´óÏó´«Ã½

With the Olympics fresh in the memory and some experiencing 'withdrawal symptoms', a number of you are asking about our plans for the Paralympics. Will we be replicating the extensive Olympic coverage across all of our output when the Paralympics start in a week's time?

The answer is, unfortunately, no. The simple fact is the television rights for the Paralympics were awarded to by the London organisers, We've known about this since January 2010 and my colleague Roger Mosey blogged about it at the time.

So, the reason is not that we think the Paralympics doesn't deserve all-embracing coverage. On the contrary, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has had a long standing commitment to the Paralympics and indeed a proud tradition of covering disability sport - one that's valued by sports governing bodies here in the United Kingdom and envied around the world - so it would be bizarre for us to make such a decision without cause.

Read the rest of this entry

So the party's over, but the clean-up goes on.

While the past few weeks of the Olympics have been incredibly special, the work doesn't let up for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport. Alongside the huge network TV viewing figures we have seen unprecedented audience numbers for our digital services - and the challenge now is how we build on what we have seen in London for our week-in, week-out online sports coverage.

Big sporting events have traditionally been the catalyst for change in broadcasting - from the advent of colour TV to the introduction of HD - and I'd like to think what we have seen during London 2012 will have a bearing on how sport is covered in the future.

Read the rest of this entry