Joining Outdoor Life Network from E! in February not
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| Gavin Harvey, new to Outdoor Life Network, is a devoted cyclist. |
only gave Gavin Harvey a chance to run a network, but it also provided the active executive the opportunity to oversee the programming of some of his favorite pastimes, especially cycling. With Lance Armstrong going for his sixth straight Tour de France victory, OLN decided to liven up the promotion of its race coverage via the “Cyclysm” ad campaign. OLN President Harvey spoke with The Sports Business Daily’s assistant managing editor, Schuyler Baeh-man, to discuss that campaign, his love for the bike and more.
What is one device you could not live without?
Harvey: My Merlin road bike, because I would spontaneously combust if I didn’t get to ride, which I used to be able to do a lot more of before I got this job.
What sports do you follow other than those I would find on OLN?
Harvey: I keep finding myself stuck on the Lakers. I don’t know why. No matter where I live, and I’ve bounced around the country several places the last few years, I stay very close to the drama that is the Lakers. I also try to keep up with baseball, because I love that sport.
So are you a Red Sox or a Yankees fan sitting there in Stamford, Conn.? You are right in the middle of the battleground, right?
Harvey: I have to admit that I felt some regional pull, you know there’s some regional tension, and so I think I’m going to devote my energy to the Mets [laughs].
Have a Lance Armstrong story?
Harvey: I have not met Lance. As I arrived at OLN, Lance is in training. I did have lunch with Paul Sherwen, Phil Liggett, Peter Englehart and Kirsten Gum the other day, and it was a great time, being a fly on the wall listening to them talk about cycling stories. They were very funny, entertaining people. They are in a position to be the best cycling commentating team in television.
You are bullish on cycling even after Lance retires. Why?
Harvey: I’m trying to check my bias at the door because I love it so much. The drama of the
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| Lance Armstrong stars in OLN’s summer blockbuster. |
competition, the dedication of the athletes, the enthusiasm that people have viscerally for the sport. We love the fact that Lance has done what he’s done, he’s brought so much heat to the sport, but we want to take a swipe at promoting its merits in its own right as a televised sport. There is a love for cycling that is part of our population, and so we are going to try to find ways to crack the code of cycling as a televised sport and grow its popularity.
Along those same lines, why do you feel that pro bull riding is a good fit for your network?
Harvey: It is a really amazing spectacle to watch. As I learn more about it, and I think this will be true for many of our sports, there are nuances to the stories, there are sacrifices of the athletes, these are tough, tough guys, and it’s a spectacle to watch. It’s great television and it is increasing in its popularity. It just has a heritage in the outdoors and tradition that feels right in its fit with OLN.
Many bull-riding organizations are starting to market the bulls as much as the cowboys. Is that an approach you agree with?
Harvey: We’re into it in a big way. We have focused on the fact that, just like in baseball, you have batters who have percentages against right-handed pitchers
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| OLN has found that the bulls are as popular as the guys who ride them. |
and left-handed pitchers, we’re offering statistics on how certain bulls do against certain riders. We have bull rankings, and we’ve found in research that the bulls are as popular as the cowboys. People really follow the bulls, and there are a lot of people, we learned, that are rooting for the bulls. We apologize to the cowboys, because the worst that happens to [the bulls] is they get ridden. The worst that happens to the cowboys is a lot worse. Look at the names like Little Yellow Jacket, Slingblade, Blueberry Wine, these are great personalities, too. It is another part of the story that’s really fun.
During your time at In Demand, you worked on the branding and positioning of the iControl VOD system. Is video on demand shaping up to be what you thought it would be when you were working on it from 1999 to 2001?
Harvey: I don’t think anybody anticipated back then that one way to go would be to offer it at no extra charge at this stage. What Comcast has done in offering it at no extra charge to digital customers is a pretty creative move. There are a lot of people sampling it and getting accustomed to the technology. They’ve been able to convince networks like my own that this is a worthy investment of our programming. Back then there was some question as to how do you get people into it to try something new.
Are the fears about the impact of personal video recorders and the ability to control viewing overblown?
Harvey: I don’t know if they’re overblown. People should be cautionary about technologies that are potentially paradigm-shifting. There are many more chapters to be written about how people adapt PVR vs. VOD and even where high-speed Internet is going. But you definitely want to be thinking of solutions to potential problems now. Among advertisers, product integration is becoming potentially more important. In sports business, product integration and sponsor participation goes with the territory. We think that’s an advantage we have as advertisers get more and more concerned about this.
If you were in a room with Sen. [John] McCain, what would you like to tell him about his push for à la carte pricing of cable networks?
Harvey: [Laughs] I would tell him that we couldn’t do what we’re doing with OLN if we had to fight and claw for every single viewer. The model that we’ve grown up under, a lot of other programming has grown up under. It has been an incredible explosion of programming and content, new technology. What we would like to do is focus on the value proposition to the consumer and to redouble our efforts to convince people that this model is working for us. We are developing tons of new content, finding ways to spin it into new technology and grow those businesses, and it all continues to benefit the customer. I think you would see a lot of great ideas and a lot of risks not taken if you didn’t have the opportunity to grow in this bundled environment.
You used Jason Lee in the “Cyclysm” campaign to promote your coverage of the Tour de France. What is your favorite Jason Lee picture?
Harvey: “Almost Famous” is at the top of the list. Great sound track as well.
Who came up with the idea of the campaign?
Harvey: Our objective this year is to broaden the appeal of the tour, so we get more people to watch who are casual fans or even non-cycling fans just because it’s an epic event. We made the decision that this is something we want to support in a big way. “Cyclysm” emerged out of discussions that, knowing that our objective was to broaden the audience and that we didn’t want to promote this in a conventional way, we put all this together and said we need a word to describe the enormity of the event and how we feel about it.
So “Cyclysm” felt like a mythical, movielike, cinematic word that adequately pulled together cyclone and cataclysm and cycling. The idea was then to open this thing up like a movie … Lance being a star and the event being the summer blockbuster, in order to do something different. Some people may hate it, some people will love it, but we really hope it provokes thinking about the tour and Lance and the “Cyclysm” on OLN.
What are some of the new programming initiatives on the horizon at OLN?
Harvey: OLN has its origins in the field and stream genre and we will continue
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| The network is taking a fresh look at its coverage of winter sports. |
to serve that. We want to take a few new swings at how field and stream type of shows are done while continuing to serve the loyal fan that is there. We think it’s time for a new type of fishing and shooting show, so we want to, not reinvent, but continue to vitalize that area. You’ll see us at the Tour de France for many years to come, and we are talking about what we can do domestically, if there is a domestic franchise we can help build in the cycling genre. The Gravity Games are launching on OLN in September, so you will start to see us take a very big leadership position in the world of action sports. We think the Gravity Games is a great brand and it’s a trusted brand among the athletes and fans of the genre. We have launched into surfing, and you will see us get into more water sports. We are looking at the winter sports area, which we’ve served very well, to find a new way to tell the stories. To get people like Hermann Maier, Bode Miller and Picabo Street out there, cover the events and do some fun new stories and coverage of it.
Look for more of this conversation in our sister publication, The Sports Business Daily, located at www.sportsbusinessdaily.com.
