A study of strategies for organizing sports programs on YouTube channels in Thailand

Abstract

This research aims 1. to study the program contents; 2. to study the uniqueness of the programs; and  3. to find strategy for organizing sports programs on YouTube channels. This research is a qualitative research and the textual analysis methodology is applied. The subjects are sports programs on YouTube channels. They are divided into 2 sports types: team sports and individual sports. Team sports is football and the individual sports is boxing. The researcher did a purposive sampling to study the contents presented on 2 YouTube channels as follows: 1) Khobsanam Program and 2) Muay Thai (Thai Boxing) Ngoen Lan Program. The researcher applied a textual analysis according to the number of channel groups.  

The findings of Khobsanam Program are: 1. There are 11 programs with reality contents and these programs can be divided into 2 groups. Group one consists of news narration, sports news analysis and critique. Group two consists of interview, group conversation, and group discussion. Another 1 program with the entertainment content is quiz game show. 2. The uniqueness of the program is that the moderators pronounce Thai language with clear voice. They are also humorous and friendly with the audience. The main outfits of the moderators are football club polo shirts. In terms of picture and sound uniqueness, it was found that Cut- in Shot was applied the most, followed by Cutaway Shot and Action Shotrespectively. The sound mostly focuses on the moderator’s speech followed by music, effect, and the ambient noise of the field. The findings of Muay Thai (Thai Boxing) Ngoen Lan Program are:  1) There are 6 programs with reality contents mainly news reporting and recorded contents presentation. 2) The uniqueness of the program is that the moderators pronounce Thai language with clear and strong tone of voice, stressed accents with some local dialects. They give a rhythmic pause during their narration in order to express emotions and persuade the audience. In terms of the outfits of the moderators, the moderators dress in formal suits in the live programs whereas they wear the sports polo shirts in the narrated or news reported programs. In terms of picture and sound uniqueness, the results were found that Action Shot was applied the most, followed by Cut-in Shot and Wide Shot respectively. The sound mostly focuses on the moderator’s speech followed by the ambient noise of the field. 3. Strategies for organizing sports programs on YouTube channels are as follows:  1) Content formats are presented by (1) attracting the audience to follow the contents by the clip’s title, (2) presenting the show’s presenters/pundits by mentioning who they are and how they are related to the contents, (3) generating questions by defining problem issues to arouse suspicions among the audience, and (4) telling the story by expanding its contents that indicates the causes and effects of the events in each episode; (2) The findings of uniqueness of sports program are: (1) the serial pictures focus on Action Shot in the clip title instead of chronological order, (2) the sound is presented in 3 forms; namely, speech or narration, music, and special sound effect to arouse joyful and exciting emotions, and (3) the moderators pronounce Thai language with clear voice. They can control their tones of voice to build perception among audience. In terms of the outfits, the moderators dress in formal suits in the news reported programs and narrated sports programs to create credible looks whereas they mainly wear sports polo shirts or program costumes in talk show and interview programs.