Bravo is a British television channel, owned by Virgin Media Television. Its target audience is currently men in their late twenties to early forties and shows a variety of both archive programming (such as Knight Rider & MacGyver) and original productions.
It has undergone many transformations since it began broadcasting as a channel for mainly black & white programmes from the 1950s and 1960s such as The Avengers and many ITC Entertainment productions. A policy change to withdraw all of their black & white shows soon saw them move on to specialise in science fiction and horror before becoming known for showing crime documentaries by day and adult programming at night. Since then it has decreased the adult content and increased sports and imported shows like Alias. Bravo also aired World Championship Wrestling's flagship show "Nitro" during WCW's final year in business and also showed Extreme Championship Wrestling's flagship show "Hardcore TV" during ECW's final year in business.
On August 28 2005, the channel started showing Serie A Italian football, bringing back the Channel 4 format Football Italia. However, poor viewing figures saw Bravo cancel first the weekly Gazetta Football Italia show, then announce it would stop showing Italian Football altogether after 23 December 2006. The channel's other highest-profile sports coverage is its exclusive UK rights to Ultimate Fighting Championship archives as well as recent events, as well as related reality TV show The Ultimate Fighter. The network airs an Adult Swim block nightly at around midnight. Recently the channel has acquired rights to show the tv spin-off, Blade: The Series.
From January 2007 Bravo's sister channel Bravo 2 had the exclusive UK rights to broadcast Total Nonstop Action wrestling programming which consisted of only a two day delay from the American broadcast of the TNA weekly show "TNA iMPACT!" and a three day delay for the TNA Monthly Pay Per Views. Since January 5th 2008 TNA iMPACT! was moved to Bravo, with replays of the show on Bravo 2. . Bravo's contract with TNA Wrestling Programming is an 18 month contract and was distributed by RDA TV. As of 2008, TNA iMPACT! is shown on Bravo, instead of Bravo 2, at the same timeslot.
