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So even though Ellen had blown the doors off the sitcom closet and Will Truman made sure they stayed open, gay characters found themselves relegated to the cable networks. This included the boys and girls of Queer as Folk and The L Word, Michael C. Hall's David on HBO's Six Feet Under, and those naughty Oz inmates. Of the primetime fab five (or four, after Normal exited), Laura Innes' lesbian doctor on ER would soon enough be downsized to a recurring role, and the gay lead on NBC's Some of My Best Friends wouldn't see another season.

With the exit of Will & Grace last season, gay audiences are left with the sparsest representation of America's diverse and colorful LGBT population that we've seen since before DeGeneres uttered those two famous words 10 years ago.

One possibility for the paucity of gay characters is that the content that did make it to screens simply wasn't up to snuff. Every year the fall schedules are littered with the corpses of failed series, with and without gay characters — it's a high-casualty business.

And several of the shows with gay leads, including Leap Years, Some of My Best Friends and this season's Help Me Help You, are not exactly in the range of All in the Family. The truth is, a good show with a gay lead is still a good show, and as the crossover success of Will & Grace proved, audiences embrace intelligent writing, interesting characters and solid ensemble work, often regardless of the subject matter. For the most part, the new shows with gay characters simply haven't been high-quality.

But that's only a part of the story. It might explain why some of the shows with gay leads didn't last, but it doesn't address the bigger question: Why aren't there more shows with gay leads to begin with? Is it a coincidence that the rise of a conservative administration actively opposed to the advancement of gay rights seems to correlate with the waning of gay visibility on network television? Could the fact that the country has been hanging to the right since 2000 be partly to blame?

Considering the advertiser-based business model of network television and increased pressure in recent years by conservative special interest groups to “clean up” the airwaves (the brouhaha over The Book of Daniel was one such case), not to mention increased unease on the part of networks following recent FCC crackdowns on indecency (The Bedford Diaries), it's not altogether surprising that the nets wouldn't exactly be chomping at the bit to push cultural boundaries. One almost gets the sense that Will Truman was the last man allowed on the lifeboat before the ship went down in 2000, and even he could only handle the pressure of being the torch-bearing gay lead for so long.

But perhaps the current political climate — while it has surely contributed to the atrophying of gay representation on the networks — isn't solely responsible for the continued decline. As mentioned earlier, gay characters (both real and imagined) have found far more fertile soil on fringe networks and on cable, where their individual complexities and relationships are often addressed with a higher degree of candor and sensitivity.

In addition, the emergence of unscripted or reality television on the major networks has provided many opportunities for gay men and women to show that we are as competitive, competent and supportive as our straight counterparts. Several of television's most resilient and challenging reality competitions, including The Amazing Race, Survivor and Project Runway have been won by openly gay contestants. Considering that the number of scripted shows has decreased in recent years to make way for the reality juggernaut, and the relatively solid showing of gay contestants on these shows, perhaps switching out a gay character on ER with a gay couple on The Amazing Race isn't such a bad thing.

In recent years, networks like Showtime, HBO, Bravo, Logo, here!, Q Television, Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, UPN, The N and FX have delivered programming rich with gay content and characters. There are a lot of options out there for gay viewers looking for programming that tells their stories or reflects their lives.

But as in so many other aspects of gay life, gay-friendly shows are increasingly relegated to the fringes of television rather than integrated into the mainstream. Is this a ghettoization of gay culture on TV, or a triumph of niche programming?

When the Fab Five hit it big a few years back with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, there was much talk about the “mainstreaming of gay culture.” But what is mainstream about a small cable network targeting a more progressive audience, while the network's parent company, NBC, remains considerably more conservative in its programming choices? Is this mainstreaming or marginalization?

While the specific cause of the dwindling of gay characters on network television may be debatable, the fact is that the depressing trend continues. Without Will and Ellen to hold up the tent, gay audiences are at serious risk of losing a decade's worth of headway in achieving even the most paltry of representation on network TV — representation that doesn't even approach being realistic.

It is appropriate to celebrate some of the diverse, wonderful characters that cable has brought us, but we should not forget the time when gay characters held the network spotlight, and question when — or if — it might be turned on them again.

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