New agreements with DIRECTV, Verizon, Warren Miller Films and SKI Magazine likely spell success for soon-to-launch The Ski Channel
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Millions of active lifestyle buffs will get an extra present under the tree this December 25 as The Ski Channel confirmed via news release that it will reach more than 15 million households when it goes live next month on Christmas Day.
Owned by Atonal Sports and Entertainment, The Ski Channel just announced it has signed long-term agreements with DIRECTV, Verizon, Warren Miller Films and SKI Magazine. (The company also announced it has closed a “significant” round of funding.)
Programming on The Ski Channel will focus on destination travel, equipment, instruction and real estate through a combination of news, weather, magazine shows, movies and events.
In addition to its newest partners, The Ski Channel also counts the following among its corporate partners: Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Brighthouse Networks, Verizon, Panasonic, Marquis Jets, Fender Guitars, Mirage Resorts, Rage Films, Ride Guide, World Heli Championships, Teva Mountain Games, Level One Productions, Skiers World and Olympic Gold Medalist Jonny Moseley.
This weekend was the 2008 Sprint U.S. Freestyle Championships at Deer Valley and Shelly was back in town. David and I were lucky to have met Shelly several months ago on a flight back from a client meeting. A couple months later, Shelly came to Utah for the Visa Freestyle International and I had chance to go to breakfast with her the Friday before competition.
The next day my wife, Debbie and I went to Deer Valley to watch Shelly compete, but an ill-timed exit from the chairlift made it so we missed watching Shelly win! (Deb and I were riding the chair down from the race course to get warm, didn’t have skis on and had to sprint out of the way of the chair and Deb didn’t quite make it. The chair hit her, knocking her to the ground. She felt a little loopy, so we went home.) David was there for Shelly’s win and has been meaning to blog about it for awhile.
This time Shelly was in Utah to compete for the national title in individual and dual moguls. She’s been the Duals National Champion for the last three years straight. Deer Valley’s Champion run, where the course was set, is one of Shelly’s favorites. It’s one of the steepest on the circuit, which makes it a very technical course with lots of speed.
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Last December David blogged about meeting US Ski Team mogul skier Shelly Robertson. Well, this weekend is the Deer Valley Resort Visa Freestyle Invitational and Shelly is in town.
When we first met Shelly she was returning home to Reno after taking 7th place in the women’s moguls competition at the 2008 World Cup season opener in Tignes, France. Since then we have traded emails back and forth with a plan to see her ski in person at the Deer Valley event.
After France, her next event was the Nature Valley Freestyle Cup on January 20 in Lake Placid, New York. I’m signed up for the US Ski Team email newsletter (You can sign up in the middle of the page at (www.usskiteam.com), and I saw that she took 5th place, so I sent her a congratulations email. She responded, “I was definitely excited about 5th- skiing really well- just went way too big on the bottom jump and almost over-rotated the backflip.” That statement turned out to be prophetic for her next event.
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She looked a bit harried, standing there, waiting for the crush of travellers in front of her to finish boarding the 757 so she could collapse into her seat in 20A.
She was cute in an outdoorsy sort of way, her sandy blonde hair pulled up on the back of her head. As she stood there waiting for the line of passengers to finally move forward, I noticed her patterned plum and white parka, a design I’d never seen before.
Just another college kid traveling home for the weekend, I thought. College kid? Probably. And as it turned out, she was about to wrap up her degree at the University of Nevada Reno; but she was also a lot more than that too.
Meet Shelly Robertson, nine-year veteran of the U.S. Ski Team (freestyle) and world-class moguls skier.
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