This study investigated the relationship between gratifications sought (GS) from television news and gratifications obtained (GO) from network evening news programs Each GS correlated moderately to strongly with its corre sponding GO for the respondent's most-watched program. Correlations between each GS and noncorresponding GOs were generally much lower. In addition, the degree of dependence on a particular program was posi tively related to the strength of the GS versus GO relationship. The differ ences in the GS and GO factor structures appear attributable to medium and program content characteristics. The findings indicate considerable promise for a sought versus obtained conceptualization of uses and gratifi cations.

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Employing a uses and gratifications paradigm, we expected that audience experience with televised sports would vary on the basis of fanship, with fans having a qualitatively different, deeper, and more textured set of expectations and responses than nonfans. Fans were expected to respond in similar ways, regardless of gender. Telephone interviews were completed with 707 adults residing in Los Angeles and Indianapolis. Fanship was operationalized using cognitive, affective, and behavioral bases. In this study, fanship made a difference, with fans clearly more invested in the viewing experience. Male and female sports fans reacted and responded in almost identical ways, although men generally were an insignificant shade more involved than women. However, since more males are fans, the televised sports viewing experience in many households may not be shared, even when husbands and wives watch the same TV sports program.

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This paper considers how mediated sport’s promotional culture works to hail us in interlinked gender, fan, and consumer identities. The paper draws on findings from a recent series of studies to illustrate how an emergent dirt theory of narrative ethics helps move beyond Althusser’s notion of ideological hailing to understand the dynamics of power and contraints at play in strategic sporting narratives that stereotype men and women and their roles as fan and consumer. The discussion focuses on the dynamics of narrative hegemony and the prospects and limits of social change in the ethics that undergird sport-related narratives in consumer culture.

This study examined gratifications sought and discrepancies in gratifications obtained from network news programs in an attempt to predict news program choice. The results of both 1-test and discriminant analyses indicate that the decision to view a particular television news program is strongly related to the perception of gratifications obtained (or potentially available from) the various programs. A comparison of means indicates that such choice behavior is not a function of overallperceptions of gratifications obtained from oneS favorite program alone. nor is it usually a function of gratifications sought from television news in general. It is only when an audience member makes a comparison between the gratifications perceived to be obtained from his favorite program and competing programs that a functional relationship with viewing choice emerges. While in certain cases more specific perceptions of anchorpersons, program format. and news quality may be more important, the discriminant analyses indicate that the perception of differential gratifications is at least as strongly related to viewing behavior as the more traditionalmeasures of program attributes.

In this editorial essay, Communication and Sport Editor-in-Chief Lawrence Wenner considers the state of scholarly inquiry on communication and sport at an important moment. The moment features complementary and competing scholarly journals, a notable advance in institutional formations in scholarly organizations that have helped legitimize inquiry in the area, and the strategic rise of academic programs, institutes, and centers in communication and media studies that focus on sport. In assessing the state of scholarly play on communication and sport, competing questions are considered: (1) ''Is there 'a' field and, if so, what is it? and/or (2) ''Are there many 'fields of play' with offset objectives, priorities, and levels of development?'' An epistemological assessment is made of three dispositions to the study of communication and sport: (1) a ''Media, Sports, and Society'' disposition, (2) a ''Sport Communication as Profession'' disposition, and (3) a ''Communication Studies and Sport'' disposition. The essay closes with summary characterization of these dispositions and points to the challenges ahead for the scholarly study of communication and sport to develop as a coherent field.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the International Sociology of Sport Association and the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, the three guest editors for this special fiftieth anniversary issue of the IRSS, current ISSA president, Elizabeth CJ Pike, the immediate past president, Steven J Jackson, and current IRSS editor, Lawrence A Wenner, introduce the issue's genesis and theme: '50@50: Assessing the trajectory and challenges of the sociology of sport'. In considering the trajectory of the sociology of sport, the ISSA and the IRSS, they reflect on the early development of the field and the founding of an international association and journal aimed at understanding sport in the social and cultural dynamic; they note early and ongoing challenges concerning the academic seating of the field, its legitimacy and impact, and its engagement with the public sphere and the 'sociological imagination'. Speaking to the challenges of fashioning a special issue to represent the breadth of 50 years of the sociology of sport, the editors outline how a '50@50' strategy was implemented to bring perspectives from 50 notable scholars and to ensure that a diversity of voices was heard, not only on a range of themes, theories and methods, but from diverse identities and locales. Addressing two overarching challenges -the global dominance of English as the lingua franca of scholarly discourse and the need to advance interdisciplinarity and engagement with scholars beyond the sociology of sport -will be key to broadening dialogue to help ensure the future sustainability and progress of the sociology of sport.