From Broadcast:
A raft of broadcasters and producers have agreed to offer placements to the disabled sports presenters uncovered by Channel 4 as part of its 2012 Paralympics coverage.
Sky, ITV Sport, BBC News, BBC Children’s, 5 Live, ESPN, Perform and indies IMG Sports Media and Sunset + Vine will offer placements on live news and sports productions to the talent uncovered by C4 at two bootcamps, the second of which took place last week.
The attendees of the week-long training events were given a crash course in presenting and seven of the 12 from the first course have been identified as having potential.
They will be given a placement to help them build their skills and gain a deeper understanding of what it takes to get programmes on air.
C4 disability executive Alison Walsh said: “It is shadowing experience. We want to arm them for the process of how to get productions on air: from how to write interview questions to putting highlights packages together. The aim is to give them a dummy experience.”
C4’s £500,000 disabled talent search was launched after it won the rights to broadcast the 2012 Paralympics. The broadcaster is aiming for 50% of its Paralympics presenting team to have some form of disability.
The broadcaster also recently secured the rights to the BT Paralympics World Cup in May, which were previously held by the BBC.
Walsh said: “If we want to put our money where our mouth is, we should have two or three presenters doing some of the World Cup coverage.”
By Balihar Khalsa
