Outside Television to Launch June 2012

In the upcoming weeks, Comcast will launch Outside Television, a cable network born of the 35-year-old Outside Magazine. The network will provide content focusing on skiing, running, hiking, surfing and other outdoor activities to a group of approximately 140 million outdoor enthusiasts across the United States.

The network will be available as part of a package of specialty sports and lifestyle channels on Comcast's Xfinity TV in key markets near coastlines, mountains, and the Great Lakes, where outdoor activities dominate the local lifestyle. The birth of the new channel reflects the continuous increase in spending time outside as more Americans aspire towards healthier lifestyles.    

Some of the channel's content will be supported by a brand or sponsor, such as the North Face Expeditions program and Warren Miller Entertainment. Outside TV will also work collaboratively with Outside Magazine to provide integrated opportunities for advertisers across television, print, online, mobile, and social media channels. 

Outside Magazine's video content has until recently lived on YouTube, so the new TV network serves as a significant step for mass distribution. Dennis Gillespie, senior VP of Distribution for Outside Television, hopes the new network will encourage an influx of converts to the outdoorsy way of life.

Outside Magazine already acts as a Bible for those who are passionate the active outdoor lifestyle. I think extending their reach with a TV network has the potential to be hugely successful in speaking to a larger audience, and thus allow brands to gain greater awareness and customer loyalty.

NBA Embraces Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest during Playoffs

It's nearly impossible to find a group as impassioned and knowledgeable as die-hard sports fans. Not only are these individuals religiously tuning in to catch the game, they're also seeking to engage with the program on a heightened level by unlocking premium content through social media channels.  According to a recent Mashable infographic, 80% of sports fans monitor social media sites while watching the game on TV, and even 60% of fans do so while attending live events. With buzzer-beating baskets and game-changing fouls happening at rapid fire speed, there's a beautiful marriage that exists between sports and social media, an entity known for its immediacy.     

Cognizant of this harmonious relationship and the extensive presence of their fans on each network, the NBA is leveraging the power of Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest to unite basketball fanatics around the excitement of the NBA playoffs. The NBA will launch its community-rooted "Hoops around the World" program, and encourage fans to tweet photos of their neighborhood courts using the hashtag #hoops. The @nba Twitter account will retweet its favorite shots, and the stunt will culminate in an interactive world map illustration of all submissions before the finals begin.

The NBA will expand to greater audiences with Tumblr and Pinterest, two platforms not typically exploited by the association. The NBA will devote its Tumblr page, launching next Wednesday, to photos from professional basketball history, including shots from classic match-ups and iconic moments from the game's greatest players (pictured above). The NBA's Pinterest page, expected to launch late next week, has a two-tiered strategy. It will drive fans to the NBA's e-commerce site to browse throwback apparel, and feature funny moments in NBA history, quirky characters, and other storylines that reinforce to fans why the NBA is so fun to follow off the court.  

With TV ratings for the impending NBA playoffs expected to shatter those of previous years, the NBA is rightly vamping up its social media outreach. I'm particularly intrigued by the use of Pinterest to interact with fans because of the site's heavily-skewed female audience. It will be interesting to track engagement on each platform throughout the playoffs and see where the league is seeing the greatest success.

Time Magazine Enters Sports Arena

With March Madness in full swing and 16 teams on the road to the Elite Eight, sports are at the forefront of American culture right now. In fact, they pretty much always are. So whether you roll your eyes and storm out of the room whenever someone puts on the game, or arrive two hours early to get the best seat on the couch, you might as well accept the role that sports have come to play in our society.

Time Magazine, known traditionally for their grasp on political, world, health, and entertainment news, has taken strides to make inroads with a wider group of consumers with the advent of Keeping Score, a sports blog.


The blog, housed in the Entertainment hub the magazine's online site, covers sports-related topics from around the world. But rather than covering the tireless flow of stats, trade agreements, contracts, salary caps, and lawsuits that plague the sporting world, Keeping Score takes a step back and evaluates the larger cultural, economic, and political implications of developments in sports.

As Time.com managing editor Catherine Sharick wrote in an internal memo, "Keeping score will be much more than a chronicle of games and statistics. It will explore the key issues and personalities, controversies and trends, driving the daily conversation about sports" (Adweek).

I think this is a great idea. I consider myself a huge sports fan, though I try not to occupy myself with the petty details that some sports fanatics can recite in their sleep. I will undoubtedly keep up with the blog, which provides a refreshing outlook on sports in general and at the issues of politics, health, economics, business and religion that surely come into play when dealing with sports. I also find the global scope of the blog fascinating, and it's interesting to see the different sports perspectives around the world.

This is a great example of looking at the bigger picture in order to better meet the needs of consumers, which I feel many companies so often forget to do. Sports, fitness, and outdoor activity can mean so many things to many different people, and it's important to take into account that these enthusiasts may have other areas of interest that influence their extracurricular activities.

Thanks to Keeping Score, I can now keep up with this month's excitement in college basketball while gaining a deeper understanding of other significant issues that may be at play here. (Go Syracuse!)