September 11/07 6:12 am - Calgary's Ride Guide TV Inks U.S. Licensing Deal

Posted by Editor on 09/11/07
 

Calgary's Ride Guide TV Inks U.S. Licensing Deal

Steve Bellamy, Chairman and CEO of The Ski Channel announced a multi-faceted partnership with Calgary based, Ride Guide TV. The deal includes premiere windows for the Ride Guide's entire library of Mountain Bike, Ski and Snowboard shows, use of the Ride Guide's extensive clip library that has tens of thousands of hours of the most extreme and interesting footage from all over the world, and joint production efforts on new programming. Ride Guide has produced over 300 episodes over 11 seasons, and is seen in 60 countries worldwide in over 60 million households. As part of the deal, the Ride Guide will produce 26 fresh episodes per year for The Ski Channel and will make available all past episodes. Ride Guide is produced in cooperation with Canwest Media Works, Inc.

"The Ride Guide is the premiere Mountain Biking episodic television series in the world," said Steve Bellamy. "With this deal we intend to become the television destination for the sport and we now have an amazing tent pole for which to build out the category. We will be loading the season with fresh episodes and will be picking through their extensive library of classics to run as well. This is the first Mountain Bike deal in a series to be announced closer to our launch next year."

"The Ski Channel is the biggest media platform in the mountain sports genre and we are honored to be their first large episodic television programming deal," said Ride Guide founder Kevin Pennock. "We appreciated our run on Havoc TV in the US, but The Ski Channel is more in tune with what we are doing. We spend our lives producing cool shows and now those Mountain Bike shows have a home on the world's biggest mountain television destination. They are an especially perfect fit for Ride Guide because of their commitment to both skiing and snowboarding during the winter and mountain biking in the summer."