Yeserday the season’s first snowflakes fell around SOAR’s office near Salt Lake City. We’re ready for the slopes and powder that await us (see image below)! Winter is something to look forward to in the state with the greatest snow on Earth, and here’s why:
- 13 ski resorts, most which are less than 40 miles from Salt Lake City
- Nearly 400 inches average annual snowfall at the resorts
- Nearly 27,000 skiable acres
- More than 1,100 ski runs
- Snowboarding allowed at 11 out of the 13 resorts
Ski (or snowboard) on!
Information gathered using information from SkiUtah’s 2009-2010 Utah Resort Facts
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.
I’ve now been “officially” working in the Sports, Outdoor, Athletics and Recreation industries for slightly more than 3-and-a-half years now, and I must say I continue to be shocked at the overall lack of new media sophistication I see within these industries.
Understand that this is not meant as a slam against all companies in these markets (although it may come across as such).
I also recognize that almost every company I now find in any industry has a Web site. But for many companies, that’s it. And in some instances, companies have little more than a brochure-ware Website.
Others are beginning to step forward and are beginning to embrace newer forms of interactive media, sometimes known as Web 2.0 technologies. These solutions and tools include
- Blogging,
- Online video,
- Social networks (MySpace and Facebook being the most popular, but not the only ones),
- Microblogging (through such tools as Twitter and Pownce, to name two), and
- Podcasting.
What’s even more amazing to me, however, is the seeming lack of interactive / Web 2.0 sophistication among the media companies serving the outdoor and recreation industries. Here again, I’m not attacking every media-publishing company serving clients and/or end-users in the recreation, sports, athletics and/or outdoor industries. Just most of ‘em.
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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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