Bravo

"Quarterlife," the first Web-based drama to air on network television, has been canceled by NBC after a dismally rated first episode, but will move to sister cable channel Bravo, people close to the show said Thursday. The highly touted online series about a group of young artists bombed in its NBC debut Tuesday night, drawing the network's lowest ratings and smallest audience for that time slot in at least 20 years, according to Nielsen Media Research. The show ranked a distant third place for the 10 p.m. hour, averaging just 3.1 million viewers and a meager 1.3 rating among advertisers' favorite demographic, adults ages 18 to 49, which is the audience for whom the series was designed.

SULTAN KHEYL, Afghanistan - Highway 1 runs like a broken spine through Wardak province. Even with its potholes and cracked asphalt, it is a lifeline for soldiers and civilians alike. The dusty highway links Wardak to Kabul, the capital, about an hour northeast. For Afghans here, it's the main avenue for commerce, government and family connections. For the U.S. infantrymen of Bravo 3-15, it's ultimately their way home. In this landlocked nation, the most cost-effective way out for U.S. soldiers and equipment is Highway 1 to the capital.

"When the revolution happened" are the first words we hear in "Shahs of Sunset," a new Bravo reality series about the Persian Americans of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills — six of them anyway, and their glimpsed families and supporting-cast friends. The revolution referred to is the one that took place in Iran in 1979, which helped create the sizable diaspora whose local chapter, sometimes called Tehrangeles, comprises the largest Iranian community outside of Iran. The novelty of the setting aside, we have been here before.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has expanded his reach beyond the basketball court, writing pop-culture essays on his blog at the Huffington Post . The six-time NBA champion takes on reality television in a thoughtful, critical analysis of the genre. "Those who refuse to watch, based on some misguided cultural snobbery, aren't just missing great entertainment, they are overlooking the best social insight into the American psyche since Huck Finn and Jim explored the soul of America on a raft of lost innocence," writes Abdul-Jabbar.

The art-themed, reality-TV series "Work of Art"  on Bravo appears to be kaput after two seasons, although no official announcement has been made by the cable channel.   On Tuesday, the website GalleristNY reported that Bravo isn't bringing the series back and that its producers are shopping the show to other channels. A Bravo spokesperson told The Times that no official decision has been made regarding the return of "Work of Art. " But a source close to the channel said it was "unlikely" that the show would return for a third season on Bravo, which is a division of NBCUniversal.

Bravo has established itself as a birth site for reality TV touchstones -- through franchises such as "Real Housewives" and "Top Chef" -- but it really, really wants to get in the scripted game and has picked up two new scripted shows to pilot to help make that their reality . The pilots are expected to start production early next year.  "Rita," produced by Fox Television Studios, "is an adaptation of a Danish series that centers on...

Re an item in Howard Rosenberg's Oct. 23 column: Bravo (A Betrayal) Is the main reason I got cable Now, thanks to corruption I am no longer able To watch sans interruption. Farewell, films of Truffaut and Mike Leigh, Films from Australia and New Zea- land, all chopped up like so much hash; I'm reduced to watching reruns of "MASH." ROXANE WINKLER, Sherman Oaks

With what sounds like a laboratory-developed hybrid of "Real Housewives," "NYC Prep" and HBO's "Girls," unscripted-drama farm Bravo is looking toward the tributaries of the New York City art world with its summer series "Gallery Girls. " "The show follows the lives of seven dynamic and ambitious young women in New York City who tackle the cutthroat environment of the art world while vying for their dream jobs," says the network's news release, which also included a few nods toward the septet's television-ready personalities broken into short, easily digestible paragraphs.

Bravo has given the green light to "Project Greenlight," the series that shows the making of a film by first-time directors and actors. HBO, which aired the first two seasons, didn't renew it. The third season for the series, which is produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chris Moore in association with Miramax Television, will focus on the creation and filming of a horror movie or a thriller.

