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By Shirley Brady
Lance Armstrong's attempt to win his sixth straight Tour de France title this month is not just an audacious goal for the champion cyclist. It's also a turning point for Outdoor Life Network?which is airing its fourth Tour from the July 3 start in Liège, Belgium, to the July 25 finish in Paris.
"The tour is our crown jewel, both an opportunity and a monumentally important franchise for us," says OLN's new president Gavin Harvey. "We are using this as a platform to introduce some new shows in prime time and on weekends, and to do some brand definitional promotion to change people's perception of our network."
To that end, one of Harvey's first moves after joining in February from his previous role as EVP of marketing at sister Comcast network E! Entertainment was to commission a $20 million marketing campaign called "The Cyclism." The campaign is designed to hit the net's target demo of active male viewers 18 to 54 (median age: 41), for the Tour and OLN programming year-round.
New programming on the network includes a show called The Roadside Tour, which from 5 to 7 p.m. daily follows the Armstrong team's progress as reported by a group of American fans dubbed "The Cutters." OLN wetted fans' appetites for this year's historic event with an original special, Lance's Five Battles Won, and two new series: Road to the Tour and The Lance Chronicles (which also was offered in high-definition on INHD).
Along with three minutes of local ad-sales avails, OLN has primed operators with taggable tune-in TV spots, customizable posters and other Tour-related resources. The goal is to attract advertisers beyond the obvious sporting goods and outdoor-related businesses. OLN includes financial services, consumer electronics retailers and travel agencies on its list of 26 suggested local ad sales categories.
Harvey hopes to double the 1.2 million average viewers who tuned in last year by offering almost 350 hours of Tour action this month. "Once they're here, we want them to understand that OLN is about much more than just the Tour."
OLN is using the Tour as a lead-in this month to kick off original programs at 10:30 p.m., including Outdoor Magazine's Ultimate Top 10 (debuts July 3), Saturn's Gravity Files (July 5) and Countdown: Courage 25 (July 21). A biography strand of vignettes will be offered for video on demand later this year. Harvey will use this approach of more story-driven programming to expand the audience for OLN's other programming, such as Gravity Games, bull riding and winter sports.
The network hopes to offer each day's Tour highlights on VOD. "We're also looking at what part of the Tour could be spun off into a high-speed environment," Harvey says, "and we're taking a close look at HD beyond The Lance Chronicles going to INHD. We're hoping to get all this worked out in time for this Tour."
Harvey is conducting a brand audit to help expand OLN beyond fans of its various genres. "We don't want our cycling fans to think, `what's with all the fishing shows,' for example," he says. "Our challenge is to make people understand across the board what we are...We want to put OLN right in the front of mind so we're not just super-serving our passion groups but get more of the broad population watching TV surfing over to us more often."
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