World Cup television

Abstract

In the last year of the first decade of the 21 st century, in the verge of breaking into the era of digital television, it is important to know what kind of television model is available in Portugal. The analysis of the news coverage of the FIFA 2010 World Cup will certainly help in finding the answers. In this article, we present a study that centers its focus on news formats related to this great media event, broadcasted in both generalist as well as cable news networks between the 11 th of June and the 11 th of July 2010 (the opening and closing dates of the competition). That analysis, based upon 604 broadcasts, sought to discover the means for viewer integration in television broadcasts and who was summoned by the television studios to participate in the discussions that they promoted. The data collected clearly shows that this World Cup TV is still very much closed to public participation and circumscribed to a small group of guests, most of who come from the journalistic field. It seems impossible to mention a third stage in the audiovisual world in the face of this reality. Post-television can wait.

Television and Video: Reconfigurations of Audiovisual Communication

“…Discussions on old and new definitions of television have been abundant in the past decades, mainly due to its constant reconfiguration. At the beginning of the 2010s, researchers considered television as a medium out of control (Schwaab, 2013) and the socio-technological apparatus it was then installing was that of a centripetal screen (Lopes et al, 2012). In other words, it was showing an ability to grab and concentrate resources of all kinds, be it textual, visual and semiotic, institutional or technological to retain its centric status not only in the ordinary living-room of ordinary people but mainly as a longstanding stronghold of societal experience.…”