It’s been interesting to note the progress in our research since the last time I spoke about it. As mentioned before, I had no prior knowledge to the subject at hand and thus this was something extremely new to me, and all my research was coming from that beginner’s perspective. I would say a lot of the research links that I contributed to the bibliography came from a very generalised and objective point of view and it’s been refreshing to see some relevant and highly specific articles coming from Rudi. She was, after all, the person who thought of gambling and sports sponsorship for A1.

For instance, Rudi has contributed a lot of articles that mention specific instances of AFL teams and their involvement, or in some cases dis-involvement, with betting organisations and the likes. She brings in a more focussed research, for example articles on the Western Bulldogs and the Hawthorn football club turning away from sports betting and wanting stricter regulations. Because she’s had exposure to sports as a whole, being an athlete herself, she’s more familiar with the teams and perhaps even have more knowledge on specific instances/articles where it would be relevant to our research. In contrast to my research, which were very generalised on the effects of gambling, the rise of sports sponsorship and the Australian government’s stance on the topic. In that sense, I think it has been helpful to have several perspectives and takes on the research as my group members have contributed angles of the topic that I probably would not have even thought of. Matilda managed to find articles that were also very AFL/NRL specific so in that sense she also brought that perspective onto the table.

In terms of whether we were able to scourer for research that balanced our argument/topic, I think it’s just generally hard to find articles or academic sources that shed a positive light on gambling. As I said before, it’s considered a vice and such a taboo in majority of cultures and societies today. Therefore, because of that I think our argument might come across as very one-sided although that might not be a bad thing as a lot of comedy news shows have a very biased opinion towards subjects they discuss anyway.

In conclusion, this is where we stand on gambling in sports sponsorship:

In much recent years, we’ve seen a spike in gambling in sports sponsorship. There have been both backlash against the gambling and sports overlap and an overwhelming increase in teams and venues in support of collaborating with gambling and betting organisations. More and more problematic it becomes when it starts to spread to youths and even current gamblers. Much have been said for arguments against the increasing market for gambling organisations in sports sponsorship, with even the Australian government chipping in to endorse these statements. Of course, the research is far from done and like I said before it would be nice to see articles for sports sponsorship by gambling organisations and maybe by the time we film, we might have, but for now this is where we stand on the topic at hand. 

Prior to being given the topic for my second assignment, I have had no knowledge or even interest in sports sponsorship let alone gambling in sports sponsorship.

The premise of the idea is to research on the emergence and effects of betting organisations playing the role of the sponsor within the world of sports- be it the teams, events, venues and even organisations.

I would like to divide the terms sports sponsorship and gambling into separate entities before discussing them in relation to one another.

There have been an abundance of articles and comments about the importance of sports sponsorship firstly for brands and secondly for the teams itself. It provides an avenue for big brand companies to invest in for more brand recognition as well as an opportunity to build their brand further. For the sports teams themselves, it provides income to be able to better the quality of training through an upgrade of sports equipment and training venues made possible from the revenue obtained through sponsorship. In this sense, majority of discussions surrounding the topic have been in favour of it.

Gambling has always be seen as taboo in our society. Gambling encourages addiction and is considered a vice in most cultures. Effects of gambling has been extensively researched and there is an abundance of both academic references as well as case studies in this topic of research. Because it’s been something that have been vastly talked about, there are both positive and negative opinions on it- although mainly negative.

Gambling in sports sponsorship has been on a rise. Fast food chains and alcohol companies have been the main sponsors for sporting teams and venues for the longest time however have recently been overtaken by betting organisations. The evidence of this is seen by the renaming of a popular stadium from Brookevale Stadium to LottoLand. The pairing of gambling companies and sports sponsorship is also apparent within advertising and media through apps, ads etc. The effects of this has only recently been discussed, and most of our research shows the majority leaning towards a negative opinion on this unlikely pairing.

