Paralympic Star Ellie Simmonds
After the BBC’s phenomenal job with the Olympics, anyone was going to have a tough time following it up with the Paralympics.
Channel 4 took up the gauntlet though, unfazed by their coverage of last year’s Athletics World Championships being universally panned. While there were more than a few people throwing their hands up in the air though at channel‘s coverage of the event at the beginning of the two weeks, by its conclusion, they might have won people back.
Ok, the ad breaks were very annoying. But when are they not during live sport? Every now and again they would miss an important moment, but on a general level, they weren’t enjoyment destroying.
They also learnt from the mistakes of the first few days too, after Channel 4 were heavily criticised for not removing all of their usual afternoon TV in favour of blanket coverage of the Paralympics. By the second week, it was almost comparable to the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics themselves.
The standout number though is the staggering 400 minutes of coverage of the games that Channel 4 doled out. While nothing in comparison to the gargantuan amount of TV that the BBC put out for the Olympics themselves, it’s easily the best amount offered out there, with Australian network offering over 100 hours of Paralympic action and Japan only giving its viewers a nightly hour long highlights show.
Even that would have been a huge improvement on American network NBC’s coverage though, which gives the word pathetic a bad name.
With only four hour long shows and a yet to be scheduled 90 minute round up of the games planned, NBC’s coverage of London 2012 has once again come under serious scrutiny, after they chose not to live broadcast any of the Olympics and even then providing sub-par coverage throughout, despite recording a total of over 219 million viewers over the course of the event.
The appalling state of the NBC coverage has even got the president of the International Paralympic Committee unsure of a continued alliance with him saying; "We'll examine their values as they will examine ours. If the values fit, we've got a chance. If they don't we'll go somewhere else."
So while Channel 4 may have fallen short of the bar set by the BBC, they still far than outdid their international rivals.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in BBC Channel 4 London 2012 Paralympic Games