NBC purchased Bravo in 2002, making the small, arts-focused community its first leisure cable community. Quick ahead to 2025, and Bravo — a really totally different sort of channel than it was 20 years in the past — will quickly be the corporate’s solely cable outfit.
As Comcast spins off a lot of the NBCUniversal cable networks — USA, MSNBC, CNBC, E!, Oxygen, Syfy and Golf Channel — right into a separate group, it strikingly has determined to maintain Bravo within the authentic firm alongside NBC, Peacock and Telemundo.
Bravo isn’t NBCUniversal’s most-watched cabler — that will be MSNBC, whose shift to SpinCo raises a bunch of thorny points, together with probably having to think about altering its identify. It isn’t even NBCU’s top-rated leisure cable channel, which is USA Community: Per Selection’s 2023 networks ranker, MSNBC averaged 1.22 million viewers final yr, with USA at 688,000 and Bravo at 571,000.
So why Bravo? Fairly merely, in a world of zombie cable networks, Bravo is among the few channels nonetheless pulling its weight with authentic fare. Bravo’s lineup has helped gasoline Peacock with megahits like “Vanderpump Guidelines,” which gave the community its most-watched episode of all time final yr with half 1 of its Season 10 reunion.
This yr, “The Valley” gave Bravo a few of its greatest premiere numbers in not less than 10 years. Then, after all, there’s the endless “Actual Housewives” franchise, “Beneath Deck” and its spinoffs, and every part that Andy Cohen does.
In response to NBCU insiders, it’s clear that next-day content material from NBC and Bravo assist drive an enormous a part of viewership on the Peacock streamer, and that’s simply not true with the opposite cable networks.
The concept NBCU would preserve Bravo and jettison every part else was gazing us all alongside: Peacock boasts hubs for its personal originals, in addition to for NBC, Telemundo and Bravo. (Nicely, and likewise MSNBC — once more, nonetheless a thriller to how that can play out.) Nevertheless it doesn’t harbor hubs for USA, E! and even Syfy.
USA Community, which grew to become a normal leisure powerhouse within the 2000s with hit authentic collection like “Monk,” “Fits,” “White Collar” and “Mr. Robotic,” is now principally dwelling to off-network syndicated fare, film libraries and NBC Sports activities programming. Networks like Syfy and E! have additionally pulled means again on originals.
Already, the programming group at NBCUniversal tends to spend most of their time specializing in NBC, Peacock and Bravo. The bio for unscripted content material, competitors and gameshows exec VP Corie Henson, for instance, lists her purview with NBC (“The Voice”), Peacock (“Baking It”) and Bravo (“Prime Chef”). Ditto her counterpart on the approach to life and documentaries facet, Rachel Smith, whose oversight contains “Actual Housewives,” “Beneath Deck” and extra for Bravo, and massive docs for Peacock like “Casey Anthony: The place the Fact Lies.”
After which there’s NBCUniversal Leisure chairman Frances Berwick, who oversees content material, program technique and enterprise operations for NBC and its cable leisure networks (and now stories simply to NBCUniversal Leisure & Studios chairman Donna Langley, as of now). Berwick has been instrumental within the evolution of Bravo, having first joined the community in 1996. Underneath her watch, the channel developed — first with “Contained in the Actors Studio,” after which “Queer Eye,” “Challenge Runway” and “Prime Chef,” after which ultimately with its Bravolebrity codecs. Bravo is among the many handful of cable networks that draws a rabid, loyal fandom: There’s no USACon. However there’s actually a BravoCon.
20 years in the past, the concept little Bravo would finally one of many Final Cable Manufacturers Standing would in all probability shock most business execs. It was seen as virtually a novelty acquisition when NBC purchased it from Cablevision for $1.25 billion in late 2002.
NBC (again when it was nonetheless owned by Common Electrical) had solely dabbled in cable by means of the flip of the century, with networks like MSNBC (previously referred to as America’s Speaking) and CNBC, in addition to investments in A&E and Historical past Channel. The concept of NBC shopping for Bravo was seen as principally a repurposing play, a means for the community to air second home windows of its collection on a tiny channel that, positive, had “Contained in the Actors Studio” and simply acquired repeats of “The West Wing,” however principally nonetheless ran art-centric fare.
On the time, Selection reported that “NBC chairman and CEO Bob Wright intends to stay with Bravo’s upmarket artsy schedule and even improve it with extra commissioned documentaries and entertainment-related fare from NBC’s in-house manufacturing operation and from different suppliers.”
Little did they know the mega-brand that Bravo would ultimately flip into. However this was the daybreak of the following chapter of cable programming dominance, and a yr later, Vivendi Common offered its movie and TV properties to GE — forming NBCUniversal. All of the sudden, it had USA Community and Syfy in its arsenal. In 2009, Comcast took a majority stake in NBCU, bringing its networks like E! into the fold. What adopted was greater than a decade of a giant NBCUniversal cable portfolio doing its factor, earlier than the streaming revolution upended the enterprise and killed the cable golden goose.
And that brings us to now: Bravo ushered in NBC’s cable period… and now it turns into the final vestiges of it on this new world order.
(Pictured above: Bravo’s “The Actual Housewives of Orange County”)
