Revolutionizing Ovation
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 6/4/2007
For its relaunch as a national service June 20, Ovation TV will debut a new programming format, sport a new graphic look and get ready to kick off its first major stunt, tied to the Fourth of July.
Ovation TV will mark its rollout on DirecTV with a programming event, “American Revolutionaries,” airing from July 1 to 15, according to senior vice president of programming Kris Slava.
The lineup for “American Revolutionaries” includes several world TV premieres, including Old, Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music; and Meet Marlon Brando, a 1966 interview with the actor; as well as several U.S. TV premieres, such as Kurt Cobain: The Last Days, which includes witnesses who saw him the week before he died.
The network, promising to “Make Life Creative,” also plans to produce original specials and series, Slava said. One original series is planned for this year, and several more for next year.
“They will be about bringing creativity into your life,” he said.
For its first tent-pole programming event, Ovation TV has secured the rights to 25 film titles, which include several world television and U.S. television premieres. Those 30 hours of content, meant to celebrate American “innovators who changed what we mean by art,” includes pioneers such as Jackson Pollock, Elvis Presley, Andy Warhol, Martin Scorsese, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Guthrie and James Dean.
“We thought it was an excellent opportunity to frame what Ovation is going to be going forward,” Slava said. “All these people were brilliant. They were all revolutionary. They were all groundbreaking.”
Ovation TV's nightly schedule will focus on a particular arts genre each evening: Monday will feature performance arts, such as dance and theater; Tuesday will feature stories of artists; Wednesday will center on visual arts, such as painting, sculpture, and architecture and design; Thursday will feature contemporary music; and Friday film.
With its debut on DirecTV, Ovation TV will expand its carriage to almost 15 million households, including 5 million cable homes.
