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There were, generally speaking, two schools of thought about the .

The first is that it was one of the highlights of 2008 and some of the best sports coverage in recent memory. This was the clear finding of our audience research, and also of a lot of the emails, blog responses and letters we received - for which, many thanks.

The second view is that may have been the case but we were extravagant in the number of staff we sent and the amount of money we spent, and this fits into accusations of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ not being careful enough in the spending of the licence fee.

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It understandably wasn't front-page news, but it was a significant week for the Cultural Olympiad last week.

As I've written here before, there's pretty much universal agreement that the Cultural Olympiad hasn't been cutting through. Most of the population are blithely unaware of its existence, and .

But at a meeting of Tony Hall's Cultural Olympiad board - which the ´óÏó´«Ã½ sits on - there was the for the whole project along with an expert team. Ruth Mackenzie and her colleagues now take on the job of shaping and curating the Cultural Olympiad.

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I wrote here a few weeks ago about the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and the Paralympics, and the fact the rights to the London Paralympics were being marketed by the organisers. Well, we heard today that they've decided to award the contract to Channel 4.

Naturally, we're disappointed that we won't be able to continue with our tradition of covering disability sport in the Paralympics - But we congratulate and I'm pleased that the argument about free-to-air coverage has been won: the Paralympics won't be behind a pay barrier, and they'll be available to anyone who wants to watch them within the UK.

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