Pigskin Loyalty and Geographic Ethnography
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While trying to find where to watch my beloved Pats last season after relocating to the West Coast I found the 506, a site that curates interactive Google maps of TV markets for various American sports. I rediscovered the site earlier this week via kottke and took another look.
However practical these maps may be in helping you navigate television on Sundays, they are concurrently acute cultural and possibly even ethnic cartographies.
Looking closely at a few regions for this upcoming week’s FOX games you can begin to see the method and design that goes into promoting specific teams to particularly loyal or interested regions:
The Mid Atlantic, where most local teams are playing on CBS this week is a jigsaw puzzle. The Dallas-San Francisco match up is being aired in New York City & Philadelphia, possibly a nod to the camaraderie between SF and NYC or maybe a holdover from Dallas’ bygone reputation as “America’s Team.” Meanwhile, a little further south, the local Washington Redskins are barely penetrating the Mason-Dixon line, a potential reminder that Washington is a Southern city.
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