New Gay Channel Finds Controversy Up North

Cable World, Sept 3, 2001 by Will Lee

Some operators balk at packaging PrideVision

A new network catering entirely to gay and lesbian audiences will be launching this week--but only in Canada for now.

Toronto-based PrideVision TV will make its debut as one of more than 20 new digital networks required to be carried by cable and satellite providers by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. As a result, the controversial, ad-supported channel will be previewed by many of Canada's cable subscribers as part of a three-month free trial of those networks intended to jump-start the country's digital cable effort.

But despite its most-favored nation endorsement by the government, PrideVision still faces challenges from operators, some of whom refuse to bundle the network with others in digital packages, thereby forcing those who want to see it to pay separately for it. Others, like Canada's No.2 MSO, Shaw Cable, won't include the channel in its preview lineup. Shaw chairman Jim Shaw, quoted in the Financial Post, predicted a "consumer revolt" if PrideVision were to be packaged with other offerings. (The same skittishness doesn't seem to apply to SexTV, another of the new digital networks, which--in its previous incarnation as a weekly show--had treated subjects such as "The Puppetry of the Penis" and "Kosher Sex.")

The network is owned by Headline Media, which also owns The Score, a sportsnews network, and aims to have 150,000-200,000 subscribers in Canada by the end of 2002, says Anna McCusker, VP-marketing.

Whatever the case, what PrideVision's subscribers will be seeing--if and when they get it--is a mix of mostly acquired programmming from Britain and the U.S., including MTV's salacious Undressed and DykeTV, a lesbian-themed newsmagazine produced by a group of Manhattanites that has aired on public access channels in 50 cities around the U.S. From the UK's BBC and Channel 4 PrideVision has imported the often raunchy talk show So Graham Norton, as well as Gimme Gimme Gimme, described as a gay Absolutely Fabulous, and Metrosexuality, a half-hour drama about a straight teen-ager with two gay, but estranged, fathers. The network will also be producing a news and public-affairs program called Shout!

For all the nuisances it's facing in Canada, PrideVision is also eyeing a more difficult challenge: entering the U.S. "We're definitely planning to be in the U.S. by next summer, possibly the spring, says McCusker. The network's sales team "has experienced a great deal of interest" from advertisers already, she says.

American-born, gay-themed networks like C1TV and the Gay Cable Network have struggled to gain carriage, and their exposure has largely been confined to Internet presences. And Triangle TV, a Palm Springs, Calif.-based venture, has tried to go the satellite route but has been been unsuccessful thus far.

"It's a cultural difference," says Kevin McClelland, regional media director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), of the seeming divide between Canada and the U.S. in the gay-cable arena. "Canada's just so much more progressive than we are on lesbian and gay rights and issues," he says. McClelland nonetheless professes "surprise" at the success of such programming as the Showtime series Queer As Folk and Bravo's annual "Out of the Closet" Week, which has featured documentaries and feature films dealing with the gay experience.

Some of the difficulty for gay networks has been the urban-centricity of its intended community. As Frank Hughes, SVP-programming for the National Cable Television Co-operative, which represents small operators with a combined 12 million subscribers, puts it, "For my member systems, which serve smaller communities in the midsection of the country, [a gay-themed network] would have very limited appeal. They simply would not be interested in that kind of programming."

Triangle's CEO and founder, Frank Olson, refutes the contention that gay product wouldn't play in Peoria, explaining that his target viewer is "the gay farmer in North Dakota who wants to participate in the gay community but has no outlet in his particular town."