When you watch cable television, how queer is the view these days? AfterElton.com took a look at the five major television networks last month and graded them on gay visibility. Now it's the cable networks' turn.

Unlike the airwaves, there's almost no limit to the number of players on cable. To find — let alone evaluate — all the possible gay content on every cable station would be impossible, so our focus is on 17 well-established, general-interest networks.

Seven of these networks are standouts in their representation of gay and bisexual men and our issues. Four rate "middle of the pack" status while six finish up as "laggards". This article does not address the “gay” networks which include Logo (the parent company of AfterElton) nor here! as those networks are exclusively gay. Nor does it examine lesbian and bisexual women's representation which are outside of our purview.

The Standouts
(in alphabetical order)

BBC America

Since launching in 1998, BBC America has carried programming from the BBC and other U.K. television networks (ITV, Channel 4, etc,). Beginning in 2004, it began to offer original programming of its own. Shows with gay content that currently air or have aired in the past on BBC America include Bad Girls, Little Britain, Hex, So Graham Norton, Coupling, Footballers Wives, Hollyoaks and The State Within. BBC America programming reflects more permissive European content standards, and thus its slate often contains more adult content than American cable channels.

It deserves special recognition for what it is about to do: make the sci-fi series Torchwood available to American audiences. This Doctor Who spin-off features bisexual lead character Captain Jack Harkness, played by openly gay actor John Barrowman. In the U.K., the first season of Torchwood was a certified smash, pulling in record numbers for BBC3. When the Sci Fi Channel, which airs Doctor Who in the United States, elected not to run Torchwood, BBC America won the hearts of gay sci-fi fans in the U.S. by rising to the challenge and bringing the show to American shores.

There was a time when Bravo was a sleepy little cable network whose flagship program was Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton. Things changed in 2003 when Bravo was acquired by NBC and launched Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Almost overnight, average prime-time ratings went from 300,000 to 3 million. The network shrewdly leveraged the Queer Eye phenomenon, quickly filling their schedule with content aimed at Queer Eye fans: Boy Meets Boy, Project Runway, Kathy Griffin's My Life on the D-List, Work Out, Top Chef, Top Design and, most recently, Shear Genius.

Although Bravo isn't quite as gay as it once was and is now orienting itself toward a more general audience of the affluent and the young, gays and lesbians remain a solid part of the mix.

Although Comedy Central actually has a fair amount of queer-friendly original programming, there are two shows that could alone send this network into the standout category: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report hosted by Stephen Colbert. Their blisteringly funny, satirical look at American politics and culture is aimed at homophobia on a regular basis. Stewart's semi-recurring "Gaywatch" definitely counts as must-see TV for queer viewers.

For the 2006–07 season, Comedy Central featured three series with leading gay characters: Xandir on Drawn Together, Log Cabin Republican on Freak Show and Lt. Jim Dangle on Reno 911! It's also the home of the groundbreaking animated series South Park, which cheerfully annihilates homophobia along with everything else in its sights. Comedy Central's track record on queer visibility is nothing to laugh at.