Cable Network Roundup

The Laggards

There was a time when A&E stood for "Arts & Entertainment" and focused primarily on biographies, documentaries and miniseries. In fact, the network's programming sensibilities were quite similar to those of PBS, and like PBS, A&E imported much of its programming from the United Kingdom (MI-5, Poirot Investigates).

More recently, it's moved away from its highbrow aspirations and has found some success with a slate of original reality shows (Dog the Bounty Hunter, Growing Up Gotti, Gene Simmons: Family Jewels). Unfortunately, none of these shows have addressed gay and lesbian issues in any meaningful way. With no scripted gay characters on the network and no identifiable gay personalities on their reality shows, the new A&E brings up the rear in terms of gay visibility.

BET

When Ray Cunningham first made his debut on the reality show College Hill, he gently chided Black Entertainment Television that he was the first openly gay face to grace the network in 25 years. Other BET programming with gay content includes the recent show Rip the Runway which fuses fashion and hip-hop and often profiles designers, make-up artists, and stylists that are gay. African American and gay-rights activist Keith Boykin co-host's My Two Cents on BET's sister channel BET J. Also on BET J's My Model is Better Than Your Model produced by Boykin's partner Nathan H. Williams. The show offers up an unapologetic gay aesthetic without any apologies.

Interestingly, BET just added reruns of the very-gay inclusive cop drama The Wire to their line-up. One of the show's main characters is Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) who is unapologetically gay as opposed to someone on the “down low”.

Speaking of the “down low” BET's news special The Down Low Exposed purported to show the extent of the “down low” in the African-American community despite the fact it provided no evidence to back up its contentions. The show was especially controversial in gay African-American community which objected to its sensationalism and the fact that it was hosted by J.L. King, the black gay author who popularized the term “down low” and appeared on Oprah to tell women how they could supposedly spot a gay man.

BET recently announced its most extensive lineup of original and scripted programming in its 26-year history. Will things look up for the gays? BET's entertainment president Reginald Hudlin bragged that BET's new lineup would show "the diverse array of programming about black culture." Time will tell if that includes showing a few more gay faces.

You'd think an entire network about the entertainment industry might be able to do a decent job with gay visibility, but E! would prove you wrong. Now and then a gay celebrity is featured on E! True Hollywood Story. Bad gay jokes abound on The Soup (formerly Talk Soup). Then there was the lesbian wedding on The Simple Life with noted gay activists Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. The episode was quite gay-positive and made those with homophobic attitudes look quite bad, but with only a handful of other minor gay mentions on the network, all of it adds up to little of significance.

Dr. Who, but no Torchwood? No gay characters on Battlestar Galactica? It might be news to the Sci Fi Channel (not to mention the producers of Star Trek), but there are a lot of gay sci-fi fans out there, and this network really needs to give us something . The universe is a big place; surely there is somewhere out there beyond the stars with gay people, and it's time for Sci Fi to show it.

TNT may, as its slogan proclaims, "know drama," but the network doesn't seem to know gay people. The Closer is an excellent show, but what sort of gay representation have we had on the network? An ex-gay murderer who kills his lover and makes it look like a hate crime. A closeted porn star who has AIDS, hides it, and infects his straight female porn co-stars. Yawn.

USA, once a minor player in basic cable, has raised its profile steadily in recent years. The network has some good original shows — Monk being the best — and some good reruns (the half of the Law & Order franchise not shown on TNT), but what about gay visibility? Not so much.

Last year they did present a gay couple in their reality special The Great American Christmas, but you have to go all the way back to 1997 to Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story to find any other significant gay content. Beyond that, all that comes to mind (other than the occasional Law & Order episode with gay content) are reruns of House and the subtexty House/Wilson thing that occurred last season.

Dennis Ayers, Rod McCollum, and Michael Jensen contributed to this story.