An Analysis of the Global Significance of the 2012 London Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony
An analysis of the global significance of the 2012 London Summer Olympics opening ceremony
The 2012 London Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony (Hereafter LSOOC) was watched by 62,000 spectators in the stadium and an estimated audience of one billion across all five continents, it was for a few hours the focal-point of the world. This essay will conclude that the live broadcast of this major-sporting media event has become economically significant; primarily as a result of the increasing global commercialisation of sport.
Introduction
Sport is seen as the most desirable element of television viewing. It has played a significant role in the growth of television, especially during its emergence as a global technological innovation in the 1960s (Whannel, 2009:201). It can be agreed that television has transformed sport, in a way that it is rare to have one week without an international televised sporting event (Glenn, forthcoming).
The live broadcasts of sporting events have the power to engage viewers with an embedded suspense of ‘who will win?’ It has been internationalized and become globalised in a way that fans in South Africa can follow the fortunes of Tour de France or the German Formula One Racing (Glenn, forthcoming). This essay will analyse how the live broadcast of the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony constitutes as a media event and the global significance that it devotes to the host country.
Definitions and Types
To understand the concept of what constitutes as a media event, we use the description given by Dayan and Katz (1992). According to these two authors, media events are monopolistic interruptions of routine. They intervene in the scheduled flow of broadcasting (1992:5) and stimulate viewers to turn to the event.
These media events can be subdivided into three 'scripts ' as defined by Dayan and Katz (1992). However, this analysis of the 2012 LSOOC only constitutes for two of the ‘scripts’, more specifically
The 2012 London Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony (Hereafter LSOOC) was watched by 62,000 spectators in the stadium and an estimated audience of one billion across all five continents, it was for a few hours the focal-point of the world. This essay will conclude that the live broadcast of this major-sporting media event has become economically significant; primarily as a result of the increasing global commercialisation of sport.
Introduction
Sport is seen as the most desirable element of television viewing. It has played a significant role in the growth of television, especially during its emergence as a global technological innovation in the 1960s (Whannel, 2009:201). It can be agreed that television has transformed sport, in a way that it is rare to have one week without an international televised sporting event (Glenn, forthcoming).
The live broadcasts of sporting events have the power to engage viewers with an embedded suspense of ‘who will win?’ It has been internationalized and become globalised in a way that fans in South Africa can follow the fortunes of Tour de France or the German Formula One Racing (Glenn, forthcoming). This essay will analyse how the live broadcast of the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony constitutes as a media event and the global significance that it devotes to the host country.
Definitions and Types
To understand the concept of what constitutes as a media event, we use the description given by Dayan and Katz (1992). According to these two authors, media events are monopolistic interruptions of routine. They intervene in the scheduled flow of broadcasting (1992:5) and stimulate viewers to turn to the event.
These media events can be subdivided into three 'scripts ' as defined by Dayan and Katz (1992). However, this analysis of the 2012 LSOOC only constitutes for two of the ‘scripts’, more specifically
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