Take a middle-aged prima donna, a cabal of catty judges, and a bunch of ambitious, naïve, and eccentric contestants. Mix it all up in an artsy cable channel angling for a new lease on life and out pops—Project Runway.

Or Top Chef.

Or Shear Genius.

Or really any Bravo reality show.

Since 2003, when Queer Eye for the Straight Guy debuted on Bravo, the once fine-arts-oriented cabler has been tilling the fertile ground of what it calls "creative competitions," the term employed by Bravo spokespeople deigning to use the dirty word "reality."

Nevertheless, the shows—which include this year's debuts Make Me A Supermodel and Step It Up & Dance, and 2007's Top Design, in addition to Runway (2004), Chef (2006), and Genius (2007)—are of a piece.

There's the judges' panel, a few industry mainstays with the requisite expertise and, more important, brass-knuckled sass to debunk any outfit, meal, or runway walk presented to them.

There are the contestants, mostly middle Americans, many talented and all poignantly convinced that winning will change their careers forever. And at some point every season, they each cry.

There's the industry-specific prize—a spread in a fashion magazine for the aspiring designers, or a showcase at a food show for the winning chef.

At the center of it all is the fetching female host, an underemployed actress or model past modeling age who serves as the show's sex appeal and the bold-faced name that gets people tuning in.

Heidi Klum, the host of Runway since its debut in 2004, inaugurated Bravo's sweet-but-stern host shtick, kissing contestants goodbye minutes after booting them from the series.

The model is leaving Bravo when the show decamps to Lifetime at the end of this season, but Niki Taylor and Elizabeth Berkley, who started this year as the hosts of Supermodel and Dance, respectively, are keeping the channel's 1990s glam quotient high.

Least important as a qualification is the host's tangential relationship with the show's subject matter.

"I love food and I am naturally very obsessive about it," says Padma Lakshmi, the Indian actress, model, and cookbook author who hosts Top Chef. "I can talk about it for hours and hours on end."

But it's Bravo that's getting the real blessing from this bonanza of competition shows, even if the channel, formerly fine-arts focused, is now consumed with considerably lesser "arts" such as hair-styling or modeling.

Bravo's other category of original programming, the "docudramas," include gossipy shows like The Real Housewives (of, variously, the O.C., New York, New Jersey, and most recently, Atlanta).

But it's the creative competitions that have done the channel proudest, with successive seasons of Runway and Chef garnering bigger and bigger audiences.

Runway's 2004 premiere brought in just over a million pairs of eyeballs. The most recent season, the fourth, had 3.9 million. And Chef has rocketed from 1.2 million to almost 3.2 million in four seasons, according to numbers provided by the network.

The shows also do particularly well with adults in the 18 to 49 age group, which advertisers prize; Bravo currently ranks a respectable 18th among ad-supported cable networks in that demographic.

But not everyone is a fan.
 
"Bravo's creative competition shows will eventually lose audience shares over time," predicts Homer Pettey, an associate professor of film and television studies at the University of Arizona. "Maintaining the same format shows a lack of creativity on the part of the producers."

Assuming Bravo sticks to the formula for another few seasons, however, we wondered what's next. Paris Hilton hosting a dog-grooming show, Top Chihuahua?

Lakshmi says sports are the "next wave—the ultimate reality show, inherently."

Problem is, asking a Bravo contestant to do sports is a lot like asking A-Rod to design jodhpurs. Unless…Is Venus Williams free?