While Rudi has commented that the information on gambling in sports sponsorship is outdated, I argue otherwise to an extent. I agree that most academic or credible research can be found on the topic in recent years ( past 5 years ) however there is a lot of newspaper articles or news stories relating the the topic. ( for instance the renaming of the stadium, or news of sponsorship rights bought by gambling companies ) Albeit, the information can seem very sporadic and uncredible due to the medium it might have been posted on or the lack of connection to academic work, it is still there and available. I think, for us, the hardest challenge of our topic and research would be being able to relate it to the academia world as well as being able to provoke criticism like how comedy news is so synonymous for.

Moving on from here, it would be interesting to see if I’m able to find anything that reflects a positive opinion/effect on gambling on sports sponsorship as that would prove to be valuable when actually structuring a balanced argument for the topic.

While last week we focussed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and how it relates to comedy news, this week we looked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Reading:

What really interests me with this week’s reading is that it brought to light a lot of ideas I never really had of The Daily Show, or even ideas that I’ve had or could not properly articulate or explain. For instance, the part about how ‘Weekend Update’ introduces their news pieces in a very quick-fire structure to make the news stories seem trivial. The reading, seemed to be arguing on how even though The Daily Show classifies itself as ‘ fake news’, several aspects of the show prove otherwise. Coming back to the quick-fire point, in contrast, The Daily Show actually dedicates significant time to really stretch out one news story. That alone contradicts the notion of the Daily Show as ‘ fake news’. However, to categorise the Daily Show as ‘real news’ or the opposite of whatever ‘fake news’ entails is also problematic because, with the example of the soundbites that was mentioned by Baym, the Daily Show does not necessarily follow the standard protocols that which mainstream news channels do. Where mainstream news channels would use specific portions of a recording where the speaker comes across as articulate and confident in what he/she is saying, the Daily Show would often use the ‘outtakes’- where all the uhms and ahs and mistakes were made. This brings to light a different side of the same speaker and can be used, if consumed correctly by the audience, as a way of critiquing what the real message of said speaker actually was- which is after all what comedy news is all about.

I think for the time the article was written ( 2006 ), the genre of what we know now as comedy news have yet to properly define itself in the industry. It would be interesting to see if Stewart would still categorise the Daily Show he knew then as fake news now that comedy news has become a thing, a very significant thing in our political public sphere today. I think the article was right in describing the Daily Show as dissolving the borders between news/entertainment and perhaps paving way for a new form, that in which we now know as comedy news.

The Class:

It was a particularly interesting class as we got the opportunity to visit the TV studios. Truthfully, I wasn’t really bothered to stay around for the second bit because I was and am still relatively familiar with the functions and equipment in the TV studios. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I actually picked up on things I didn’t know before. For instance, the speed at which you can zoom on the camera is adjustable?! I also didn’t know that the autocue had more than just type and scroll features ( being able to put markers and having keyboard shortcuts ). I think it was great that we were able to be given a good demo this time round and I wished we had that last semester.

The Class Project:

While group 1 were having their time in the TV Studios, we managed to huddle up and update each other on the progress of the class project. I’ve started on the script and it’s been a little bit of a struggle as I’m not very used to being funny. I think, since we are comedy news, I have to constantly keep in mind to make sure my jokes don’t simply come across as a parody- making fun of something just for the sake of making fun of it. I think that’s the hardest struggle I have with the script because it’s so easy to make someone laugh but much harder to make provoke thought and critisism with humour.

Ultimately, we managed to come up with a general structure and sketch of the show, which I will take into consideration as I continue to finish a draft script.

week 1 reflection here

the idea here

For my idea, I’ve decided to go with a recent allegation of one of the cave rescue divers from one of the most top ranking people in the world, Elon Musk. The allegation included Musk tweeting and calling the British cave diver,a.k.a one of the core members of the rescue team during the Thai Cave Rescue, a pedo ( short for pedophile ).

After doing a quick search on recent news stories ( because I no longer have time to watch TV ), I came up with this article on channel Ten’s The Project segment ( https://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/the-project/top-stories-july-2018/elon-musk-calls-rescue-mission-cave-diver-a-pedo )

I think it’s an interesting topic to talk about considering Musk is currently dating Grimes, a Canadian musician, who is 17 years his junior. Also, considering the circumstances, it was quite ignorant of Musk to make such allegations. Adding to that, he also made claims that his submarine would’ve achieved the same, if not better, results than the rescue team. Which is in itself quite absurd considering how narrow and meandering the cave was.

