Buzz by Bravo: a trendsetting niche network’s place within contemporary television

This dissertation examines Bravo as a niche cable channel whose strategies, audience, and programming contribute to its success in a competitive, changing landscape. As such my study of Bravo significantly contributes to the understanding of what television—as both a concept and an industry—represents in the twenty-first century. This project unpacks Bravo’s network strategies and explores how postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies are presented through the channel’s most successful franchise, The Real Housewives. I focus on the cable network Bravo as an exemplar in the ‘digital era’ of contemporary television, reflective of both trends in popular reality programming as well as the increasingly inevitable integration between television and technology. The project illuminates the trends indicative of the current state of the television industry. In a moment where streaming, on-demand services are taking viewers’ attention away from their traditional cable subscriptions and fictional original programming is at an all-time competitive high, Bravo’s success is notable. Almost fully reliant upon unscripted, reality fare, the channel continues to find success when many critics predict the end of reality programming and traditional cable. From an academic perspective, this dissertation is unique in that it combines television, industry, network, and audience studies with thematic analyses to reinforce the impossibility of studying television in our contemporary moment without each of these components. This project straddles the boundaries of several paradigms. Informed by critical branding and television studies, it also owes a significant debt to critical cultural studies and its interventions into the understanding of popular culture, power, and media.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communications and Media Studies

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2017

Author dc:creator

• Baldwin, Martina S

Contributors dc:contributor

• Molina-Guzmán, Isabel
• Hay, James
• Dubrofsky, Rachel
• Valdivia, Angharad

• Television studies
• Network studies
• Postfeminism
• Cable television
• Neoliberalism
• Industry studies
• Digital era
• Critical branding studies

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Martina Baldwin

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97754

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/97754