A partnership announced yesterday between Canadian Art magazine and CTV’s Bravo! channel is aiming to extend the reach of the Toronto-based magazine with the launch of a new series, Bravo! to Canadian Art.

The shows air quarterly, coinciding with the newsstand schedule of the magazine, and is also streamed online at CanadianArt.ca.

The idea of the series is to give viewers a ‘behind the scenes’ view into Canadian Art magazine – for instance, following the painter who’s on the cover of the current issue as he visits some exhibits, explains Andrea Carson, marketing and communications coordinator at Canadian Art Foundation, which runs the magazine.

Bravo! has a monopoly sponsorship on the series this year, she adds, but the team will look for additional sponsorship opportunities if the partnership extends to 2011. The aim this year is to expose the brand to a wider audience, says Richard Rhodes, editor of Canadian Art.

‘Our readers come from both inside and outside the Canadian art world,’ says Rhodes. ‘We reach a crossover audience that includes both experts and general readers with an interest in art. It’s this unique combination that gives us such a large audience and makes it easy to work with Bravo! and extend our reach to their viewership.’

Canadian Art has 130,000 readers per issue – the average age is 53, skewed female, with an average household income of $97,000, according to a spokesperson.