Please forgive me. I wrote October, I meant to write August.
The event is scheduled to be on between 4 and 6 PM Eastern TOMORROW Sunday,
August 22, 2004. Please change that before forwarding.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, August 21, 2004 3:51
PM
Subject: Olympic Wheelchair Event
I decided to send this to everyone I knew who I thought would be
interested, these are my own thoughts and not a forwarded message:
Some
of you may know that the 2004 Athens Paralympics are coming up, not long after
the Olympics. This year they run from September 17 through September
28. Unfortunately, there are no plans for televising any of the
Paralympics here in the United States. The 2002 Winter Paralympics did
receive some very limited television coverage (8 hours on A&E and 2 hours
on CBS), however neither station did much advertising before hand, so few
people actually watched.
So, I am writing to let you know that on
Sunday October 22, between 4 and 6 PM Eastern, NBC will be broadcasting two
Olympic wheelchair athletic events in Track and Field. During the Sydney
Olympics these events were only exhibition events, but this year they are
medal events. The two events to be broadcast are the Women's Wheelchair
800 m and the Men's Wheelchair 1500 m.
I would like to ask anyone
interested if they could write a letter to the editor of any newspapers
regarding the lack of television and other media coverage. You may also
want to consider writing a letter, or sending the same one, to the heads of
the various television networks that provide sports coverage (ABC, CBS, NBC,
ESPN, Fox Sports, etc.) asking them to consider covering, at least, parts of
the Paralympics in the future. Unfortunately, this will not get
television coverage of the 2004 Paralympics, but it will let people know there
is an interest in disabled athletics. Try to personalize your letters if
you can to include any thoughts on disabled athletics that you may have seen
either in person or on television.
I hope you'll consider sending this
e-mail onto your friends so they can watch the two events and consider writing
letters themselves.
Sincerely,
Jeff
