Outdoor Sportsman Group will go hunting for subscribers next month when it launches its new fee-based digital app.

The “Outdoor Sportsman Group’s My Outdoor TV” app will offer hundreds of hours of library programming from the company’s three cable networks, Outdoor Channel, Sportsman Channel and World Fishing Network, Outdoor Sportsman Group president and CEO Jim Liberatore said. The service will be available on Android and Apple iOS devices for $9.99 a month.

NOT AN OTT SERVICE

While the app is not an over-the-top service — it will not offer live feeds of the three services — Liberatore said it was created to reach hardcore outdoor purists who do not have access to the channels and to appeal to existing fans who want an expanded experience with the networks.

Distribution remains a challenge for the Kroenke Sports & Entertainment-owned networks. The group said Outdoor Channel has 40 million subscribers, Sportsman Channel 32 million and WFN 5 million. But Liberatore said offering a true OTT service isn’t the answer to that dilemma.

“That is something that we would only do in cooperation with the cable operators and satellite providers,” he said. “We aren’t in a position to be tweaking anybody, and this property that we’re developing actually does help them sell their product.

“We want to create this wonderland for people who are avid in the space,” he added. “What drives this is our hope to increase exposure to our linear network. What we would love people to do is take some of this library programming and then go back and watch the shows.”

Among the app’s highlights is a feature that allows users to search by any hunting activity and find all the shows about that activity across all three networks. The app also will feature wild game and fish recipes from such shows as Sportsman Channel’s The Sporting Chef With Scott Leysath.

“You can type in ‘Oklahoma whitetail,’ and every show that we have in our library that features Oklahoma whitetail hunting will pop up,” Liberatore said. “The hope is that those interested in the topic will say, ‘I never knew about this guy or this show’ and will watch more of the linear feed to see the shows that they weren’t aware of.”

Liberatore would not project how many subscribers the app will draw. “We realize, at $10, we will not have millions of people buying this,” he said. “We’re hoping that, working with our partners, we will be able to create something for them that will make both of us more valuable.”

REVENUE FOR MORE ORIGINALS

Revenue generated from the subscription app will be used to help develop more original programming. He added that the app will serve as a marketing tool for both Outdoor Sportsman Group and its distributors to showcase the services.

“You almost look at this as a huge marketing play for the linear network,” he said. “Our linear business is our backbone, heart and soul, and we aren’t trying to build a separate business to deviate from that. We’re trying to build a business that grows that, and what we’re putting together could be a great model that consumers like and [that] introduces [them] to our network that will have a lot of benefits for our distributors.”

KSE Media Ventures said Tuesday that it has acquired the remaining interest it didn’t already own in World Fishing Network, the cable channel devoted to all things fishing.

World Fishing Network will become part of KSE’s Outdoor Sportsman Group – Networks, which was created after it acquired the Outdoor Channel and Sportsman Channel. World Fishing Network had been jointly owned by KSE Media Ventures and Insight Sports, a Toronto, Canada sports group, since January 2011. KSE’s partnership in the Canadian World Fishing Network remains unchanged.

“The integration of World Fishing Network’s U.S. operations into Outdoor Sportsman Group – Networks is a natural fit that adds to our unrivaled roster of offerings in the outdoor lifestyle space,” said KSE Media Ventures CEO Matt Hutchings in a statement. “We’re committed to growing the network in the U.S. and continuing to work with our partners to maximize the network’s positon in the Canadian marketplace.”

Inclusive of Outdoor Sportsman Group – Integrated Media, comprised of 15 market-leading outdoor magazines and 17 top websites, Outdoor Sportsman Group’s television, digital and publication properties represent the largest multimedia portfolio focused on the outdoor lifestyle, reaching about 130 million outdoor enthusiasts across the country.

 “World Fishing Network has made great strides over the past 18 months to establish the brand as an industry leader, from programming to its digital presence,” said Outdoor Sportsman Group – Networks CEO Jim Liberatore said in a statement. “The network serves a passionate audience of millions of anglers and outdoor enthusiasts throughout North America. The diversity of Outdoor Sportsman Group’s content and delivery platforms will better position us to service our audience moving forward.”

World Fishing Network's four-hour ice fishing marathon will air Nov. 21 at 8 p.m., the network announced today. 

Professionals will start off the event to educate the audience about the sport with back-to-back episodes of Ice Team.

Bernie Keefe and Nate Zelinsky pair as the Ice Team in Colorado's mountain lakes, and Keith Kavajecz, Pete Maina, Jeff Andersen and Jason Mitchell join in the action later on.

