Foursquare’s new frontier isn’t just newspapers, but media companies as a whole. Case in point: Bravo and Foursquare have entered into a must-see TV relationship integrating show personalities and their city tips, as well as a Bravo badges, into the game experience.

The New York Times Bits blog reports that the partnership officially premieres tomorrow, with Bravo offering badges and prizes to viewers that visit and check-in at upwards of 500 Bravo-tagged locations.

We confirmed the relationship with Foursquare Co-Founder Dennis Crowley who tells us that this partnership is actually just the first of many more media deals to come. In fact, Crowley hints that even more television networks will get in on the checkin gameplay in the near future.

The genius behind the Bravo deal is that, on top of introducing a plethora of new Bravo-themed badges, the cable TV network — much like Metro News — is turning the personalities behind their hit reality TV shows — think The Millionaire Matchmaker, Top Chef, The Real Housewives, Top Chef Masters, and Shear Genius — into content creators. The reality show celebrities will share their tips and to-dos, essentially serving as curators of city-specific information that fans can follow and practice in real life.

Of course Bravo is going to put the full power of their network behind the partnership, promoting Bravo’s Foursquare hooks in TV spots. The NBC-owned cable network also plans to use Foursquare () for sweepstakes, awards, and other viewer incentives. They’ll even offer Foursquare tie-ins to Bravo advertisers, which will likely come in the form of coupons for viewers to cash in at the advertisers’ venues.

Ellen Stone, Bravo’s senior vice president of marketing, told the New York Times that:

“We really want to tap into the power of Foursquare by engaging their audiences and bringing our Bravo viewers these unique experiences on a national level … We saw the Foursquare phenomenon taking off and we wanted to go along with them as they shoot into the mainstream … Our audiences is always looking for new and unique engagements and this is perfect for them.”

In the grander scheme of things, Crowley sees Bravo as an important partner that will help them reach a more mainstream audience. He says the company’s ultimate goal is “to make checkins synonymous with Foursquare. Everyone is doing check-ins and we’re not going to win that word. What we think we can offer is the best reason to check-in.”

As everyone from Google () to Yelp () attempts to emulate Foursquare’s winning location formula, the recent deals with Harvard, BART, Metro News, and now Bravo are essentially wisely arranged barters for your checkins. Nicely done Foursquare.

Print Story

Are you seeing the value in location, mobile and media content creation yet? This is very interesting start. Well done Forsquare and Bravo!