Warren Miller gives Times Mirror new way to reach skiers

BOULDER – With the combined circulation of its six snow sport magazines totaling more than 1.425 million, it’s safe to say Times Mirror dominates the industry. But there are more skiers and snowboarders to reach and other forms of media that can get to them. And that’s the strategy behind the purchase of Warren Miller Entertainment for an undisclosed price last month by The Skiing Co., a Boulder-based division of Times Mirror Magazines.

“I’ve developed ways to reach skiers through print and want to develop a multimedia platform,´ said Andy Clurman, president of The Skiing Co., which publishes Skiing, Ski magazine and Freeze, and produces skinet.com and snowboardingonline.com. “Warren Miller (Entertainment) brings a film presence and complements what we do,” he said.

The Warren Miller Entertainment assets being sold include its well-known Warren Miller Ski and Snowboard Feature Film and Tour, the Warren Miller Ski and Snowboard library and Warren Miller Television and SnoWorld Magazine, a yearly publication with more than 760,000 readers. The Skiing Co. will design, publish and edit SnoWorld.

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Under terms of the agreement Kurt Miller, chairman of Warren Miller Films, and his partner, Peter Speek, will continue producing and managing the annual feature film and Warren Miller Television for a minimum of three years.

And while The Skiing Co. won’t be producing the annual film, which was started by Warren Miller in 1949, Clurman is excited about reaching an additional market. With the film, he said, the company gets to meet skiers and snowboarders in cities and suburbs across the United States.

According to Pryor, that’s a huge audience. “We were No.1 in the box office on a per-screen basis for at least a week in November,” he said. The film is viewed by more than 500,000 people in 500 cities.

Clurman also believes the Warren Miller Ski and Snowboard library will be a major asset to The Skiing Co. He said the library is the “richest library of skiing and snowboarding film” available and has “great potential for Internet deployment.”

But the sale isn’t just benefiting The Skiing Co. “The resources of Times Mirror Magazines combined with the reach and prestige of publications such as Ski Magazine, Skiing, Snowboard Life and Freeze are a powerful combination to our existing film tour and library of ski and snowboard films. The ability to leverage Times Mirror Magazine’s assets can only strengthen the Warren Miller brand,´ said Miller in a recent press release.

Warren Miller Films and Action Marketing Group, a national full-service integrated marketing agency, will use the capital from the sale to continue growing, according to Miller.

And plans to grow the two companies, which will fall under a new parent company, Action Partners, are big. According to Pryor, Warren Miller films will be expanding its efforts in development, co-productions and acquisitions.

Warren Miller Films, which now produces Warren Miller’s Global Adventure, Wild Survival and Warren Miller TV, along with feature and corporate films and TV commercials, will be developing 20 different con/cepts for documentary and drama television, according to Pryor.

Action Marketing Group, which provides promotions, presence marketing, media, advertising, event management and interactive services for clients such as AT&T Broadband, Dannon Natural Spring Water, Nike ACG, Red Envelope and Levi Strauss & Co., will be looking at potential strategic partnerships and acquisitions.

Warren Miller Films and Action Marketing Group will remain headquartered in Boulder with satellite offices in Vancouver, B.C., London and Melbourne.

As for the yearly film, which hundreds of thousands of skiers look forward to each year, Pryor said he’d “love to continue doing it” beyond the allotted three years. Although no one could give a definite answer as to the fate of the film, Clurman did say that it would be reviewed at the end of the three years, and the company will make decisions at that point. Fans will hope that’s just one thing never changes.