Just since January, gay television viewers have watched four major network shows with gay characters meet a quick and untimely demise. Emily's Reasons Why Not, The Book of Daniel, Love Monkey and Crumbs all faced cancellation within weeks of hitting the airwaves. With Will and Grace quickly closing in on its final episode, it is hard for gay viewers not to feel a little dismayed over the decline of queer visibility on network television.

True, the situation is considerably better on cable with LOGO's Noah's Arc, Dante's Cove on Here!, BBC America's Footballer's Wives, and various shows on HBO and Showtime. But the networks still dominate the television landscape and there are fewer and fewer GLBT faces on their scripted shows.

The fact of the matter, however, is that every year there are fewer scripted shows on television in general. Instead, the networks have found higher ratings and more profit in reality programs. Here the outlook for gay and lesbian visibility is considerably brighter

The whole 50-year history of the relationship between gays and television has been, to say the least, a rocky road. In our uphill battle for equality and social visibility, the television experience, for both gay actors and viewers, might even be seen as a crazy public game of hide and seek. (“Come out, come out, whatever channel you're on”!)

The current runaway popularity of reality type television programming has brought with it the chance for mainstream America to see gays as they really are. Shows like Party Party, Amazing Race, Project Runway, Top Chef, Celebrity Fit Club, and even Queer Eye for the Straight Guy have helped to familiarize and normalize us in the public eye, in ways that scripted television has not, and perhaps cannot.

One might think that gay-inclusive reality TV is a relatively recent phenomenon. Surprisingly though, we were there from early on.

An American Family is widely recognized as perhaps the very first bona fide reality TV show. Created in 1973 for noncommercial public television (PBS), An American Family set up television cameras in the home of Bill and Pat Loud and their family and filmed them for seven months as they went about their everyday lives. Ten million viewers were tuned in when their son Lance declared, for the very first time, that he was gay.

It was an electrifying, genuine moment—something almost impossible to come by with scripted television. Viewers saw a real gay man behaving in a real way. This has been one of the key qualitative differences between gays on reality TV and gay characters on scripted TV. It is also one reason why more and more gays are tuning in to reality programs.

Real-life, non-acting gays on television are free from a lot of the politically correct image doctoring and gay stereotypical presentation that govern so many scripted gay TV characters. Gay participants on unscripted reality shows simply and refreshingly are who they are.

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