What a Catch!
By Unmesh Kher
If puttering about the garden is your thing, you've got HGTV. If you're a weekend chef, there's the Food Network. And today more and more stalkers of deer and bass have the Outdoor Channel, which has fashioned itself as the nation's only cable and satellite channel dedicated primarily to hunting and fishing. Though a tiny player among the TV giants, the channel saw its revenue climb 30% last year, to more than $12 million, and it turned a $1.1 million profit. It's expecting a big boost in viewership next month, when satellite programmer DirecTV will begin including the Outdoor Channel--TOC to its fans--in a sports-programming package it offers to its 10 million subscribers.
While many large networks like ESPN and TNN show a little fishing and hunting, those pursuits account for 70% of the programming on TOC. Viewers can pick up tips about the liveliest trout streams and pheasant ranges in North America, along with pointers on how to bag the game. The closest thing the channel has to a rival, Comcast's Outdoor Life Network (which has a licensing agreement with a unit of AOL Time Warner, TIME magazine's parent company), reaches three times as many viewers but focuses much more on sports like cycling and kayaking. Another difference: TOC runs regular shows on country music and gold prospecting. Its eclectic mix is carried on cable systems from San Diego to Miami, plus the satellite Dish Network.
Like so many other entrepreneurial tales, the story of the Outdoor Channel starts in a garage--this one at the Post Falls, Idaho, home of George and Wilma Massie. Avid weekend gold panners, the Massies launched a for-profit gold-prospecting club in 1968. They moved their business in 1976 to California, where George won a little fame four years later when he found a million-dollar pocket of nuggets in the Mother Lode area. In the late 1980s their son Tom, now 37, began filming George's gold-hunting expeditions and lectures--footage that the Massies turned into an infomercial called The Gold Prospecting Show. "It kinda just evolved into a program," recalls son Perry, who today is 40 and CEO of Global Outdoors, the publicly traded firm in Temecula, Calif., that owns 84% of the channel.
George died in 1993, the year his gold-prospecting club spawned the Outdoor Channel. Within two years, the channel was dominated by hunting and fishing shows and was being distributed by a few carriers in the Southeast. By the end of 1998 it had 5 million subscribers; last year it reached 15 million. Despite the industry's advertising slump, ad revenue grew 18% last year, to $8.6 million. Says Daryl Daigre, vice president of marketing for Mossy Oak, a camouflage-and-hunting-accessories chain: "They deliver our ultimate consumer to us." While larger networks are queasy about showing the actual felling of animals, the Outdoor Channel shows the "kill shot"--but tastefully. It avoids blood and guts unless skinning and butchering are the topics, as they were in a recent episode of Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild, a popular show whose host is the rock star and hunter.
Much of the channel's programming is hard to distinguish from advertising. Companies like Mossy Oak and Primos, a maker of devices that mimic the calls of game birds and animals, produce popular programs that showcase their wares. It probably doesn't bother the channel's fans, many of whom are eager for news of the latest gear, like high-tech crossbows and electronic fish finders. The 38 million Americans who fished and hunted last year spent $41 billion on equipment alone--a number that doubtless keeps the Outdoor Channel's executives smiling.