In Victoria E. Johnson's article entitled "Everything New is Old Again", Johnson talks about how sport programming has effectively been able to capitalize on both the past network-era as well as the post network-era. Johnson states that first purpose of her paper is to "examine sport programming's historic and continuing synchronicity with network-era television practices in two primary ways: by tracing the form's centrality to institutional branding, differentiation, and claims to continued cultural relevance; and through the example of the foundational role of the National Football League". Johnson then goes on to state that sport programming networks have "with remarkable regularity across media history, times of economic crisis and technological transition have encouraged networks to stake their institutional identity on sport". For Johnson, sports programming has been the one type of program that has always been in demand and important to wide and diverse audiences. Additionally, Johnson seems to think that sports programming networks have effectively been able to broadcast to audiences in both a past network-era era, as well as a post and current network-era. Sports programming has effectively been able to construct communities as broadly communal and individually based.
The question is, do we agree with Johnson? Is this something that we should be concerned about? Is this something that we should consider important? Why?
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