire, while at the same time realizing that there is a fine line to be struck before audiences react with accusations of them appearing “mad” or “drunk” in the studio. Even though interactional norms in broadcasting and online are gradually thought to be converging into one relaxed and more personal type of address irrelevant of platform, it is thus a matter of degree as to how much you can push those boundaries in broadcasting, at least in the Swedish context.

There is cause for a readjustment of some of the core principles of broadcast talk theory in light of the digital transformation, notably regarding the shift in look and its meaning as a relationship-builder, and the more intensified superliveness orientation from “ordinary” broadcast liveness. The basic assumption that producers continuously work at performing talk that is oriented to construct sociable relations with audiences is not platform-specific and is still, we argue, unchallenged as a basic broadcast/online interactional principle. However, the strategies of achieving sociability have altered in the online environment. Most notably is the change (and sometimes down right abandonment) of the direct address and look-to-camera. That is, the explicit “me” orientation is de-prioritised in favour of a position where the viewer/user becomes both observer of highly sociable superliveness-oriented talk between participants on screen, and a “co-present” audience member with capabilities to influence the unfolding screen interaction through active input on social media. The more animated and off-guard, spontaneous talk of these web interactions creates a sociable “mate-like” atmosphere in which audiences can feel a more acute sense of familiarity and belonging than what is achieved from ordinary liveness. Talk and interaction online thus take into account that audiences are not merely “absent” (although a significant portion of course still are) but “accessible” and indeed almost present in the studio via artefacts such as the twitter home pictures. It could be argued that the “anyone” orientation in Scannell’s “for-anyone-as-someone structure” of which the look-to-camera is a part, is devalued or toned down in favour of a strengthened inclusive and present “someone” orientation (as when individual audience members are identified when reading posts from twitter for example).

Given that sports journalism has been, at least in the Swedish context, somewhat of a frontrunner when it comes to inventing new online formats with a new type of audience address, it would perhaps be reasonable to suggest that journalistic hierarchies – where sports is not often rated especially high in relation to hard news and other “serious genres” – could also be changing. Adaptable genres such as sports could potentially serve as internal benchmarks when it comes to how online journalism should be “done.” Not so, according to the co-host of Superlive:

I can’t say that the hierarchy has changed as I perceive of it. It’s still a fact that other journalistic genres look, or those who think themselves a little above us, still look down on sports journalism the way I experience it, and I don’t think that web TV has done much either way there. That image exists and is still rather cemented, that one really doesn’t take sports journalism seriously. But I don’t think it’s the web TV programmes that govern that; it’s more some kind of old image that one has of sports journalism if you are a cultural journalist or something like that.

With his thirty year experience in sports as a print, broadcast and online journalist, his observations of sports as a field that – still – is considered partly demeaning to journalism (Schudson 1978, 2001), despite its capacity to integrate new technologies and communicate successfully with audiences in engaging innovative formats, are surely to be taken as legitimate. At the same time, he acknowledges the fact that the overall address and tonality of the web is becoming more of a norm also in broadcasting. Thus, we argue that sports journalism online has played a prominent part in such a development. This is also why high-profile sports presenters such as The Warm-Up’s host, with his successful broadcast-to-online transition, is recruited to new morning television line-ups where engaging with audiences across media platforms is a main ambition. Likewise, experienced sports journalists/directors at SVT has headed the channel’s election programming where involving audience voices has been an integral feature. The digital media consultant we interviewed developed digital sports platforms before going solo. So, even if sports journalism as a genre may still be looked down upon by non-sports reporters, there are most definitely signs that sports journalism’s successful and innovative appropriation and development of online TV/video content has left managements duly impressed. This has, in turn, led to cross-overs recruitments in order to implement their experiences in other journalistic genres and enhance, supposedly, general journalistic quality in the digitally transformed media landscape.

Do these changes in talk and interaction risk devaluing journalistic professionality when it comes to upholding its values of credibility and authority? For some audiences of traditional broadcasting maybe that is the case, but for other audiences accustomed to the more casual and intimate tonality of many web formats, probably not. In fact, to embrace a warmer, friendlier and more inclusive address could well be thought of as to display professionalism, i.e. to show an understanding of what web-accustomed audiences desire from their programme producers. We believe that to act credibly in the web media environment is to offer audiences intensely “authentic” experiences that they can claim to be “theirs” on account of producers constructing events in which they can feel closely engaged and involved (c.f. Scannell 2001). Indeed, we propose that to not display traditional forms of journalistic authority, but to, in some sense, perform a role of “non-authority,” is a sign of an already changing journalistic professionality. In line with this argument, we suggest that audiences will come to expect a less authority-driven journalistic professionality in favour of a more relaxed and personable one in the future.

It would perhaps be easy to assume that the interactional shifts outlined in this paper are the result of strategies thought up by smooth digital communication consultants who know the recipe for online success. However, this would be a faulty assumption, again, according to Superlive’s prior co-host:

Sometimes you are lead to believe that TV4 has more rules, thoughts, policies than what it really has. A great deal just happens. And you try your way forward and a lot rides on exactly who you happen to put in front of the camera at a given moment.

Similarly, the host of The Warm-Up claims that the format was “a blank sheet of paper” when they first started broadcasting where “no one involved really knew what it was going to contain.” SVT’s sports director recalls initial worries being expressed that it would involve more preparation and scheduling than was already the case for the TV broadcast to which she said “no no no we just go on air, just go on air, and talk about what you do in the moments ahead of the broadcast.” Hence, also a public service company like SVT allows for such blank pages to go out live on the web at the time. In a recent article on audience engagement in the process of producing digitised TV, te Walvaart, Van den Bulck, and Dhoest (2018, 912) also show “that policies and goals held by the organisation at the social institution and organisational levels, and established editorial practices and formats on the level of routines, are not always key in how production decisions are made,” even if, in their studied case, an example of an individual taking unplanned, unstrategic decisions live was an exception rather than a guiding model during the production process. There is no reason, we think, to doubt the truthfulness of these claims of seemingly happenstance developments as they come from different sources that independently verify each other. Furthermore, the same kind of “trial and error” pattern is in line with what Scannell and Cardiff (1991) also pointed out as true for the activities of early broadcasters.

Further research on the digital transformation and its imprint on journalistic practices could benefit from more studies on how interactional changes between platforms contribute to a change of journalistic values and norms, as well as to changed perceptions of the audience from a media industry perspective, from a cross-national horizon. Also, of course, it is relevant to look at the journalistic evolution in other genres than mediated sports. In addition, the industry’s continued general dilemma of how to both cater for “forward-leaning” and “reclining” audiences in a highly competitive climate will surely be of relevance for some time. Such studies would provide an alternative viewpoint from which to explain and understand how (meta)processes of convergence impact in quite concrete ways on the practices of journalism.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the six interviewees for their valuable contributions

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences under Grant P13-1106:1.