Upfronts 2011: Travel Eyes More Trips With Personality
Adds Four New Series To Complement Its On-Air Guide Group
Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 4/15/2011 2:27:00 AM
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New York -- Coming off its best first quarter ever, Travel Channel is charting new adventures for viewers with its established stars, while it searches for new ones.
"Travel is a big broad, everyday category," said Travel president Laureen Ong during an interview following Scripps Networks' upfront presentation to advertisers at Cipriani here on April 13. "Travel extends beyond vacations. We travel to work every day. It's where you live, and finding things to do with your kids on weekends, or destinations within 50 miles of your home."
Under Ong's leadership over the past year, Travel -- which scored its best first quarter ever and second strongest to date among its adults 25-to-54 target byaveraging 238,000 of those viewers in primetime -- continues to veer away from the network's travelogue-orientation of the past.
"We've contemporized the network. Viewers want to be entertained and guided. They want us to bring more personalities to the lineup," Ong said.
To that end, Travel has/is mapping out itineraries for new seasons with some of its notables: a fourth campaign of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern; Bert the Conqueror, in which Bert Kreischer looks to inspire viewers to connect with their inner child via local competitions and thrill rides; a new format for Adam Richman, in which he will partake in eating challenges alongside locales in Man v. Food Nation; and Ghost Adventures, where paranormal investigators Zak Bagans and Nick Groff, along with equipment technician Aaron Goodwin, continue to trek through history and the dark secrets of haunted locations around the world.
As for Anthony Bourdain No Reservations, the second half of the current season commences on July 19, with trips planned to Haiti, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Cuba and The Congo. Bourdain, who has been tweeting from his travels, is also about to embark on a new show this fall, dubbed 24-Hour Layovers, during which he ventures out and about while waiting for airport service, according to Ong.
New series include Triple Rush, which focuses on the lives and culture of New York City bike messengers and bowed on April 14 at 10 p.m.; Mancations, which debuts June 1 and shows best buds Evan and Gareth hitting the road in search of laughter and bonding, while giving the ladies a glimpse of guy-only getaways; and Sand Masters (working title), a docuseries in which the "Sand Guys" produce larger-than-life sculptures that defy mother nature and gravity. The latter starts June 5 at 9 p.m.
In Off Limits, debuting May 16, explorer and history buff Don Wildman goes on quests to forbidden, hidden and unseen spaces across the country, uncovering urban inner workings, passageways, crumbling mines, abandoned factories and mega structures.
"Dan finds access to things that others don't," said Ong. "He likes to get lost in cities and try to discover why things work, or used to work."
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