I’m sure you have heard the news. The bell tolls for the death of Logo, the gay TV channel. It won’t be a nice peaceful death, covered in olive oil, reposing in a Beverly Hills’ Hotel bath tub. No. The corpse of the little gay TV network that brought us Rick and Steve and Jeffrey and Cole will be gutted, and reanimated like Frankenstein’s Monster. The Network will arise from the slab attempting to look like so many overly processed Housewives on the Bravo Network.
If you read my blog for long you’ll notice that I stay away from anything political, there are much better and more astute bloggers for popular news stories. That being said, when I read about Logo changing its platform, I felt as if RuPaul had just told me to “sashay away.”
Logo has decided to attempt a Bravo Network format. This grabbing at Bravo’s Housewives franchise will be mixed with some Lifetime channel and other female centric shows, along with reality shows just to make the train wreck “fabulous.” If the channel’s inauthentic reality show, The A-List was the canary in the networks coalmine. The bird is dead.
I will miss my Logo channel. It won’t pass peacefully and much as it will be murdered.
America will have a new source for faux reality shows about the housewives of mobsters, forcing their toddlers to compete in pageants as tables get flipped in arguments over the bidding of abandoned storage units. Must avoid TV.
For a short time we had a channel for us. Like when MTV showed music. My hope is that young gays will be able to grow up remembering how this channel helped them come out and not remember how The A-List made inauthentic stereotypes of our community.
If you read my blog for long you’ll notice that I stay away from anything political, there are much better and more astute bloggers for popular news stories. That being said, when I read about Logo changing its platform, I felt as if RuPaul had just told me to “sashay away.”
I will miss my Logo channel. It won’t pass peacefully and much as it will be murdered.
America will have a new source for faux reality shows about the housewives of mobsters, forcing their toddlers to compete in pageants as tables get flipped in arguments over the bidding of abandoned storage units. Must avoid TV.
For a short time we had a channel for us. Like when MTV showed music. My hope is that young gays will be able to grow up remembering how this channel helped them come out and not remember how The A-List made inauthentic stereotypes of our community.
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for gayTV...
I used to love their show "Can't Get a Date?" - I think they made 5 of them and ran them into the ground with endless repeats.
ReplyDeleteThen I had to endure their shiteous movies like "Adam & Steve", which didn't seem so bad when they put on crap like "Noah's Ark".
But I can watch AbFab on BBC, so while I'd like to see LOGO survive for other reasons, their programming choices are not one of them.
I think the two biggest problems they had was 1. too much of gay for gay entertainment is fair to port and 2. most gays don't seem to watch the good stuff that they had. I don't think a channel can survive anymore when it has a very narrow and specific content - it needs to address its demographic audience and its diverse taste. Andy Cohen has done that with Bravo.
ReplyDeleteLook at Glee - a very good network show, very positive portrayal of Gays and anti bully and yet how many GLBT's don't watch it? It used to be that we would flock to shows that even hinted at having a gay character and now we take it for granted.
It wasn't that long ago that there were no gays on tv but contrary to what GLAD thinks, we're on every day everywhere. We have Ellen, Andy and Rosie five days a week, we have numerous news people - Rachael, Thomas Roberts and a few others I can't remember just now. We have Top Chef, Project Runway, Tabatha's, Survivor, and too many more reality shows featuring mostly gay or gay participants to list. You have Suze Oreman.
We had the lesbian wedding on Friends in 1995, the gay football bully coming out on Buffy in 1998 (sorry Glee).
You also have NetFlix and Hulu to access almost any GLBT documentary, web series, TV show and more.
Comcast only offered Logo here as part of its ultra-premium "Hell In A Handbasket" package. I offered to trade all 53 of my various sports channels for just that one, but no dice.
ReplyDeleteI gotta be honest- I think I actually chose to watch Logo programming like twice.
ReplyDeleteMost of it just wasn't very good. And I filled my gay TV quotient mostly by watching pro wrestling and ultimate fighting.
It's a shame they can't get this together. I have been in contact with them since my posts hit their desks. I really think they should fire everyone and start over.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the shout-out, Stevie. I really appreciate that.
I have to admit I never really got hooked. The programming was generally of the mind-numbing reality variety that is neither "real" nor interesting in my humble opinion.
ReplyDeleteBuh-Bye Logo.
Can't say I'll notice it's gone; they never seemed to have much of interest on offer, whenever I looked over their listings. Then there was that whole "Ann Coulter" thing, which more or less killed any interest I had in paying attention to anything they put out. Same reason I don't watch "Glee": I don't want to support the nut-jobs, even indirectly.
ReplyDelete