5 Q's with Erica Conaty, vp, marketing, NBC Universal Cable

We know "Bravo on with the Show" brought 50 kids (aged 10-17) to NY for 3 days of theatrical training that culminates in a performance tonight at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre. What’s the program’s goal? The overarching goal is to help restore theater arts in communities. Like music, theater usually is the first or second program to be cut from school budgets. Tell us about the parallel program. The big note is that it’s a cable-exclusive program. We provide tool kits to the MSOs to distribute to schools. The kits have lesson plans that follow national guidelines for teaching theater arts, so if theater programs are under-developed or under funded in schools we give English teachers ways to apply theater arts in their classrooms. How do you reach out to underprivileged communities? An example is what we did at National with Comcast and the African-American Arts Foundation. We held a 1-day arts workshop for 30 kids, who later performed at our booth and we gave a check to the Foundation. We also do 1-day workshops that show communities how to raise money for arts programs. Any changes for next year? Yes. We’re still tweaking it, but we’ll move away from Broadway and toward Bravo. We’ll move it up to high-school-age kids and the winners will get a TV experience in NY as interns at Bravo, doing anything from production to editing to directing. I think it’ll be called "Bravo on the Set" and we’re working with NAMIC and The Cable Center on tie-ins. There’ll definitely be local extensions. In tonight’s show, the kids performing were chosen by an essay contest. Why? We wanted to keep it non-"American Idol." Just an essay on why the arts are important to you. We were trying to qualify students who’d really learn and get something out of this 3- day experience. I cried reading some, they were so emotional.