Journal Entry 4

Football Consumers and Users of the Media:
Football is accessed in many ways by the users and consumers of the media. These include; television (TV), newspapers, the internet, the radio, magazines and mobile phone updates. Supporters of football use a variety of these ways throughout the calendar football year to catch up with the team they support, their team if you like, and to see how their competitors. They may also use a numerous of these media mediums at the same time to find out the current scores and earlier results. The audience may pay for sport packages on television. Take sky such as an example, they have all of the sky sports channels available for a yearly subscription fee. They may also buy newspapers just to read about the football’s latest fixture and result news or even just sport based magazines and newspapers that are sport orientated.
I have the sky sports package at home allowing me access to all the live games shown on the TV through sky sports by which all the games shown are spread out between the teams in the premiership throughout the season. Football itself also leads to lots and lots of debate. The internet is probably the biggest type for this to occur. There are groups on facebook and other social networking sites for teams and individual players such as a team being the best or a team which a lot of people dislike. The same goes for the individual players groups. There are also lots of forums debating the weekend results and who deserved or did not deserve to win. For these people it is almost as if they are in the pub just after or just before the match has just finished or started and they are reliving the match again or saying exactly what will happen in the match.
This links in what we have been studying in the sense that it looks at consumers and users of the media but just that it is focused on a particular aspect that is sport, and football to be more specific at that. It shows us how people are involved in the media in many different ways and take different active roles in it as well. I can relate to this myself. I sometimes have the TV on watching a live match and get mobile phone updates on other scores across the premiership to see if it helps the team that support at all in the league. I also have realised I am taking an active role in the football franchise and by paying for the sky sports package I keep it going and make them try and get even more games for the next season to ‘better ‘ themselves compared to the previous season. So as a result I will continue to keep getting the sky sports packages to get access to the matches live on TV. I feel though that the type of media consumed and used the most is that of TV. It offers the ultimate experience for the fans and they have developed TV even further by including high definition and now 3D as an option while watching the match.