Ovation Gets Artsy Makeover

By Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 3/1/2010 11:41:00 AM

Los Angeles — Arts channel Ovation TV is rebranding as simply “Ovation” as it heads into upfront meetings with ad agencies sporting a new logo and on-air look and plans for new series and programming stunts.

The new logo features gold, concentric circles and suggests a speaker, a klieg light or a pebble dropping in water, senior vice president of programming Kris Slava said. The color is “Ovation gold,” as in the gold standard of arts entertainment programming, added senior vice president of marketing Gaynor Strachan Chun.

The Web site and on-air graphics also change, effective today (March 1). Ovation worked with Oishii Creative on the new look.

Ovation plans a “chunky” increase in its programming budget this year, Slava said, and will, for the first time, do some national advertising this summer (for its annual “American Revolutionaries” programming stunt), Chun said.

The new look comes as the channel approaches 40 million households and has evolved its programming during the past three years that Slava, a former Bravo executive, has been with the Hubbard Media-owned service.

A new series, The Scenic Route, a travel show hosted by Los Angeles Times writer David Keeps, premieres Sunday, April 11, as part of a two-week stunt called “Passport Ovation.” Keeps visits sites where photographer Edward Weston and novelist John Steinbeck worked in California; explores historic lighthouses; and journeys to an artists enclave in the Mojave Desert.

Starting March 28, the network looks at religious controversies in a stunt called “Sacred to Profane.”

A high-definition version of Ovation launches in July, around the time the network’s centerpiece stunt, “American Revolutionaries,” returns. This year the theme is American directors, Slava said, and the network will air movies such as Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets.

Ovation isn’t Nielsen rated (and has no current timetable for that, Chun said) but has seen “three-digit-growth” in ad-sales every year, Slava said.