‘Bullseye target with no leakage’: How 7Bravo seeks to fulfil Seven’s content offering for key demos
Seven and NBCUniversal international networks’ new channel 7Bravo has officially entered the market.
For advertisers looking to reach women under 50s, Seven’s director of content scheduling, Brook Hall, said the demographic is the channel’s “bullseye target with no leakage”.
Hall added that the channel is an important piece of the puzzle to complete Seven’s content offering, and is an opportunity to directly target the desired female demos, with “clear branding”.
Hall
“There is plenty of content on TV streaming, free-to-air, broadcast, linear, pay, that targets women 25-54, we have to be realistic there,” Hall told Mumbrella. “They watch a lot of TV, they’re very important to advertisers, the difference is that there is no one channel or place that targets only them in that free-to-air space at the moment.”
Hall added it’s “kind of ironic” that there are the likes of 7Mate and 9Rush with a very specific audience, but “weirdly, no one has a channel that is just targeted purely at the demographic of rich, younger female audience”, which is why Seven was keen to jump on the opportunity.
7Bravo launched with a few priority titles including Below Deck and The Real Housewives on weeknights. Other daytime titles include The Kelly Clarkson Show and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. However, some unscripted key titles on Bravo will continue to run on Foxtel for an interim period.
Based on the profile of these titles, the network is expecting 7Bravo to have the most on-demand index ratio.
“Some of our channels have little to no life on on-demand afterwards, this one will be an extreme where I expect almost the majority of the viewership [to be on-demand],” Hall said.
Seven wanted a “premium ad experience” element for Bravo content on 7plus, including reduced ad loads for a better viewing experience, while the linear channel will launch with the traditional ad load to facilitate the half-hour/hour schedules viewers are accustomed to. The specific numbers of ad-to-content ratio was not disclosed when requested by Mumbrella.
Furthermore on linear, the network will also adopt events such as special airings where, for example, an episode of Below Deck would appear after Australian Idol to funnel viewers from the main channel.
“This is sticky, premium content that a lot of people will stream,” Hall said.
“If you’ve got premium content that people are highly engaged and watch, that usually brings viewers first, that’s the most important thing, and then that brings the advertiser.”
Meanwhile, although the content slate of 7Bravo is entirely international now, NBCUniversal’s APAC programming and acquisitions director, Caroline Cleland, teased the possibility of having Australian unscripted content on the channel, but “not in the short-term”, she said.
Right now, the focus is on taking learnings from different markets such as New Zealand and getting the Australian programming right.
Caroline Cleland
“An example of this is Below Deck and Real Housewives are the very key franchises to our schedule, and we’ll be launching with two nights of Below Deck in the schedule and two nights of Real Housewives at 8:30 and 9:30. Then we also have earlier seasons of Below Deck scheduled Monday to Friday at 7:30.
“True crime is a very popular genre right now, and it just sits perfectly within the reality content space. We have true crime on Mondays and the true crime events series, which are shorter series or specials produced for Peacock, and they are on Fridays at 8:30.”
On the Event front, Live from E!’s award red carpets will be broadcasted on 7Bravo, which Cleland said was as a great opportunity for fashion and beauty advertisers. NBCUniversal will also offer an influencer marketing program, named Friends of 7Bravo, working with local content creators in their specialised categories.
Additionally, Hall admitted that the timing of the launch required the team to complete the planning and programming over the Christmas break, about which they “weren’t too smart” in hindsight. However, he was positive about the channel bringing in solid numbers in the coming months.
“It’s been an interesting, massive effort to get this all rolling up over Christmas break, but looking around, I think this channel really can stride coming out of Easter.
“It’s an amp up – lots of promotions, we’ve got some biggest stumps rolled in, there is going to be a really nice solid launch. And Easter you will see the true fonts that will measure how we’re going if I’m being really upfront about where we’re looking – that’s our North Star.”
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Darcy Song was a reporter at Mumbrella, covering media owners, adtech and social platforms. She left in October 2023.
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