Russian television should show the Paralympic Games in full for the first time, Arkady Dvorkovich, a top aide to President Dmitry Medvedev, said Tuesday.
The Russian media usually feature the Paralympics only in news reports about Russian athletes winning medals, and has never shown the games live and in full.
“The Paralympics should be shown in full on terrestrial channels. I don’t doubt that, and I will strive for it as chairman of the council on disabled people’s affairs,” Dvorkovich told representatives of Inva Media TV, a satellite channel showing programs of interest for the disabled.
He did not specify whether he had the summer's London Games or Russia's Winter Games in 2014 in mind.
He suggested that the state-owned Rossiya channel should show the Games because it often shows “second-rate American films of the 70s and 80s.”
“This obviously isn’t the best choice, compared to the relevant broadcasts [the Paralympics], and here it’s possible to change the situation,” he said.
The rights to broadcast the Paralympics are held in reserve by state-owned channels, but rarely used.
Inva Media’s head of regional development, Sergei Feshchenko, said his channel, which most Russians cannot receive, had to fight to show the Paralympics despite lack of interest from the rights-holding networks.
Russia finished in the top ten in the Paralympic medals table for the first time in Beijing in 2008, with 18 gold medals.
The previous highest achievement for Russian paralympians was 16 gold medals by athletes representing the former Soviet states as the Unified Team in Barcelona in 1992.
