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Do women only get bronze at Nine’s games?

Sports broadcasting has long been a male bastion, but an opinion piece today reckons Nine should shake it up a bit more.

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An opinion piece in today’s Age from writer Peter Bannan makes some pointed observations about Nine’s reliance on putting men on the frontline for sports broadcasting, especially for the Olympics, at the expense of women.

While it’s no surprise that sports broadcasting has long been a male bastion, it’s ultimately a question of balance.

Bannan writes: The only woman fit enough to make the team is Leila McKinnon, wife of Channel Nine CEO David Gyngell. McKinnon will join Ken Sutcliffe, Cameron Williams, Karl Stefanovic, Eddie McGuire and Mark Nicholas, all of whom regularly front Channel Nine’s sports coverage.

While Nine will have a select few women commentators in London covering certain sports, they get a guernsey only because they are deemed to be ”experts” in their sports. Their role will be more about being behind the microphone, providing analysis, rather than in front of the camera presenting one of the major sporting events.

Why this insistence on women who have expert knowledge? What special expertise do Karl Stefanovic or Eddie McGuire have when it comes to the Olympics? Sure, McGuire knows AFL, but last time I checked, Australian rules wasn’t an Olympic sport.

Bannan goes on to acknowledge that Nine’s Alicia Loxley, Tracy Grimshaw, Roz Kelly and Georgie Gardner could be utilised… surely as anchors rather than commentators?

Loxley will in fact provide updates along with Ben Fordham. Eddie McGuire is co-hosting the opening and closing ceremonies with McKinnon and covering  (Marathon and Triathlon), aside from this he is actually anchoring for Foxtel.

Nine will have female commentators for select sports including: Kerri Pottharst (Beach Volleyball), Debbie Watson (Water Polo), Jane Flemming (Athletics), and Melinda Gainsford Taylor (Athletics).

But it’s a fair point that Nine has named four male anchors (Ken Sutcliffe, Karl Stefanovic, Mark Nicholas and Cameron Williams) and only one female, who is indeed the wife of the boss.

Other female sports commentators to rate a mention are Caroline Wilson, plus Seven’s Johanna Griggs, TEN’s Liz Ellis and ABC’s Karen Tighe, Simone Thurtell, Tracey Holmes and Debbie Spillane.

You can read more on the article here.

24 Responses

  1. @David
    “I think you’ve made this point numerous times on this site? It’s getting a pretty repetitious.”

    If you are responding to my comment, I don’t think I’ve ever made that point here. I still don’t think there’s much point in criticising one network’s coverage of sport when others are guilty of the same unfair exclusion as well.

  2. No, I don’t think they can fix this now. If they’d thought of it a year or two ago they could have started grooming some of these women for roles in sport. But now if they included Grimshaw or Gardner etc. many in the audience would be thinking ‘gee what about these ring-ins, what do they know about the Olympics or sport?’ The other blokes all have some kind of background in sport or sports reporting. Where’s Giann Rooney by the way? She does a pretty good job on Wide World of Sports and passes the ‘sport credibility’ test – she’s the only woman I think who you could sneak in without complaint.

  3. @mason, why all the Eddie hating. Eddie covered sport on Channel 10 Melbourne for 10 years before going to 9. He loves soprt and TV. He has been on TV for 30 odd years and has done everything. How hard is it to call a 100 metre sprint or swim. They run or swim from point A to point B. We are not talking brain surgery here.

  4. I don’t think I could watch the Olympics listening to Eddie McGuire. I’ll certainly be looking for other feeds from different sources for my Olympics fix if he is given over-prominence. I don’t care whether the hosts are male of female, as long as they are at least experts or past athletes with experience. I also hope the coverage isn’t overly Australia-centric. There is much more to the Olympics than announcing that Australia finished 59th in Badminton.

    1. Eddie has already done Olympics in Vancouver. If you want more than Aussie coverage you should subscribe to Foxtel. As it is, Nine won’t be able to cover all Aussie competitors anyway, so I hardly think they will start focussing on Botswana….

  6. Is Leila McKinnon pregnant? I hope so. She has more chance of effecting real change at Nine than anyone. That network needs to be dragged into the 21st century and a few more women in very senior roles are required. Bonus points for being David Gyngell’s wife! She is his greatest asset.

  7. @tmorgan the article was mainly directed at nines olympic coverage, and a lack of women in sport in tv in general.
    And Seven arent above being critised, Rohan Connoley in the same paper had a pretty scathing full page article on sevens AFL coverage a few weeks ago.

  8. @tmorgan96 – I think you’ve been here long enough to know that football isn’t a focus of this blog.This article is about the commentary team for the Olympics, which happen to be on the Nine Network. David hasn’t mentioned NRL coverage either. If he writes an article on the gender bias in sporting commentary in general, I’m sure he’ll mention both major football codes.

  9. The article doesn’t point out Seven doesn’t use female presenters for its AFL coverage. Should that be mentioned too, or is Seven above being criticised?

  11. Ken sutcliffe has been to many Olympics. It’s basically his job. Nicholas is English. Karl is one of the best hosts of anything in the country. Beyond the expert commentators, plenty of shows have an uneven male to female ratio. Basically all reality shows have the exact same gender imbalance…..

  12. For me I really like to have someone who has experience in the sport with the commentary. They give a good insight into what the athlete is going through etc. Now if Eddie knows what it takes to compete in a triathlon then I’ll post a positive comment.

  13. @camo2 – more Nine chauvinism. I especially like your logic that an article becomes sexist if it mentions that something else might be sexist.

    Addressing inequalities in employment opportunities seems to only be considered irrelevant by inconsiderate members of the group that is not being marginalised.

    I doubt this would be an issue if the imbalance was more moderate but having just one woman, who happens to be the wife of the CEO, says “tokenism” to me (in capitals).

  14. Well, to me it is not so much a case of sexism but more a case of are you a mate of the boss. I think Eddie deserves a spot as he is a sports journo. Ken probably but the rest are a bit so so. it is the olympics. you bring your A team to cover them, not your mates.

  17. I am dreading listening to Eddie’s commentary.

    I can’t remember her name. But they used to always to use a female for the gymnastics.

    i think its too male dominated and I would prefer to listen to someone who has experience in the sport and not be there just because of their name.

  18. It’s good to hear so many voices pointing out what is so obvious about Nine’s misogynistic culture. Things must change. Their blokes only approach to everything is costing them ratings and revenue and the market wont put up with it any longer.

  19. more nine bashing…total irrelevant who commentates… the article itself for me is sexist just for pointing it out…its funny that when 7 had the olympics and they had Johanna griggs fronting the coverage…some newspaper scribes also questoned it…male female who care… sport or non sport background..who cares… the people in the studio will be hosting links and doing studio interviews… so its really that not big a deal…. if more women come on board then excellent if they dont will it really matter… and i think the girls do a better job most of the time as well

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