Many in the action sport media business have been asking what Wasserman Media Group was doing spending so much money on their Sportnet property. It appears someone inside the company asked the same question and answered by cutting 41 percent of the staff.
Twenty-eight of the group’s 68 employees were laid off late Friday, including Gabe Huerta, VP-product development, and a number of others from product development and support.
An email to Luke McDonough, the former president of Studio 411 was returned with the following message: As of November 21st 2008, Luke McDonough is no longer an employee at Wasserman Media Group/Sportnet.” And the recently launched Snowboarder.com has cut recently hired editor James Sullivan and is reportedly being run by a “project manager” at the company.
Joplin, Missouri based American Ramp Co., makers of mostly steel, wood, and composite skateboard ramps is busily consolidating the pre-fab skateboard park manufacturing business, according to a story in the Joplin Globe.
About four months ago, American Ramp acquired Solo Ramps, a Canadian company that specializes in prefabricated concrete ramps. . . ARC also recently acquired a competing business, Sk8parks International.
Apparently, there is a huge market out there for funky, pre-fab parks. “Last year, the company built about 130 parks and made almost $12 million. It employs about 80 people.”
Pharrell Williams is 35 years old and doesn’t have as much time to skate as he’d like, but Skateboard P. still sites skateboarding as his original influence, according to a story in the Guardian.
The first sport I got into – and the one that has had most impact on my life – is skateboarding. Most people think skateboarding is for some kid with blond hair from suburbia. But I remember when I was 12 or 13, growing up in Virginia Beach, everybody, black and white, was doing it. Skating taught me what it meant to be cool, to have credibility. I had it. I got so mad with it that I had a half-pipe put in my house. I had the look – the baggy jeans, the Vans. I still wear Vans shoes. I rap about skateboarding. My nickname is Skateboard P.
We’d still wear Vans too if our company sold shoes that looked like Ice Cream’s.
Question: why do the people who appear in electric skateboard videos always look like they’re stepping onto a skateboard for the first time? Answer: because they are.
We just added a new blog to the list. It’s called Boil The Ocean. We don’t know anything about it other than it features something we find rare in skateboard blogging: consistently intelligent opinion regarding skateboarding. We’re just embarrassed that we hadn’t read it until now. Check it, and let us know if you know who’s kicking down all this knowledge.
Australian customs officials arrested a 33-year-old Australian man on November 20, 2008, after they discovered that the two skateboard decks he was carrying from Auckland New Zealand contained a little more more than 8-plys of maple.
The decks were opened, allegedly revealing three packages containing 600 grams of white powder. . . .Preliminary tests indicated the presence of cocaine, Customs and AFP said.
If found guilty he could face 25 years in prison and or a $550,000 fine.
Is Quiksilver’s stock price really going to drop below the one buck line today? Because with twenty minutes to go it’s hovering at $1.25. But it got an immediate 18 cent bounce in after hours trading. . . wonder what’s up?
This is the kind of TF that makes us think taking all that money might be worth the grief Ryan Sheckler has survived all these years. This place is like a cathedral of skateboarding.
The December issue of Slap Magazine might just be a collector’s item. It’s the last print issue before High Speed Productions, Inc. takes tall that skateboarding, life, and art and progresses right into the digital world. Can’t say we’ll notice any difference. We never read the print version anyway.
That makes these four shows really old news to the people who care and completely untimely and irrelevant to those who happen to accidentally stumble on to the broadcasts while trying to find something to watch.
Turns out “another view” was right when they posted the following: “The bulk of the TV audience doesn’t care if the event is live or a year old.”
According to Alana Johnson at The Nielsen Company, the LG Action Sports: Cincinnati show which aired November 8, 2008 at 2 PM EST (and was really only one month old, mostly) averaged a .5 rating. That means it was on in 570,000 homes and was watched by 687,000 people over the age of two. For comparison recent summer X Games have been scoring in the 1.0 range (meaning about twice as many people watch them).
For action sports television a .5 is pretty solid. Not a Dancing with the Stars 12 rating solid, but not bad at all. The show’s placement couldn’t have been better for catching random jocks on the couch: it was sandwiched in between two football shows: Varsity Rivals and CBS’s College Football Today. And, if that’s who sponsors want to hit up (and we’re not saying they shouldn’t) then it looks like the LG Action Sports World Tour programming is delivering.