Bravo to each of the five people on our Industrial Welfare Commission who voted 5 to 0 to raise our state's minimum wage by $1 over two years (Oct. 24). Clearly this cuts into profits. This is regrettable. But business owners are not the enemy. Poverty is. The extra 50 cents on Jan. 1 and another 50 cents the next year will allow our poorer brothers and sisters a little more food, a few more bus trips and a prayer at paying the rent. MIKE SALCIDO Monrovia

Customized TV Listings are available here: www.latimes.com/tvtimes Click here to download TV listings for the week of March 17 - 23, 2013 in PDF format This week's TV Movies     SERIES Splash Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, comic Louie Anderson, reality star Kendra Wilkinson are among the stars competing on this new celebrity diving competition. 8 p.m. ABC Pretty Little Liars The teen-themed drama ends another season, followed by a sneak peak at the pilot episode of the summer series "Twisted.

"LA Shrinks" debuts Monday on Bravo, which may be broadly described as a network on which people who really do not need the money star in reality programs. It focuses on three therapists, hopping from one to the other -- they don't interact -- and following each in and out of the office. In contrast to the house style, the principals are relatively likable and well adjusted, though not without their challenges. For the space of the opening episode, at least, none of them scream. Our practitioners: -- Dr. Venus Nicolino, who lives and works in a big, marbled Bel-Air mansion, with a husband and four kids, two their own and two nephews under "permanent guardianship" (reason unstated)

Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON - When Jessica Bravo came here this month to talk to her congressman, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), about expanding rights for illegal immigrants, their meeting ended in a shouting match and tears. Bravo, an 18-year-old community college student at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, was smuggled over the border from Mexico by her parents when she was 3. She recently joined hundreds of other young illegal immigrants in a campaign to confront members of Congress and ask them to vote for a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants.

When Justin Bravo applied to be a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, background investigators noted the young man had some brushes with the law that raised red flags about his past. Nonetheless, the department hired Bravo as a deputy through a little-known program called "Friends of the Sheriff" - a screening process for applicants with connections to department officials. Bravo's link was his uncle: Sheriff Lee Baca. Now, the jail deputy is the subject of a Sheriff's Department criminal probe into whether he abused an inmate.

Bravo has established itself as a birth site for reality TV touchstones -- through franchises such as "Real Housewives" and "Top Chef" -- but it really, really wants to get in the scripted game and has picked up two new scripted shows to pilot to help make that their reality . The pilots are expected to start production early next year.  "Rita," produced by Fox Television Studios, "is an adaptation of a Danish series that centers on...

Click here to download TV listings for the week Nov. 18 - 24 in PDF format This week's TV Movies     SERIES Criminal Minds : A busload of children goes missing on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., Sending Rossi (Joe Mantegna) and the BAU team into action in this new episode. Thomas Gibson, Shemar Moore, Matthew Gray Gubler, A.J. Cook and Kirsten Vangsness also star (9 p.m. CBS). Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:   When detectives investigate reports of sexual abuse at an elite private school, decades of secrets are exposed in this new episode (9 p.m. NBC)

With "Pregnant in Heels," premiering Tuesday, Bravo adds to its Theater of Schadenfreude yet another series about the helpless rich and their high-priced factotums. The facilitator this time is Rosie Pope, a designer of upscale maternity clothes, proprietor of a "pregnancy boot camp" and a "24/7 full-time mommy concierge for million-dollar mamas. " She helps women of privilege micromanage their maternities, even as she teases self-awareness out from under the shadow of their self-obsession.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Don't like the new Bravo reality television series "Start-ups: Silicon Valley"? Get ready for more shows to roll out of Hollywood. Real Silicon Valley entrepreneurs will get their first look Monday night at the series that shows six young hopefuls looking to make it here -- a subculture that was clearly ripe for exploitation. The show, which is supposed to give a glamorized glimpse inside the real world of risking everything to build a start-up, has a lot of haters here.

David Murray isn't skin deep - - even if he at least initially seemed that way on television. The 29-year-old engineer created a real buzz after confessing to numerous plastic surgeries including a hair transplant and a nose job in the first episode of the new Bravo reality series "Start-ups: Silicon Valley. " (The second episode airs Monday night). But he also packs some serious high-tech punch. Murray has a triple degree from Carnegie Mellon and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford and he started out his career as an associate product manager at Google.

After just one episode, Bravo's new reality TV series on Silicon Valley has already gotten a lot of grief for how it portrays women in technology. Executive producer Randi Zuckerberg said she was aiming to get young women excited about becoming entrepreneurship and technology. Some people feel the show has missed that mark . But cast member Kim Taylor, 30, seems -- at least at the outset -- to be acting the part of female role model in tech (and less like the Silicon Valley version of "Real Housewives")