HOW TO DRIVE AWAY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE:

The man who isn't there: Broadcast networks reel as record numbers of young men ignore their offerings. (Gloria Goodale, 11/07/03, CS Monitor)

Glenn Fajardo rides a mean motorcycle when he gets the chance. This 24-year-old computer technician by day, online enthusiast by night, wishes he had more time for his bike.

Between his job and the various online communities he frequents (one for poetry, another for singles), not to mention his goal to get back to graduate school for advanced networking training, he has little time for the open road. And, to the chagrin of TV executives on both coasts, few hours for what he and his buddies consider "old-fashioned" entertainment, television.

"Oh, I keep it on when I'm cooking or getting ready to go out," says the cheerful techie. But he looks quizzical when asked about one of the broadcasting world's currently favorite concepts, "appointment TV."

Shows that you actually change your plans to watch? "Nah," he says with a laugh. "I keep the TV on the Discovery Channel or something interesting when I leave it on," he says, adding with a grimace, "Why would I keep it on the broadcast networks?" [...]

Primetime pundits call Fajardo and his cohorts a canary in the network mine. "It's time for the broadcaster to wake up to what's going on right under their noses," says TV historian Ed Robertson. "The television audience has been changing for a while," he says. "People have far too many other choices of what to do with their time, and it's never going to go back to the good old days when most people - especially young people - choose TV as their first entertainment choice."

Of course, when we were younger you had Police Woman, Charlie's Angels, Wonder Woman, Battle of the Network Stars, etc. Today you've got, Absolutely Pink: After decades of near-invisibility, gays are coming out of TV screens on both sides of the Atlantic — and they're a huge hit. What makes gay TV so completely fabulous? (JUMANA FAROUKY, 11/10/03, TIME)

Pink is just one in a lineup of gay-oriented (but not gay-exclusive) shows on the network, which is owned by Dutch-financed company XAT Production and has been featuring normal gay folk for more than a year. Alongside lighthearted semispoof shows like Pink, GAY-TV carries movies (but no porn), music videos, celebrity-gossip shows and serious current-affairs programs, all designed to give homosexual audiences a familiar voice but also get straight viewers to tune in.

It's an increasingly popular formula on both sides of the Atlantic. The runaway hit of American television is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy — a series in which style-challenged heterosexuals have their looks and lives overhauled by a squad of gay advisers. Starting this week, Queer Eye will air in the U.K., and a British version of the show is set to launch early next year. And in January, France will see the debut of Pink TV, another gay-themed cable and satellite channel. [...]

Of course, gay themes aren't restricted to gay networks. Mainstream TV's attitude toward gays started growing up in 1997, when American comic Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet in her self-titled sitcom. "It was an important lesson for advertisers and producers who are naturally cautious and who saw that people weren't freaking out, they were kind of interested," says Joshua Gamson, an author and sociology professor at the University of San Francisco. At the same time, advertisers began targeting gay audiences as members of a high-spending demographic. "Once it's demonstrated that you can have a hit with gay characters, commercial TV is amoral," says Gamson. "There are some limitations, but fear of other people's sexuality isn't one of them. A hit is a hit."

From Ellen, it was a quick jump to gay/straight sitcom Will & Grace and finally Queer Eye, with gay men replacing black people as TV's favorite subculture: the oppressed minority, once kept on the fringe, is now center screen defining the new cool. Thanks to Queer Eye's Fab 5 — a quintet of queens ranging from fruity to button-down who use their expertise in fashion, culture, cuisine, grooming and interior design to "make better" (because "makeover" sounds so temporary) a straight man's entire life — the show became a massive hit when it first aired in the States on cable station Bravo in July; it was soon picked up by the NBC network (which owns Bravo) and it now attracts some 7 million viewers every week. The show has been sold into syndication from Australia to Iceland. Advertisers love it, too, with the Fab 5 constantly name-dropping everything from furniture stores (like Pottery Barn and Domain) to shaving products (Neutrogena, Zirh) that the new-and-improved straight guy simply must spend his money on. "We've said this from the beginning, it's not a gay show," says Queer Eye creator David Collins, one of the coproduction team at Scout Productions (Collins is gay; his partner in developing the show, David Metzler, is straight). He came up with the idea in an art gallery in Boston when he saw a group of gay men jump to the defense of a guy being publicly berated by his wife for his poor dress sense. "Queer for us doesn't have a sexual connotation, but it means unique, different, an exciting perspective. All of our guys are credentialed experts. Being gay doesn't mean you automatically have style, taste and class, just like being straight doesn't automatically mean you don't."

Pretty much self-explanatory why young men aren't watching television, isn't it?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 8, 2003 6:23 AM