CALL AND RESPONSE

Abstract

This article critically analyzes the rapid growth in the United States of sports talk-radio programs, teasing out their race, class, and gendered implications, and attendant particularly to their role in commodification of American sports. The author argues that, far from being a democratizing force in America, sports talk radio reinscribes as it reflects and, indeed, covers up dominant positions of power and powerlessness. Thus, the proliferation of sports talk-radio programs is actually one more indication of democracy's demise than of its regeneration.