Outside Television and Red Bull Media House Forge Wide-Ranging Partnership; Deal Includes “Pushing Boundaries,” Primetime Films and Action Lifestyle Content

By AlpineZone News |
Jul 12 2012 - 12:52 PM

WESTPORT, Conn. and SANTA MONICA, Calif., June 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — America’s only dedicated television network for outside enthusiasts, Outside Television, today announced a long-term programming partnership with Red Bull Media House spanning original series, films and future productions involving Red Bull athletes and the two partners’ complementary television, print, online, mobile and social media activities.

This strategic partnership brings original adventure sports series “Pushing Boundaries” to Outside Television and a selection of Red Bull Media House films to the “Outside Film Festival” primetime block starting soon. Red Bull Media House will also provide Outside Television exclusive content for the network’s morning program “Outside Today,” and bring featured Red Bull athletes in-studio for interviews. Red Bull athletes span all major athletic and action sports disciplines and include Bruce Irons (surfing), Lolo Jones (hurdling), Demarcus Ware (football), Blake Griffin (basketball), Lindsey Vonn (skiing), James “Bubba” Stewart, Jr. (motocross, supercross), Markus Keller (snowboarding), Steve Fisher (kayaking), Phil Dalhausser (beach volleyball), Robby Naish (windsurfing), Ryan Sheckler (skateboarding) and Travis Pastrana (freestyle motocross), among many others. Red Bull has been creating captivating athlete profiles, lifestyle and action sports programming for nearly 25 years, and will develop still other original series and feature content with Outside Television for the near-future.

“The key to achieving any success with the very demanding and highly engaged people who belong to the active outside culture is that you must be genuine and authentic,” says Rob Faris, senior vice president of programming for Outside Television. “By uniting our media interests and unique reach, Red Bull Media House and Outside create a significant opportunity to better serve the already deeply devoted and also scoring legions of new converts. This is only the first iteration of what we anticipate becoming a very significant strategic relationship.”

“The programming partnership between Outside and Red Bull Media House is only the next evolution in both companies’ heritage together as content champions of the best programming and personalities in action and lifestyle,” remarked Greg Jacobs, head of distribution for Red Bull Media House North America. “The current and future programming development strategy developed between Outside TV and Red Bull Media House will be mutually beneficial in bringing premium sports and lifestyle content to television in an unprecedented approach to storytelling and production.”

The partnership with Red Bull Media House follows a very recent collaboration between Outside Television and America’s top broadband and cable television provider Comcast Xfinity announced in late-May, and that will see Outside Television join every Comcast cable system around the country, likely by year-end. Outside Television has been available the past two years, primarily through local cable systems serving most of the nation’s top resort communities. Yet, over the past few weeks, Comcast Xfinity has been rapidly adding Outside Television to its dominant systems in Chicago, Miami and the rest of Florida, with Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Detroit, Houston, Albuquerque and Santa Fe (where Outside Magazine is based), Boston and Hartford joining the roll out during this and the next four to six weeks.

The addition of the Red Bull Media House programming is aimed at spurring that expansion forward, helping Comcast and other distributors capitalize on the more than 141 million people who now participate regularly in challenging outside activities, as well as the millions more who aspire to share that lifestyle. To that end, Outside Television will schedule a combination of 30 half-hour episodes of “Pushing Boundaries” starting in mid-July (time period and premiere to be announced), and dedicate an exclusive primetime block to the new Red Bull feature films.

Those Red Bull Media House features include:

Poor Boyz Production’s Grand Bizarre – Witness the most daring skiers on the planet performing death-defying feats including Bobby Brown’s ground-breaking triple cork 1440 and Simon Dumont’s one of a kind cubed halfpipe. Nowhere have you seen anything more bizarre than this year’s Poor Boyz Productions release, ‘The Grand Bizarre.’
Halo Effect – A group of the world’s best kayakers take a two-month journey to the Scandinavian paddling meccas of Iceland and Norway. While they search inside the Arctic Circle for rapids and waterfalls that have never been run, they’re also searching for the elusive moments when the stars align and everything goes perfectly, but sometimes… in the blink of an eye… things go horribly wrong. The inevitable externalities of their main goal is what they call ‘the halo effect.’
Strength In Numbers ? –Shot over two years, and within some of mountain biking’s most iconic locales, bikers the world over unite in a true way of life, no matter whether the most novice or world-renowned professionals.
Mount St. Elias ?– An awe-inspiring film following three Alpinist skiers Axel Naglich, Peter Ressmann and Jon Johnston as each attempts to conquer one of the last, and most dangerous peaks in the natural world. ?
Soundwave ?– In a production first, surfers Ian Walsh, Carissa Moore, Carlos Burle and Maya Gabeira risk 50-foot waves at Jaws, while wired for sound and surrounded by seven cameras.
Meanwhile, “Pushing Boundaries” will boast another 30 unique half-hour episodes with programming highlights to include:

Red Bull Antarctica — With the first-ever jump from one of the most spectacular and difficult mountains in the whole Antarctic, Russian climber and BASE jumper Valery Rozov overcomes treacherous climbing conditions and temperatures of minus 30 degrees.
Glorious Days — Hang-glider pilot Jon Durand’s dreams to ‘surf’ the Morning Glory cloud above Australia’s far North Queensland that’s more than 1,000 kilometer long and 3,000 meters high.

X-Alps — A more than 500-mile continuous biennial adventure in which competitors alternate between paragliders and running with them strapped to their backs, traversing the entire length of the European Alps from Austria to Monaco.

Outside Television: Outside Television is America’s only network devoted to the active outside lifestyle, serving half the U.S. population (141 million) who consider themselves participants. Created with Outside Magazine, the network relies exclusively on high-definition programming captured from spectacular locations around the globe to immerse enthusiasts into the personalities, performances and one-of-a-kind thrills of sailing, surfing, kayaking, skiing, running, hiking, BMX, mountain biking, MotoCross and other adventures that pit men and women against wind, water, snow or terrain. Long a staple in America’s top ski and activity resorts, Outside Television is now expanding aggressively throughout the nation, thanks to relationships with Comcast Xfinity and other leading cable, satellite, Telco-TV and other distributors. For more information, go to www.outsidetelevision.com .

Red Bull Media House: Red Bull Media House is a global media company that creates compelling sports, culture and lifestyle programming and distributes it across multiple platforms. From film to television, print to digital and games, Red Bull Media House content is optimized for any device or platform. For more information, go to www.redbullmediahouse.com.

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