Background
Bravo launched as a commercial-free premium channel on December 1, 1980 owned by Cablevision's Rainbow Media; the channel claims to be "the first television service dedicated to film and the performing arts". Cablevision launched Bravo as a premium channel available two days a week and sharing channel space with the softcore porn channel Escapade. In 1981, Bravo had 48,000 subscribers in the U.S.; four years later there were around 350,000. A 1985 profile of Bravo in The New York Times observed that most programming consisted of international, classic, and independent film. On Bravo, celebrities such as E. G. Marshall and Roberta Peters provided opening and closing commentary to the films. Performing arts on Bravo included the show Jazz Counterpoint. During the mid-1980s, Bravo converted from a premium channel to a basic cable channel. By the mid-1990s, Bravo began adding sponsorships as PBS did and included commercial breaks by 1998. Bravo signed an underwriting deal with Texaco in 1992 and within a month broadcast the first Texaco Showcase production, a stage adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.
In the Encyclopedia of Television, Megan Mullen perceived certain Bravo programs as "considered too risky or eclectic for mainstream channels". Those programs were Karaoke and Cold Lazarus, the final serials by British playwright Dennis Potter shown by Bravo in June 1997, and Michael Moore's documentary series The Awful Truth from 1999.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer owned a 20% stake in the channel from 1999 to 2001. NBC bought the network in 2002 for $1.25B; it had owned a stake in it and its siblings for several years up to that point. Parent company General Electric merged NBC with Vivendi Universal Entertainment in May 2004 to form NBC Universal.
Bravo's "makeover" came in 2003 with reality series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which hit 3.5 million viewers. Entertainment Weekly put "Bravo reality shows" on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "From Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Fab Five to Project Runway's fierce fashionistas to the kvetching, perma-tanned Real Housewives, Bravo's quirky reality programming mixes high culture and low scruples to create deliciously addictive television."
A study released in May 2008 ranked Bravo as the most recognizable brand among gay consumers. Bravo's age demographic is people 18-54, according to the Cable Television Advertising Bureau's cable television profiles.
Read more about this topic: Bravo (U.S. TV Channel)
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