Craven slams CTV decision not to broadcast opening ceremony nationwide

 INTERNATIONAL Paralympic Committee president Sir Philip Craven has slammed the decision not to broadcast the Vancouver 2010 opening ceremony across all of Canada.

UNIMPRESSED: IPC president Philip Craven calls CTV's decision not to show opening ceremony throughout Canada a smack in the face

The consortium that holds the Paralympic broadcasting rights in Canada, led by CTV, buckled under pressure to at least show the opening ceremony in British Columbia but Craven still labelled the fact that the coverage was not nationwide as a ‘smack in the face'.

Craven also lamented CTV's plan not to broadcast the closing ceremony live in a similar move from the American broadcasters in Salt Lake City eight years ago.

"Not happy at all," said the Brit, himself a former Paralympian basketball player. "I would, of course, prefer that it was all over the country. A lot of progress has been made, but some countries are slower to get the message than others.

"It's a social balance and we're all people of the world. In this case, we're all athletes of the world and that's the message the Paralympics gives whether it's in Vancouver and Whistler (site of the skiing events) or Beijing.

"It is this very, very powerful message that we're all out there, we're all people of the world and we're all part of the world. We are not in some marginalized community that has that terrible word 'disabled' in front of it."

Craven said he had asked CTV to carry a live broadcast, but it wasn't until the broadcaster went through the dress rehearsal Thursday night and saw how the programme would look that it decided to go live at 18:00 local time with the two-hour show.

Originally it planned only to rebroadcast the show on Saturday, packaged in front of a live broadcast of the Canada-Italy sledge hockey game.