Bravo (British TV channel) (PatrZDZ's vision)

**Bravo** is a British and Irish television channel owned by Flextech, a subsidiary of Liberty Media. Its target audience is males in their 20s to early 40s. It broadcasts a variety of both archive programming (such as Knight Rider and MacGyver) and original productions.

## History

### Early history

Bravo was launched on 20 December 1985 as a cable only channel, created by United Artists Programming broadcasting black & white B-movies from the 1950s and 1960s and vintage TV series. Initially, the channel was a cassette-delivered service provided to cable headends for automatic play-out.

In 1991, United Artists merged with their largest shareholder TCI (now Liberty Media), to form the largest cable operator in the United States. TCI and US West announced a joint venture and, in 1992, the joint venture company became Telewest Communications. In 1993, talks were held with Tele-Communications Inc. which resulted in Flextech acquiring TCI's European programming business in exchange for shares. By January, the deal was complete with TCI, allowing it to acquire 60.4% of Flextech while Flextech acquired 100% of Bravo, 25% of UK Gold, 31% of UK Living, and 25% of the Children's Channel which increased its share in that channel.

On 22 July 1993, Bravo launched on the Astra 1C satellite in anticipation of the launch of Sky Multichannels in September 1993. With the launch on Astra, the channel started broadcasting between noon and midnight (as opposed to 3pm to 3am).

Its programming output was altered around the same time, when the channel obtained many of the ITC Entertainment productions and other cult TV series including The Avengers. In 1990, it upgraded its on-screen image with an elaborate station identifier of a modernist skyscraper under rolling thunderclouds and promoted itself as 'Timewarp Television'. It used both Roger Moore and Tony Curtis to feature in speciality shot trails. Armstrong and Miller made their first broadcast television appearance on Bravo in a series of presentation promotions during its Cult Weekend on 5 August 1995.

### Reinvention as young-adult channel (1996-2000's)

In 1996, a policy change to withdraw the black & white shows contributed to the channel moving on to specialise in science fiction and horror with movies from the Troma Entertainment catalogue. It then became known for showing crime documentaries by day and adult programming at night.

On February 3, 1997, Flextech launched Trouble, which took over the channel's afternoon and early evening broadcast hours, meaning Bravo would broadcast between 8pm to 6am. During mornings, European Business News time shared with the channel on weekdays and Living on weekends until 2001. With the change in hours, Bravo was given a refreshed look, being branded as "an altered species of television", applying to the increased amount of adult-focused programs. The channel began to air Extreme Championship Wrestling's show ECW Hardcore TV around this time; as well as ECW's biggest events, including what were pay-per-views in the USA, up to January 2001.

### Addition of sports and acquired programming

Over the later years, Bravo decreased the adult content shown and increased sports and imported shows such as Alias. Bravo aired World Championship Wrestling's flagship show Nitro during WCW's final year in business (2000–2001).

The channel's other highest-profile sports coverage is Ultimate Fighting Championship archives, for which it holds exclusive UK rights, as well as recent events

From January 2007, Bravo holds the exclusive UK rights to broadcast Total Nonstop Action Wrestling programming, a two-day delay from the American broadcast of TNA's weekly show TNA iMPACT! and a three-day delay for TNA's monthly Pay Per Views.

From 3 June 2008 onward, Bravo, along with the other Flextech owned channels began broadcasting in widescreen (16:9).