At the moment, the only thing that was done to solve the problem was that Musk deleted the tweet ( so mature ), which does not really solve the problem considering everything is never truly deleted in this day and age. Especially since Musk is such a recognised public figure, surely someone would’ve seen the tweets and captured them- quite literally immortalising them for everyone to see.

I think it’s interesting as well because as a whole, there are many other topics we can branch out to for example just doing a coverage on the Thai Cave Rescue, we could also touch upon Musk as a whole and his ( very mature ) antics, we could also touch of themes of ignorant allegations by famous people etc.

Also, this specific retort said by the accused diver ( below )  just calls for puns considering the sexual innuendo surrounding the topic.

“It just had absolutely no chance of working. He had no conception of what the cave passage was like. The submarine was about five foot six (inches) long, rigid, so it wouldn’t have gone ’round corners or ’round any obstacles. It wouldn’t have made the first fifty metres into the cave… just a PR stunt.”

All quotes and references found and based this link

Week 1 acted as an introductory class for the studio, setting out aims and defining terms used such as ‘comedy news’ for example. Prior to this, I have had little knowledge of comedy news- I had heard about the big ones like John Oliver and Stephen Colbert but never really went out of my way to actually sit through one. The closest I came to anything comedy news would be The Project- which I feel is a much subtle form of comedy news when compared to John Oliver.

The main aim of comedy news, as discussed in class, is to quite literally make news comedic. What I found interesting was the effects of comedy news and how it functioned in relation to everything else. One of it’s effects which was mentioned in class was that comedy news shows took real news stories about politicians and people and held them accountable for their actions by calling them out, exaggerating their stories and adding humour to them. Comedy news anchors were synonymous for being able to tell news the way they saw it- their opinions injected into each news story. I feel, that is the most defining factor of comedy news.

In class, we looked at a lot of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. Because I had little prior experience watching comedy news, I tried to relate shows I was familiar with to the concept of comedy news or even to the examples that were shown. It brought me into thinking about Saturday Night Live, in specific, it’s Weekend Update segment. I had only ever seen one or two Weekend Updates and would never really classify them as comedy news because the main function of comedy news as a genre is to be satirical. The Weekend Update, when compared to Last Week Tonight seemed more like a parody than a satire. ( although if I were to be very analytical I would say SNL’s Weekend Update was a parody with satirical elements than simply just a parody ) I then decided to entertain these arguments in my head and found an extremely interesting article which outline the beginnings of Weekend Update, back in 1970s.

In the article written by Aaron Reincheld ( 2006, pg 192 ) , he describes the show as ” … naturally bent toward serious, political topics because that is what the producers and writers were interested in and wanted to discuss… “. Chevy Chase started out as one of the first anchormen when the show started gaining popularity in the 70s and he described the show’s themes as ” a parody, an opportunity to be a funny news man…. and use that vehicle as satire to say damn well what I want on the news”. And I think that’s the perfect way of describing it, since I was grappling with the idea on whether Weekend Update truly was comedy news and therefore satire or just another SNL parody skit. Naturally, being part of a skit-ccentric show, the Weekend Update did initially seem like ‘just-another-skit’ ( from it’s multi camera angles and shots to it’s boxed audience laughter ) but delving further into it and understanding it’s beginnings and intentions allowed me to see it for what it truly is- it is comedy news  because it allowed presenters to inject their take, it is comedy news because it pokes fun at top news stories, it is comedy news because through its exaggerated humour, it holds someone accountable and gives people something to think about.

Reference:

Reincheld A, 2006, ” Saturday Night Live and the Weekend Update: The Formative Years of Comedy News Dissemination”, Journalism History, vol 31(4), page 190- 197.

ps. this is just the clip of a 1975 weekend update by the pioneer news anchor chevy chase