ABSTRACT
With funding for Public Service Media being questioned across the globe, this chapter looks at the UK’s publicly owned, commercially funded, public service broadcaster Channel 4, exploring how the unique business model, funding mechanism, and other structural influences enabled it to take risks with its ground-breaking London 2012 Paralympic media coverage. The in-depth interviews with key decision-makers also reveal some of the politics behind decisions that were made around representations of disability as well as revealing the structural constraints that shaped decisions. The chapter explores the way the parliamentary remit dictated inclusion of a new group into the workforce and also enabled diverse voices being presented onscreen showing that there were concrete consequences for onscreen representations and the production of meaning.
