Bravo launched in 1980, explicitly targeting lovers of the arts, assumed by its backers to be mostly women (but later to include gay men, when the appeal to two groups would be dubbed “dualcasting”). Two years on came BET, Black Entertainment Television, targeting blacks; and the Playboy Channel, targeting not only playboys but all straight men … The network did make an effort to reach women as well, with shows like Dr. Yes: The Hyannis Affair, which was described as “a sort of topless Dynasty” following “the idle rich, with time on their hands and sex on their minds.”

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 616