BBC criticized for little coverage of Paralympics

From The Guardian in the UK. In the picture, Britain's Russell Docker on a practice run for the men's downhill sitting at the Vancouver Paralympics.

The BBC has been criticised for scheduling just one hour of TV highlights of the Vancouver Winter Paralympics, despite dedicating 160 broadcast hours to the Winter Olympics on BBC2.

Lewis Wiltshire, the editor of the BBC Sport website, said TV coverage was restricted because of "budget restrictions and the time zone factor".

The Winter Paralympics, which start today in Vancouver and run until 21 March, follow the BBC's extensive coverage of the Winter Olympics which ran for 17 days from 12 to 28 February. The BBC published a detailed press release highlighting what it called its "most comprehensive coverage in Winter Olympic history".

However, in a blogpost, Wiltshire was taken to task about the lack of TV coverage of the Paralympics.

"There are provisional plans in place to stream the curling live through the BBC Sport website and BBC Red Button if the GB team make the medal rounds and we will also be broadcasting a one-hour highlights programme on Monday, 22 March on BBC2," he said. "We will not be broadcasting any other live coverage due to budget restrictions and the time zone factor."

Wiltshire added that while there would be coverage via daily news reports and the BBC sport website from "reporters and crew based in Vancouver and Whistler". If viewers wanted to catch the action they should go online to Paralympics TV, "with whom we have a very close relationship", and which would stream the most live coverage.

One disgruntled post, from mingus_101, responded: "Shame on you BBC, you can send a big crew for the main event and can find the money for that. Time delay doesn't stop the Able bodied Winter Olympics being shown. I say again, Shame on you BBC, putting nine days of competition into a one hour highlights programme."

Mingus_101 added that one option, given the BBC's own claim of a "close relationship" with Paralympics TV, was to take the feed from the organisation and provide London-based commentators.

The BBC's coverage of the Beijing Paralympic games in 2008 attracted a record number of viewers for a Paralympic games. The BBC says the last 15 minutes of the television coverage in 2008 was watched by 13.2 million, 23% of the population. This compares with 10.8m for the Paralympics in Athens and 12.9m for the Sydney games.

Ratings figures were boosted by the popularity of the main Olympics, reflected in the 2.7 million who watched the opening ceremony, the success of British athletes and the athletes' stories.

In January Channel 4 surprisingly swooped on the TV rights to the London 2012 Paralympics, seeing off the BBC bid with a pledge to air about 130 hours on its main network.