Both Huffington Post and Queerty are reporting that Logo has made a huge decision: To abandon the mission to program “gay TV.”
According to the reports, the attempt to get gays and their haggish friends watch a network just because gay people were on it didn’t work. The evidence: The A-List: New York netted about 150,000 viewers per ep; Bravo’s Real Housewives averages about 4 million. Apparently, the lesson was: Gays won’t tune into awful, cliche-ridden, badly produced reality shows just because they feature gay stereotypes.
Uh-huh.
This is, to me, ridiculous news. What Logo is basically doing is blaming its audience — “gays should want to watch other gays, but they won’t,” seems to be the message. It has nothing to do with, say, the programming being terrible.
Logo, to me, has always struggled to produce quality shows targeted to gay viewers. I don’t mind 1 Girl, 5 Gays … except that it’s shot in Canada and airs first on MTV. Imagine, gay Texans not caring about a bunch of Canucks offering their opinions on Avril Lavigne and what they did in “grade 8!” Surprise! Hey, maybe if you did the same show with Americans, gaymericans would watch.
True, Real Housewives has taken some critical drubbings; on the other hand, not all have been successful (when’s the last time you saw an original RH: Miami or RH: D.C.?). And let’s face it: The quality on many of the Logo shows is not great. The one about the gay guy who shoots Angelenos full of Botox? Ugh. Who could stomach such nonsense? And the movies they air tend to be older, heavily edited (to remove offensive content… you know, like gay stuff) and irrelevant, not to mention overladen with ads. Plus, the network itself is horribly managed: Shows are pulled or start late all the time, so you set your DVR and miss that last five minutes… or see the ending of the movie you were about to rent.
Please, Logo, stop blaming the gays for your network not working. You used to cover some news (with a straight guy who was pretty but with the personality of a pencil in brief segments ), but don’t do anything serious; I love RuPaul’s shows, but that can’t be the only thing on your network.
So consider this: Program better TV. Schedule better shows. Pick better movies. Hire smarter (gayer?) producers. Don’t assume all gay people are — or want to watch — bitchy 20something queeny boys who would sooner so take meth than mention politics intelligently. You make better shows, I guarantee you, we’ll tune in.
Well, not now. Abandon us, will ya? Just wait to see how quickly we abandon you.
plus they don’t pay their bills, allegedly
We all tuned in to “Queer As Folk” because the series addressed just about every issue facing our community: dating, marriage, immigration, gay bashing, discrimination, separation (i. e. breakup of LTR), substance abuse, alcoholism, HIV, familial relations and even death. There were times when it was predictable, but many occasions when it was not so. The show also portrayed the good, the bad, the ugly and some other stuff which couldn’t be classified in any of those categories. The series had few if any limitations when it came to subject matter and reality. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the rest of Logo’s gay-themed programming.
QAF was Showtime, not Logo. But the good news is that there won’t be a season 2 of that Dallas reality show.
Logo was just an attempt to get ad dollars for the coveted homo audience. They thought companies would pony up big time to get their stuff in front of us free spending gays, and it didn’t matter what sort of drivel they programmed, cause we nelly boys would watch anything with a rainbow flag waving around it.
@David: Shows you how much attention I pay to which network airs which programs, doesn’t it!
I thought the only thing they aired was the stupid RuPaul show. Seems like it was always on. New, Now, NEXT!
You hit the gay nail on the gay head Mr. AWJ.
The thing is, many large corporations have actually dollar targets they HAVE to spend on gay media. A TV station made sense — if X Corp must spend $1 million in gay ads, why not just take their money? The audience must have been a secondary concern… as it is now. Of note: NOTHING about the change is apparent from the Logo websites, even the press site. Guess they are staying in the closet about this…
Or simply praying their gay away.
personally I don’t watch LOGO for the only “quality” programming” they carry is a British sitcom I first watched on both BBC America and Comedy Central (absolutely Fabulous), for a marathon, I might watch a couple. BUT (and a big one at that) on the other hand is the cliche gay shows and the channel hasn’t bothered to bring the community together in any way. All the shows are marketed for a “younger” audience and it seems LOGO has completely FORGOTTEN about gays and lesbians that came decades before. Yes, there IS LOTS of quality out there. I tuned in between the Monkees marathon because LOGO showed “Night Of The Comet” (good choice), to me it is things like that, LOGO should re-vamp the show producers and programmers for they are only catering to the “hot and lovely”, not even the brainy and THAT is SAD. Shame, I actually was excited about a gay channel, until I saw what a Frankenhooker it became! Another great film they should show! Sorry “gurlz” but RuPaul can’t carry a network on his own!
It is my opinion that Logo should get a clue that not all of us want to watch day after day of the Frankenhooker (thanks John) and Buffy net work. Spend some money on entertaining programing that has some appeal to us queer folks, we will watch. Queer as Folk was great couldn’t wait for new episodes each week
RuPaul iks the ugliest creature on the planet. I do not watch ugliness.
I never thought what was on LOGO was really the best they could be. At least they tried to feature segments, news, etc interesting to gays. I thought it could have been MUCH better tho. What they have evolved into is just pure garbage. Mostly its the rupaul show which is just a terrible reflection on the gay world. It seems like somebody could come up with a channel and fill it with a variety of programs geared towards all gays. Playing decent gay themed moves half the tiime to fill up the programming wouldeven be good. Trying to make the channel into a gay bravo but with even tackier shows (the a-list NY) for one,just sucked. Terrible programminng now.
very few gay programs….Buffy? Nip/Tuck? A list was great….too much Rupaul…quit showing same movies over and over this station has way too many repeats….get out to the clubs and bars make some intrest in Logo….Gay people need to be wowed