A Descriptive Analysis of NBC’s Coverage of the Centennial Olympics: The “Games of the Woman”?

This study examines the amount of coverage given to women’s events and female athletes by NBC at the Centennial Olympic Games. Content analysis showed that women were covered extensively, but that coverage of women concentrated on individual sports such as swimming, diving, and gymnastics to the exclusion of team events. Men’s team competitions received substantially more coverage than did women’s team events, and women in sports that involved power or hard physical contact between athletes received almost no attention. Additionally, many more men were used as on-camera sources and most event announcers were male.