Unexpected turbulence has hit the outdoor industry media marketing landscape and the forecast calls for more bumps on the horizon. The recent—and sudden—collapse of the Men’s Outdoor Recreation (MOR) network has left media plans for dozens of outdoor manufacturers in shambles. The closure of MOR underscores the need for advertisers to understand key driving forces in the television business if they hope to avoid the loss of vital components of their media marketing plans in the future.

Chief among those forces is distribution. At a private breakfast two years ago with cable TV pioneer Ted Turner and a cable network executive, Turner lamented to us how much the television industry had changed since his creation of CNN.

“It used to be that all the distributors wanted your content,” he said, “but that’s not the way it is anymore.”

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