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Ross said that Bravo has been cagey about the reasons behind their reluctance to move ahead with more Boy Meets Boy. “I think, because it is a politically charged subject matter, the folks at Bravo have been very careful to keep their decisions — at least their explanations of their decisions to me — very generic and very basic.”

But, he suggested, “I think also that they [Bravo executives] wanted to continue to develop their slate of programming that would be very gay-friendly, that would feature positive portrayals of gay participants, but wasn't uniquely and strictly gay.”

That may be a perceptive assessment. Although Boy Meets Boy did generate strong ratings for Bravo, the network currently has a slate of series, most notably Project Runway, that routinely outperform those old Boy Meets Boy numbers. That's not to say that a second season of Boy Meets Boy couldn't flourish in the new, higher profile Bravo, but it might not fit the overall Bravo strategy.

What might that strategy be? Let's call it the Fox network model. Twenty years ago, the Fox network didn't exist. Now it's one of the four major networks and boasts television's top-rated show, American Idol. How did Fox accomplish what most industry insiders saw as an impossible feat? Niche programming.

Fox first gained a foothold in underrepresented communities — especially the African-American community — that sought out the new network for the few shows that portrayed them. Fox built its audience with shows such as Martin (1992–97), Roc (1991–94) and In Living Color (1990–94), which, after The Cosby Show ended in 1992, were the only African-American shows on television.

As Fox grew, it peeled off what it saw as “niche” programming in favor of, what it believed were "broader-reaching" shows. Today, there is no broad slate of Fox shows with predominantly African-American casts. This might be precisely where Bravo is at today. In other words, bye-bye Boy Meets Boy.

Frances Berwick, Bravo's executive vice president in charge of programming and production, told us that like Ross, she looks back on Boy Meets Boy with a certain degree of pride. “It was really trying to get at the heart of many of the issues that gay men experience,” Berwick said. She recalled that in the cast members' televised exit interviews, “almost to a man, the straight men all described their experiences about being on the show as akin to how they imagine being in the closet must be.”

She continued, “Superficially it seemed like a lighthearted, fun show, but at its heart, there was a very key message to it.” Berwick said that viewer reaction was incredibly positive: “I mean, the ratings [speak] for themselves.”

But unlike Ross, Berwick seems to feel that the ship has sailed on the possibility of another season of the show, initially pointing to the one-time-only nature of the twist as Bravo's rationale for not bringing Boy Meets Boy back.

“It's a very sort of format-driven show,” Berwick explained. “And there is a gimmick [the twist], if that's the right word, which makes it very, very difficult to replicate.” In other words, any new gay bachelor would need to be in the dark about the show's closeted straights, and that isn't going to happen this time around. Berwick said that even selling versions of the show abroad was difficult because of international press reports revealing the twist.

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