Local TV sports and the Internet

Abstract

In a very short time, Ashley Russell made quite a name for herself in sportscasting. In 2012, Russell hosted Yahoo! Sports Minute, a program that received 22 million page hits per month; an unrelated fan web page dedicated in her honor received nearly half a million views.Another sportscaster, Ines Sainz (a sports broadcaster who made news in 2010 after she was harassed by players for the NewYork Jets) had more than 300,000 followers onTwitter in 2012, and Seattlebased sportscaster Brad Adam had such popularity that even his hair had its own Twitter page (“Top 11,” 2010). Russell, Sainz and Adam all show how the Internet has impacted local television sports.Before the web, local sportscasters could expect to reach only those audiences within range of their station’s signal.Today, the Internet has opened up new global opportunities, and in many senses, the local sports is not so “local” anymore. But this same shift toward wider audiences also negatively impacted the local sports segment, and in some ways threatened its survival.This chapter addresses the issues related to local television sports and the Internet, and what affect those issues had in the sports media environment.