Bravo to Bravo!

I don't watch the Bravo Channel often, or not intentionally. I know that many people like being distracted from the reality of the world by watching Reality TV, but that doesn't make much sense to me. To me, "Real Housewives" is scary, and shows like that one probably illustrate why the divorce rate keeps climbing. Me? If I want to be distracted from reality, I'll tune in to TMC Classics.

But, as profiled in today's NYT, the reality is that Bravo has their finger on the pulse on what sells, when most entertainment content companies are still guessing and hoping that whatever latest idea the "head of creative content" buys into, will actually take home a trophy at the Up Fronts.

And, Bravo to Bravo for proving that entertainment companies that use risk analysis tools, actually research what their consumers want before manufacturing it, and remaining flexible enough to make changes to their product as their audience taste changes is a recipe that every media company should emulate.

Here are the take-away's from today's article..click on the title link for the full article.

The network, which finds and tests stars in much the same way that consumer products companies develop and market shampoos and mascaras, 

Viewers’ opinions, carefully observed and culled on the Web and pinpointed through more traditional market research, tend to dictate which Bravo stars graduate from ensemble reality shows to their own programs. The thinking is that they’ve already been vetted by the Bravo audience and the research team, and that they’ve already built brand awareness — so Bravo is, in marketing terms, just extending its product line.

But Bravo, aiming to minimize creative risks and maximize profits, is now taking these business practices to their logical extremes. Shows on the network aren’t introduced on a hunch about a strong creative concept. Instead, Bravo begins by studying its audience’s lifestyle and preferences — what is the market need? — and then creates shows and stars that reflect them.

Over the last year, Bravo has also begun relying heavily on social media to fine-tune story lines in its programs, so that each episode is even more efficiently tailored to its audience’s taste. The network asks its stars to blog, encourages viewers to comment on its Web site and post to Twitter during episodes, deploys text-message campaigns and Facebook pages for shows, and even studies search terms that viewers use, collected by research firms like Hitwise, to parse what viewers are most interested in.

Bravo just made consumer preferences the entire centerpiece of its programming mojo as it traded art for commerce.

“Bravo targets a niche audience rather than the mass audience of the old broadcast days,” notes Lynn Spigel, a professor at the School of Communication at Northwestern University. “Bravo is an example of the high degrees of standardization and consolidation cable networks need in order to compete.”