Skyline Sports - spring football and beyond

Greetings Griz friends and readers,

We are entering a pivotal time at Skyline Sports. We launched our website in August of 2015. We have now recently completed our second sports year with the wrap of basketball season. In certain avenues, we have made a great deal of progress. We are recognized across the state as a viable news source on par with our competition, evidence in the analyst spots we have on radio stations around the state and the sourcing we have received in several different newspapers for a few of our "scoops".

With spring football beginning at Montana, we need your help! We have added a few different revenue streams to our business model but the lifeblood of Skyline Sports is premium subscriptions and the bulk of our subscribers come from within the borders of Montana. We added Kyle Sample to our team to be a full-time beat writer covering UM athletics. We have received good feedback from those who have subscribed but the subscriptions have fallen well short of the number who subscribe to read our Montana State coverage.

For Skyline Sports to continue as a viable venture providing the best coverage of Griz athletics, we desperately need a bump in subscription revenue. If you are a subscriber and you enjoy the content, tell a friend or two. If you know someone who may enjoy the in-depth content we provide, pass along a good word or even buy them a subscription as a gift. If you are not a subscriber, give it a try. The plain and simple truth is if we want to keep Kyle on board, we need more subscribers from Griz Nation!

We charge $8 a month or $90 a year. With that subscription, you will receive prevalent coverage of Griz athletics, particularly what will prove to be a pivotal year for Montana athletics, what with the pressure Bob Stitt and company are under heat entering Year 3, Travis DeCuire's name being floated in Pac 12 circles and Shannon Schweyen potentially rebounding from a trying season. We will also provide up to date recruiting information and any news that comes out of the inner workings of the UM athletic department.

During the summer, we will have pieces analyzing Griz athletic teams as a whole, breaking down what’s next for a university with some striking question marks going forward. We will also have reporting on the contracts of all three revenue sport head coaches’ contracts . We will have a “Where are they now” series with stories on former Grizzlies and their accomplishments after leaving UM and much, much more.

When fall rolls around, you can expect peerless coverage of fall camp as well as comprehensive coverage of a crucial third season under Stitt. We can give you more content than any other outlet and we can give it to you every single day. We will feature podcasts, video and of course, old-school newspaper style journalism presented through a 21st century lens.

So if you have been a subscriber in the past, we hope you come back and subscribe again. If you are a current subscriber, we hope you spread the word and help us continue making Skyline Sports a viable option for folks who follow Griz athletics. And if you are not a subscriber, give us a try. We promise we won’t disappoint you.

To subscribe, click here: http://skylinesportsmt.com/account/

Cheers,

Colter Nuanez

Thanks for the great coverage. Subscribed.

I tried to join last fall and had a hard time getting hooked up. I left a message to get help and never had a reply. I would like to sign up!

I am a subscriber and enjoy the coverage. Kyle does a great job with the UM coverage. You do a good job with the Cats but I don't read that shit.

Perhaps find ways to get Kyle more exposed in the community? For instance, more ESPN Radio listeners might subscribe if the Griz beat writer was on their show regularly, not the Cat guy. Or both of you perhaps?

Folks I will give these guys a resounding pledge of support. I am a subscriber and the content is fantastic. Best eight bucks per month I spend.

Signed up. Love the coverage Kyle provides.

Don't have time today, but when I do have time in the week or so, I will sign up.

I think Colter, a UM alum, and Kyle and crew do a pretty outstanding job !!!

Keep up the great Montana and Big Sky sports' journalism, guys !!!

i also had trouble subscribing when i tried. it seems like they have way more MSU content which if you want Griz fans to subscribe it needs to balanced out.

Hey Colter - I tried the link you have but failed, it said Http 500 internal server error, any suggestions?

Error establishing a database connection

Not a great sign to potential subscribers guys.

bgbigdog said:

Error establishing a database connection

Not a great sign to potential subscribers guys.

Click to expand...

They may be working on their subscription servers, there seems to be a big problem with current subscribers not being able to renew, but still getting all the content.

grizfan406 said:

i also had trouble subscribing when i tried. it seems like they have way more MSU content which if you want Griz fans to subscribe it needs to balanced out.

Click to expand...

Colter did start out as a Bobcat beat writer, but believe me, there's a ton of Griz content and its only grown more so since the addition of Kyle.

I am a subscriber and will continue to do so. An idea I would like to propose...work with Chris Lynn and establish a Skyline Sports Forum on eGriz.

