Review by Ryan Biever in SRM 334
Olympic season after Olympic season, the Paralympics keep gaining air time in the United States and around the world. Even though the London Paralympics in 2012 was considered "The Best Paralympics Ever", the United States only aired five hours of coverage which consisted of highlights and a wrap up a week after the events ended. Other countries such as Britain and Australia had full coverage of the events and even shows showing the different stages of some disabilities. (Sherman, 2012) Britain has also gone to lengths of showing the opening ceremony of the Paralympics in London to show a split between the Olympics and Paralympics for the first time in history. (Stewart-Robertson, 2012) People need to be more aware and help spread the word, so the hard working athletes get the credit that they deserve and become known as a top athlete like they already are.
All three articles that were used in writing this paper relayed the same information but from different perspectives. The article from Sports Business Journal simply states that each upcoming Paralympics is set to break the previous viewing record and in order to continue to do so, networks such as NBC needs to recognize the true potential and power of the Paralympics. The Telegraph, which is a UK newspaper wrote about how they fully covered the Paralympics to their best ability while the U.S. only aired five hours, and out of those five hours, zero were live events. Some disability groups even condemned NBC due to the poor coverage. Chief executive of the disabilities council in UK was disgusted by NBC's decision saying, “For NBC to take such a decision is really, really appalling. It’s a very disappointing decision because as one of the foremost American networks they should want to celebrate these true examples of amazing sportsmanship.” (Sherman, 2012) Finally, the article from PBS just reiterated what both of the previous articles stated but also showed the comparison of the two networks approach to the event. Channel 4 of Britain showed commercials, advertisements and etc., while the U.S. exerted little to no effort to give the Paralympics any hype which is appalling.
Each Paralympics following the previous come bearing with record breaking numbers for viewers and publicity, so why won't NBC take on more than six hours of air time? There are some athletes with disabilities that are far superior in their fields than Olympic athletes, but none of their names leave anyone's lips nor does anyone acknowledge who they are. This is a big problem speaking from a media standpoint due to the issue that news and information is rarely spread and if so, it is scarce and minimally covered. If more networks were to pick up broadcasting rights for the Paralympics, it'll broaden their spectators horizon, increase revenue. attract new audience members, and offer another outlet for sports which in turn could introduce a whole new world of sport that people might find intriguing. The Broadcasting stations are failing to communicate to the audience which in correlation, the Paralympics aren't receiving the full number of fans that they actually have. Being that the Paralympics are rapidly growing, more air time is required which NBC has just now realized according to Sports Business Journal (SBC). SBC stated, "The 2012 London Summer Paralympics attracted a cumulative TV audience of 3.8 billion in more than 115 countries. The IPC now expects to beat the record viewing figures for the Winter Games..." (journal, 2013) Even though the issue has been recognized, they still only booked fifty hours of coverage which is an improvement, but not as much as what was anticipated.
The sports world continues to widen as more and more sports are introduced, it's our job and the medias job to help communicate to others to broaden their spectrum of sports and so the Paralympics can meet their full potential publicity wise.
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