16 February 2007

Weather Channel Launches Extreme Sports Channel

The Weather Channel just launched a new broadband channel called Epic. Epic is dedicated to showing how weather conditions impact adventure/extreme sports such as whitewater rafting, surfing, skiing, mountain biking, etc. Epic is a video-centric website with clips and media, many of which provided by the famous Warren Miller Productions.

One of the good whitewater rafting clips is from Rafting America's member Peter Grubb at ROW Adventures on the Lochsa River in Idaho. It's a great video with some cool rafting flips and falls, and the Lochsa isn't exactly the best place to have that happen.

The idea behind Epic is to get people to participate by adding their own videos and experiences. I think it will be moderately successful from that angle. However, depending on how they market and present weather conditions and sports, I think it has great potential. In my opinion, you have two types of people who watch weather forecasts and conditions regularly.

One is business-related, for those professionals who travel regularly and are mainly concerned about flights and destination conditions. The other is the sports enthusiast- the skiers, hikers, rafters, climbers and outdoor junkies that keep and eye on mother nature.

This new Epic addition will be a great addition for the latter of the two target markets. Certainly they will tune into Epic over the normal Weather Channel is one highlights outdoor adventure related weather rather than general conditions.

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