Wilson: Paralympic athletes deserve more recognition, coverage

It’s doubtful that many people knew the two-week long Paralympics ended on Sunday, boasting the largest number of participants in the Games’ history.

South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius pops out of the starting block in the men’s 400m semifinals during the Summer Olympic Games on Sunday, August 5, 2012 in London, England.

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There are several reasons for not knowing. The most significant is the event’s lack of television coverage. There’s been some press coverage: a feature story in Sports Illustrated and numerous pieces in The New York Times — both national print outlets with large readerships.

Print exposure is great, but it doesn’t make the abilities of these athletes tangible. This lack of visual coverage comes on the heels of an Olympic Games that featured physically disabled athletes, most notably Oscar Pistorius, the South African track star and double amputee with prosthetic legs. Pistorius also competed in the Paralympics, where he won three gold medals in 2008.

Anyone who saw how fast Pistorius was during the Olympics and witnessed the respect he commanded from his able-bodied competitors knows he is a serious athlete, not a charity case.

The other 4,199 Paralympians should get the same opportunity.

As a disabled athlete myself, this lack of broadcast attention is worrisome. Disability sports will only grow when the general public can see just how captivating these athletes are.

What Britain is doing across all media platforms for the Games makes U.S. coverage pathetic in comparison.

Channel 4, which is publicly owned by the English government, bought the broadcasting rights to the Paralympics in the United Kingdom for $14.3 million and broadcast 500 hours. By comparison, NBC paid $1.18 billion for the rights to the London Olympics.

Christopher Cook, a British media academic who teaches for Syracuse University, explained this.

“Channel 4 Television is like the BBC, owned by the nation. Unlike the BBC, it is funded by advertising. So it’s a hybrid. But like the BBC, it’s committed to Public Service Broadcasting ideals,” Cook said in an email.

According to Cook, C4 acquired the rights to the Paralympics in line with its Public Service Broadcasting duty, part of which requires it to provide programming for minority groups who are often excluded elsewhere on television in the U.K.

He added that the decision to buy the U.K. broadcasting rights to the Paralympics “may also have been influenced by it being a ‘good fit’ with the Channel’s demographics, a mostly high-income and college-educated audience, which is often under 35, has a well-developed social conscience and is skeptical about mainstream U.K. TV programming.”

So Channel 4 operates similarly to America’s PBS except with a greater viewership. PBS featured in-depth Paralympic coverage.The amount of coverage by PBS is great, but unfortunately I don’t know of anyone under the age of 50 who watches PBS regularly. So their efforts probably didn’t have the effect that it should have. Channels dedicated to sports need to take on broadcasting the Paralympics, but they have yet to do so.

During the day on ESPN, I’m sure people just love hearing talking heads ramble instead of actually watching an engaging program.

Give me a break.

At a time when several of my peers and I still get asked if we’re training for the Special Olympics, I know that disability acceptance and awareness still has a long way to go, which is why it’s so important that networks get behind this event. I tried watching C4’s live-streaming coverage of the games, but it’s blacked out here. Its YouTube channel is also inaccessible.

The International Paralympic Committee’s YouTube channel or video player on its website are the only ways that people in the U.S. can watch any live Paralympic action.

The channel had four live-streaming channels of competition, but often showed the same events on multiple channels. With the Paralympics encompassing 20 sports, that approach doesn’t seem right.

But it’s better than nothing.

In a recent Guardian article, it was reported that the IPC is disappointed with the level of media coverage of the Games in the U.S.

Channel 4 showed 150 hours of its live coverage in prime time, while NBC aired four hour-long highlight packages on NBC Sports Network. There is also a deal with YouTube to show daily highlights online.

But what NBC plans to do doesn’t really solve the problem at hand. People won’t seek out the YouTube highlights or IPC’s coverage if they don’t even know the Games are happening, and even then there might be trepidation because of a lack of understanding.

And if you are going to delegate Paralympic highlights to the NBC Sports Network, why not show it live? The time difference ensures that it won’t interfere with whatever more lucrative sports broadcasting rights the network owns.

An IPC spokesman described how our nation’s media is failing to recognize the importance of the Paralympics.

“It’s very disappointing. Great Britain is leading the way, as is the rest of Europe. We hope the Americans will see the value of these Games in time and increase the amount they broadcast,” he said in the Guardian article.

I do too.

Write to Jasper at jasperwilson@hotmail.com.