The 2012 Paralympic Games

I do wonder whether that is partly Channel 4 trying to save face, had they not done very well.

I assume if there is no rowing coverage we are unlikely to see any live sailing coverage. Not that there is much room for it on schedules anyway.

Well all the advertising slots have been pre sold for weeks, so they should know roughly now if they have broke even.


I think we'll get some packages but yes no live coverage

Given Gary Linekar's public comments earlier this week, expressing regret that C4 rather than the BBC won the rights for the games, I found it rather ironic just now to have the coverage interrupted by a break that contained Gary in a Walkers Crisps commercial.

Make your mind up Gary, you can't have your crisps, and eat them !

And on that point, if the BBC had paid for the rights, would there be more coverage - or would it still be restricted by what OBS could provide? The only saving grace might have been that the BBC could have put more of their own resources into areas not covered by the OBS.

We know had the Beeb won the rights there woudnt have been as much airtime anyway so even if they had greater resources they'd still be showing less.

What resources ? They don't have many now, in the form of OB trucks and hardware ?

Resources does not always equal hardware. There are Human Resources as well...

BBC Sport is a large production operation with a lot of experienced producers. Those kind of resources may well have helped as well

However I suspect (well I know) Channel Four - via Sunset and Vine and IMG - have the benefit of a reasonable number of recently ex-BBC Sport experienced producers who decided to go freelance rather than relocate to Salford.

C4 (S+V/IMG) have put in some significant domestic resources into a number of areas (velodrome, swimming etc.) which allow them to have ISO cameras, ISO superslowmo cameras, local EVS replay, multicamera interviews etc. to add significant production values to the OBS host feed for a domestic audience. By all accounts it was quite tight to get all the kit set-up, but the operation seems to be working OK.

To answer the original point I doubt the BBC would have put in their own sport coverage operations to duplicate the OBS set-up, and they didn't propose to have anywhere near as much output on BBC One/Two as C4/More4 are providing.

However the BBC may have decided to put in some coverage of their own in areas that OBS haven't if they thought there were good stories to tell. These obviously wouldn't have been BBC-owned resouces, as the BBC doesn't own any non-News OB trucks in England. However there would have been nothing to stop them hiring in resources on the open market, and when those resources are working for the BBC I think you can describe them as 'BBC resources' in a non-proprietary way.

Thanks - wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be the shot or an even dodgier one a couple of frames later.


Well the OBS would have been even more restricted with £6m less in the pot - and the BBC didn't plan to be live in the daytime anyway on BBC1/2 - but yes, I agree the BBC would probably have tried to cover some areas not covered by OBS.

Shame on LOCOG though - all this talk about putting the Paralympics on equal footing with the Olympics for the first time and sadly the same can't be said for the OBS. That said though we're probably getting TV coverage comparable to what the Olympics had for Sydney and Athens, and I think it is that recent that not all Olympic events were filmed either.

I'm actually quite enjoying the Paralympics. The studio C4 have is very nice, and the discussions they have with studio guests are all excellent. In fact, C4 are doing quite well, I'd say. The coverage is good, Claire Balding is there, and the graphics are all lovely.

Mediaguardian says differently.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/30/paralympics-regret-bbc-gary-lineker

But in every previous news report, it's always been claimed Channel 4 offered massively increased coverage, as well as the increase rights fee. Anyway I think it's been a better advert for Paralympic sport being on Channel 4.

A few days in and I can see C4 bidding for rights with similar coverage to London 2012 at Rio 2016 considering the viewing figures.