Behind the scenes, being in the media.

I have spoken a lot about being in the media and being able to interview and listen to great coaches and athletes.

If you read down a bit I will talk about the problem that the media and female sports have.

I haven't spoken a lot about what it was like to be on TV...even if it was UConn student run television.

I have to say there is so much more preparation than what I thought for Television. You have to spend so much time behind the scenes in order to make 4 good minutes of TV. The amount of editing is crazy. All the electrical stuff and technology that not even I understand. There is so much to it. Dan Willis does an amazing job at UCTV

I was a little nervous on TV the first time. Not too bad because I was talking about sports. It is hard to be like yourself on TV though. It takes awhile before you are relaxed and like yourself. Ryan Grace is really great at being himself, being easy to listen too. Truly he is the most gifted person on UCTV...by far. He has a presence and a personality. He is honestly the only person that I ever didn't flip over the UCTV channel for. His charisma makes his arguments sound so much better.

I also hated using a teleprompter. I only used it once. I felt like it took away from myself even more.

I've been trying to word this next part carefully...It helps to be physically attractive on TV. A person of average looks can ask to do a story 20 times and be told no. A person with amazing looks can ask to do the same story once and be told yes. There is a reason that some people are said to have "a face for radio."

Now I want to talk about sports and female sports in particular.

Most people on TV are confident people who think that they are important. Some of them think they are way too important. However, people on TV and in the media have to realize that they are extremely powerful people. They influence other people. That's a big responsibility to have and a lot of people in the media don't realize it.

As someone who was in the media for a little bit there is something that I noticed, that bugged me, and makes it hard for female athletics and small sports. There is this self fulfilling prophecy on TV and in the media that states that "we won't talk about it because no one cares." That statement tells me that the people in the media don't always understand the influence that they have. If you did talk about it then people would care.

This realistically is a hard thing for female athletics. It's much harder to find people who are willing to talk about them and to give them the same attention that men get. It feeds into the perception that female sports aren't as important as men's sports. I reported on the UConn women's basketball team. Growing up in Connecticut I always saw them as the premier team in the state. When I wanted to talk about them I knew that the people at UCTV didn't think the same thing. You had to argue and argue and argue in order to convince people to talk about a big women's game. If the men had a big game...of course UCTV will talk about it. The Men's bracket was analyzed game by game, the women's...only analyzed the final four. The women's part was almost 20 minutes shorter than the men's portion and squeezed into the end of the show. Rather than preview Big women's games there would be segments on TV talking about the 2012 men's recruiting class. (That's an exaggeration, but it's somewhere close to the truth)

I was told during the BIG EAST women's tournament that the press conference wasn't necessary to go to unless the UConn women lost or won the championship. Advancing in the tournament wasn't important enough to be covered. That's pathetic. I can assure you that it wasn't the same rule for the men. I did not listen to that, I went to all the post-games.

Here is an interesting example of a difference with the media and men and women's sports. After the Pittsburgh game at Gampel (When Pitt lost by 53 I think) their coach thanked the media for showing up to talk about the game. Imagine a men's coach doing that.

It was pathetic that people didn't analyze the 2007 UConn men's soccer team on UCTV. No one talked about them. I wish I knew how special that team was at the time. But again, soccer wasn't talked about. It wasn't made important by the media.

The smaller sports have it so rough. People over-analyze games on television and virtually ignore big and interesting games/stories in smaller sports. I don't particularly get it. Yes obviously the Super Bowl, Final Four, National Championship, Bowl Games, deserve a lot of time and attention. However, that doesn't mean you should ignore the hard work of other sports and other athletes. It doesn't mean that there aren't stories worth talking about in other sports. I was made fun of on TV once because I thought that you should cover the Volleyball team seriously. I felt that I should understand what was going on, and I was being made fun of it because I found it important.

I'm going to separate this next part because I think it's important.

The people who talk about things that are important in the public eye have the power and ability to make OTHER things important.

Think about watching a women's and men's sporting event. Usually a smaller, less famous anchor covers a women's event. There is no Chris Berman for the WNBA, or for soccer in the United States. Female sports and smaller sports need a credible and well respected sports personality/news organization to talk about their achievements to make those sports important. Hopefully the next generation of people on Television and in the media realize just how influential they are. They will be vital to the success of female sports and sports like soccer in the United States becoming popular. People in the media can make a difference, or inhibit change, by what they talk about and how they characterize it.



I might have actually pissed a few people off. I guess that's ok. Without constructive criticism nothing will change.