Field of Dreammakers

Several weeks before the first pitch of the centennial World Series, set to be begin Saturday in a game that marks the climax of the national pastime's lengthy season, a new poll of American sports preferences came out.

To no one's surprise, Major League Baseball again fell short of professional football. What was surprising was the margin: More than twice as many fans picked football in the survey by Harris Interactive. In 1985, the difference between the sports was 1 percent.

The disparity offers fresh evidence of how the increasingly supersized media culture has changed the way people view sports, say industry executives and analysts. Specialty magazines have widened fans' perspective by writing engagingly about far-off teams and personalities. The rise of sports-talk radio has heightened the interest by letting fans have their say on air. And the Internet, as well as video games, promises to again change the way sports are perceived.

But it is television that has transformed sports. It has created national and even international audiences for big contests, invented new ways of watching the game, such as instant replay and highlight films, and pumped huge amounts of money into leagues around the world. The United States has seen the biggest impact.

"You look at the arrival of TV in the 1950s and you see the national pastime changing before your very eyes," says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. "Baseball is a pastoral game, one that offers a wonderful firsthand experience. Football? Football and TV were made for each other, and they embraced one another very quickly."

The pace of the game, the size of the field, the once-a-week Sunday schedule, the overblown heroes-and-villains story lines - everything about football fits TV.

Broadcast rights next year across the major sports and networks will approach $6 billion - as much as the networks spend annually on scripted entertainment programming, according to trade publication TelevisionWeek. Most leagues build their season schedules, and start times, with TV coverage in mind.

The mere notion of being able to watch a game in your living room instead of going to a stadium transformed the concept of spectator sports. The intimacy and prevalence of TV made following sports a constant activity.

The relentless expansion of cable channels and satellite offerings during the last 25 years brought more choices, as well as unintended consequences. The self-awareness of players and coaches became readily apparent. Each constituency played to the cameras, often to their detriment.

As with all programming, sports has suffered its share of slumping ratings. Viewers have infinite choices. The game of the week has become the game of the moment. Nevertheless, network executives often find sports programming irresistible. Last year, for example, Fox wrote off $1 billion in losses from its sports broadcast deals, yet company executives remain bullish about sports on TV.

"Let's face it," says Frank Deford, a veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated since 1962, "TV drives the agenda. It's what's in our magazine, it's what people talk about."

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