Channel 4's HD Coverage of Sochi 2014 Paralympic Games.

[Tony E Loves Architecture]

This thread is for our British coverage of the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Games on Channel 4 HD.

[Brekkie Boy]

Just to summarise coverage will begin most days at 6am on C4 (dependent on the Sochi schedule), with coverage switching to More4 in the afternoons due to C4's coverage of Cheltenham. There will also be two further HD channels available "digitally", but they've not expanded on what they mean by that so I suspect it's just online rather than via Sky/Virgin. I was going to say there is no chance of them being on Freeview but actually C4 do have two spare HD channels on the new HD mux available in parts of the country carrying BBC4 and BBC News in HD, and they're yet to allocate channels to these slots

[Brekkie Boy]

Must say C4 have once again done a good job - it's ridiculous to think the BBC only ever dished out an hour long highlights programme for the Winter Paralympics. Can't really fault anyone on the presenting or commentary teams - even Jonathan Edwards who I thought was pretty poor for the BBC at the Olympics seemed much more comfortable with the Paralympic coverage on C4.

The only complaint I'd have is the placement of ads - but I guess we've been spoiled by ad-free BBC coverage of multi-sport events for decades. C4 obviously have to show ads but I do think they've been a bit clumsy at times - would prefer the approach they used to have with the cricket of frequent short breaks - though in this case it sometimes felt like frequent long breaks!

[JMarkSnow2012]

Consolidated ratings for the week of 3-9 March, covering the OC and the first weekend's competition, are now available. No Paralympic event features in Channel 4's top 30 for the week (although The Last Leg maintains its status, beating Crufts for number 7 place).

Looking at the few mentions of the Paras in reports of overnight ratings, it becomes apparent that the sittation in Sochi was quite similar to London- the Paras coverage got somewhat over a quarter as many viewers as the Olys; but this being winter, and not in the UK, the overall viewers for both were only about a quarter of what they had been in 2012. Hence the Sochi Olys got ratings over 2 million, comparable with the London Paras, while the Sochi Paras got ratings over half a million, comparable with a documentary on BBC4.

[Brekkie Boy]

Remember though they were all pretty much morning broadcasts and this was the first time they were ever shown live on TV (even daily on TV). It's essentially the cost of having the summer rights - and at the price C4 pay in comparison to the Olympic rights around a quarter of the audience for probably a tenth of the rights fee is pretty good going.

[JMarkSnow2012]

Remember though they were all pretty much morning broadcasts and this was the first time they were ever shown live on TV (even daily on TV). It's essentially the cost of having the summer rights - and at the price C4 pay in comparison to the Olympic rights around a quarter of the audience for probably a tenth of the rights fee is pretty good going.

Agreed, it's almost certainly a very acceptable arrangement for C4. What's notable, though, is that it shows up something of the way people watch TV in the UK.

BBC2 occupies the second line on EPGs, so the BBC can get away with showing the Summer Olys on BBC1, and the Winters on BBC2, giving the latter a massive ratings boost (roughly doubling its audience share). When C4 showed the Summer Paras in 2012, they too doubled their normal ratings, but their secondary channels, More4 and E4, are some distance down the EPG listing, so they chose not to take the opportunity of mega-boosting ratings for one of those by making it the main Paralympic channel. Instead, they contented themselves with business-as-usual overall ratings for the main channel.