著者

脇田 泰子

出版者

スポーツ史学会

雑誌

スポーツ史研究 (ISSN:09151273)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.28, pp.1-19, 2015 (Released:2017-03-13)

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The 2012 London Olympics were a great turning point in modern Olympic history, giving birth to the terms "Digital Olympics" and "Socialympics" due to the effective merging of the Internet with conventional broadcasting in the coverage of the event. The present paper begins with an examination of how the Olympics were initially covered by the media, especially up to the first decade of the 20th century mainly inprint media. At the time, the word "media" was largely synonymous with "press", as the print media - which literally used press machines to create their product - had no real rivals as sources of information for the vast majority of people. The earliest popular views of the Olympics were thus determined by print media's cover-age. Next, the paper proceeds to a discussion of the ways in which the very first form of broadcasting, radio, was initially perceived in the West, especially France and Britain, as a feasible medium for sports coverage. Particular attention is given here to Britain, where sports occupied a surprisingly prominent place in radio broadcasting even in the latter's earliest years, on par with coverage of such "serious" matters as the weather and the doings of the royal family. The paper's main and final section is a consideration of a specific example of the close historical relationship between the Olympics and broadcasting, namely radio coverage of the 1924 Games. It focuses on the coverage in France, with the brilliant activity of Edmond Dehorter, the first radio sports reporter in that country. In the course of the above discussions, this paper attempts to demonstrate how a detailed examination of the history of sports and media will reveal that the essence and significance of the close relationship between the Olympic Games and broadcasting can be found as far back as the earliest days of radio, a period which only not witnessed the dawn of Olympics broadcasting but also had significant parallels with the present, which is experiencing the "dawn" of yet another powerful and influential form of media - social media - and the latter's rapidly expanding role in information dissemination.