The marathon schedule is as follows:

8 p.m.           Ice Team, Episode 1 
8:30 p.m.      Ice Team, Episode 2
9 p.m.           South Bend's Lunkerville
9:30 p.m.      Outdoor Passion
10 p.m.         Lindner's Angling Edge
10:30 p.m.    The Next Bite
11 p.m.         South Bend's Lunkerville
11:30 p.m.    Canadian Sportfishing

The Wire spotted a photo on Twitter and because it combines several great interests — fly-fishing, flying cameras and shows about fly-fishing — checked in with the subject, British Columbia-based angler and guide April Vokey (@ApriVokey on Twitter).

The fancy camerawork is for an upcoming show on World Fishing Network called Shorelines With April Vokey, scheduled to premiere in January.

The concept: Follow “Fly Gal” Vokey (whom you might remember from her 60 Minutes Sports profile or her presence in Tom Brokaw’s Buccaneers and Bones bonefishing series) as she, travels from the highland streams of Scotland to the rivers of North America’s West Coast, writing a book about fly-fishing’s evolution. She's already started blogging about it, and posting photos like the one here, from Ontario.

“It’s never been my dream to be a television host, it’s been my dream to be an author,” Vokey told The Wire from a lodge on the Dean River in British Columbia. That’s why this book concept, pitched to WFN by executive producer Nick Pujic, worked to help make her both an author and a television host simultaneously.

“This is my life-long dream,” she said, adding that she has enjoyed meeting and interviewing experts along the way, chronicling the history of the sport and pointing out that modern methods might not always be best to preserve steelhead and Atlantic salmon fishing in the future.

The sport is diminishing, she said: “People my age aren’t reading anymore. Stories of yesterday are starting to disappear. It’s time to embrace our past and remember it again.”

As for the flying cameras, Pujic, producing the series at Vantage Point Media House, said that’s part of the plan to make Shorelines look different from other fishing shows.

“We’re bringing the highest level of production quality that the fishing-show industry has seen,” Pujic said. The series is being shot on RED Epic cameras, which capture five times the detail of high-definition cameras and enable cool post-production enhancements. “For example, if you’re shooting wide, and the fish jumps, you can punch in and get a tight of that fish jumping all in one shot, and you don’t lose any quality.”

Helicopters are used along with four remote-control drones, capable of carrying cameras ranging in size from a GoPro to a RED Epic. “On our first shoot April hooked the first fish of the entire series, and we had the drone up in the air, 10 feet away from her. So it captured the whole thing, and it’s mesmerizing,” Pujic said.

Pujic also told The Wire: “I’ve been producing fishing shows for eight years and almost every single one is focused around the fish. This one is focused around an individual on a mission."

He said he had no doubts about viewers wanting to follow that mission. "April Vokey is the Tiger Woods of flyfishing," he said. "Not my opinion, that’s the fact. So people are generally interested in what April's up to.” Shorelines, he said, "gives people a glimpse into April’s character that they’ve not had in any articles previously, in any show that she’s been in previously. And at the same time it actually raises awareness about a lot of different issues and concerns that face anglers as a whole that she’s bringing to light. There are things that aren’t often discussed like they should be. So it’s thought provoking. Because of that I think it’s going to engage viewers much more so than watching people in a boat cast line.”

Thus far, the production has been to Eastern Canada and it will visit British Columbia and the United Kingdom this fall. Joining Vokey in her travels are her dog, Colby, and a professional photographer. The photos here are by Alyssa Lloyd (on Facebook). The drone pilot was Brock Tompkins of Scene Ace Aerial Photography and Videography.

‘Daily Show’ Fans Crowdsource a New CNN Schedule

Ouch! The Daily Show With Jon Stewart’s “Let’s Buy CNN” tongue-incheek Kickstarter campaign has raised $4.3 trillion to buy the news channel, according to the Daily Show sub-website devoted to the purchase — made possible because CNN would be spun off if Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox prevails in its pursuit of Time Warner Inc.

The crowdsource funding may be faux, but the mock effort has drawn a social media crowd.

The Daily Show created various hashtags and solicited Twitter posts on which new shows its viewers would like to see on the cable news channel once Jon Stewart and company have ponied up the big bucks, what amazing “gratuitous” technology the network should employ next and suggestions for catchy new slogans.

Here are some of The Wire’s printable favorites:

New shows:Outrage Nation, hosted by Marc Summers, where social-media activists out-complain rivals and the winner gets hosed down in CNN’s parking lot; CNN Sunday Sermons; 23 Hours of Apologies and Corrections For the Stuff We Said In Our 1 Hour of Daily ‘News.’

New technology: “Voting Booth Time Machine With 2016 Poll Results”; “Cloned Dinosaur Anchors”; “Fact- Checking.”

New slogans: “CNN: Move Along. Nothing to See Here”; “CNN: Where news isWAIT IS THAT THE MALAYSIAN AIRPLANE? No, just a whale? OK … back to news and courtrooms and laws and stuff ”; “CNN: The Near Beer of News.”

Then there is the Instagram submission showing an airport monitor and the slogan: “CNN: If you’re watching this, your flight’s been cancelled.”

— John Eggerton