Logo (do I really want my gay TV?)

Archive: Mass Media

Random speculations about Logo, the MTV Networks (Viacom) American gay cable television network.

I guess they could clone The Man Show as The Boy Show. Instead of watching breasts bobble up and down there will be guys in tight speedos and the movement will occur just below the waist.

A daily soap opera that will be like West Hollywood Boys and make us appreciate Queer as folk more (well maybe not).

Mr. Gay America, sort of a queer Miss America. Drag balls, pageants (OK with me).

Lots of televised gay weddings. Gay Fifth Wheel, Gay Cheaters?

Gay church services?

There will surely be a sexual advice program: will they hire Dan Savage or Susie Bright?

Political infotainment, news is cheap and there will be lots of that. A queer Crossfire. A gay Politically Incorrect. Surely a Daily Show clone.

I?d like to see a weekly program where some famous closet case is outed.

Dance music programming with boys gyrating at famous discos.

Stripperella failed but that doesn?t mean we can?t expect an animated Cosmic Callboy fighting crime.

And as the article below says lots and lots of gay movies, documentaries. Possibly much of it only tangentially gay.

Will they sink low enough to rerun Boy Meets Boy? Or they?ll spin their own evil equivalent where a straight men unknowingly dates transvestites and transsexuals.

Don?t get me wrong; I think Logo is a good idea. Doesn?t mean I?ll watch it (actually since I dropped my cable service a few months back I can?t).

But gays have become ubiquitous on television, and the newness factor is all but gone. What Logo faces immediately is the daunting task and, depending how you twist it, the possibly offensive (or at the very least, naive) notion that it can cater to all things lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. Nobody, except maybe golfers, wants to be so easily typecast. And Logo?s tagline, ?Different Together,? has that dangerous whiff of the bad ideathe kind that sparks four people who wear ratty Chuck Taylor high-tops (we must be counterculture Ramones fans, right?) to take a cross-country car trip from Jersey to L.A., only to find that they each hate the other?s music along the way.

Gay channel must focus on content