It would be available to Skyline subscribers only and would allow for a feedback loop among the reporters and subscribers. Respectful, adult discussion only, strictly enforced by the Skyline editors. Like newspapers do with Letters to the Editor, inappropriate posts can be refused.

Similar to the eGriz Club forum but content edited/moderated by the Skyline folks.

mtgriz said:

I am a subscriber and will continue to do so. An idea I would like to propose...work with Chris Lynn and establish a Skyline Sports Forum on eGriz.

It would be available to Skyline subscribers only and would allow for a feedback loop among the reporters and subscribers. Respectful, adult discussion only, strictly enforced by the Skyline editors. Like newspapers do with Letters to the Editor, inappropriate posts can be refused.

Similar to the eGriz Club forum but content edited/moderated by the Skyline folks.

Click to expand...

I second this motion...

I thought Kyle was planning on leaving? Said he was looking for jobs outside of MT

RayWill said:

I thought Kyle was planning on leaving? Said he was looking for jobs outside of MT

Click to expand...

No reason not to build up your resume in the meantime...

If you are experiencing problems renewing, please send me an email at [email protected] or a personal message on this forum and I will renew you on our back end and take payment in a different form. We are working to fix our back end problems and improve our subscription/renewal experience. But for now, the most efficient way to grant you access to Skyline is for me to navigate the back end. Thanks for the feedback!

The reality of the situation is Kyle Sample is a talented journalist who is coming from a job at the Missoulian with a full-time salary. For us to pay him what he's worth, he needs subscribers who want to read the very best Griz football and men's basketball content available. If we can't find at least 300 people who want to pay to read his content, he will move one to bigger and better outlets than our humble start up. We need your help getting him exposure. I have to believe there are 300 people in an 80,000-person town and around a Griz crazed state that could benefit and would enjoy Sample's writing and reporting.

As we start out in this effort to do something new built on the values of something old, we have a limited budget. Subscriptions are our lifeblood. We have had as many as 700 subscribers from the Montana State side of things but have peaked at 75 on the Griz side of things (at least as best we can tell judging by user names, emails, customer research etc.) It's understandably a slow time of year in terms of coverage. But think of a year-long subscription like a paying if forward way of ensuring Sample can stay on board for the fall and winter.

If you enjoy Sample's work and want him to continue reporting about Montana and the Big Sky Conference, send me an email at [email protected] and we can set you up with a subscription. We appreciate all the feedback, kind words, support and criticisms.

And fear not: if and when Sample moves on, we have a plan in place to continue covering the Griz on the ground in Missoula. So if you have subscribed or plan on subscribing, you will get your money's worth in Griz content throughout the weeks, months and calendar year no matter what.

Sample and I have known each other since we were 15 years old and we have talked about this dream for most of this decade. I want to keep him on board because I know his skill, his potential and his passion for what he does well.

Thank you very much!

Am I missing something but the last article I see that was actually written about the Griz football program was back at the beginning of February? And that had to do with signing day. I see about 10 articles dealing with cats football but nothing with Griz. Or are my eyes deceiving me?

BDizzle said:

Am I missing something but the last article I see that was actually written about the Griz football program was back at the beginning of February? And that had to do with signing day. I see about 10 articles dealing with cats football but nothing with Griz. Or are my eyes deceiving me?

Click to expand...

It's a pretty simple explanation: you don't have a reporter getting paid enough to take time out of his life to cover both. If there were more subscribers, there would be more money to pay a reporter to work those beats full time. So if you want more content in your areas of interest, subscribe so we can afford to make that happen.
We've already shown we can provide more and better content than the competition. Skyline doesn't wait for Montana press releases to confirm information. We have a deep pool of sources we utilize every day to get out ahead of what's happening within the programs we cover. We want to bring you accurate news first. We want to bring you the best enterprising stories, the best profiles, the best day-to-day coverage of Montana football and men's basketball.
But none of that is possible with our current level of funding. I can't take 60 hours out of my week to work the beats if I'm not getting paid enough for it to financially make sense. We've tried to find alternative funding, i.e. partnerships and advertisements, but that's not enough. We're a subscriber based website and we want to bring the best content to those who sign up. But we need more.

I just want to quickly dispel of one concern some people have raised: The money you are paying to Skyline does not go to Montana or Montana State. All of it is used within Skyline to either better our tools, or to pay our reporters, photographers and technicians. So if you bear that concern, you can rest assured your money isn't going to something you don't personally support.