The sequential and reflexive achievement of coach participation in the live TV broadcasting of football

ABSTRACT

This article draws on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to explore the accountability of coach participation in-game – i.e. its observability, tellability, reportability – by scrutinising the interactional practices by which the coach, on the sideline, is perceived, filmed, and described by TV technicians and commentators. The contribution offers an empirical investigation of the local procedures, sequentially ordered, by which coach participation in the game is reflexively achieved. It adopts the perspective of TV control room members while broadcasting football matches to show how they produce real-time audiovisual and verbal accounts tailored to the emergence of the coaches’ embodied and verbal actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Coach participation
• sports broadcasting
• ethnomethodology and conversation analysis
• perception and representation of coaching

Acknowledgment

I am grateful to all technicians, directors, journalists, and producers who made this work possible by accepting my presence among them and offering time to me. I particularly thank François-Charles Bideaux, Michel Giuliani, Laurent Lachand, and Grégory Nowak. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and Charlie Corsby, SCR’s associate editor, for their close and attentive readings and precise remarks. They considerably helped me in clarifying and improving the paper. Misconceptions, analytical errors, and other divagations, of course, remain mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).