A top aide to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said Russian free-to-air television should show the Paralympic Games in full for the first time, adding the state-owned Rossiya channel would be the ideal broadcast platform for the event.
Russian broadcasters have previously only covered the Paralympics in news reports about Russian athletes winning medals.
“The Paralympics should be shown in full on terrestrial channels,” Arkady Dvorkovich said, according to news agency RIA Novosti. “I don’t doubt that, and I will strive for it as chairman of the council on disabled people’s affairs.”
Dvorkovich did not specify whether he intends to introduce the change for this year’s summer Paralympic Games in London or the 2014 Games in the Russian city of Sochi. He said the Rossiya channel could show the Paralympics instead of the “second-rate American films of the 70s and 80s” it often shows.
Dvorkovich made the comments in a meeting with representatives of Inva Media TV, a satellite channel which broadcasts programmes targeted at disabled people.