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Kevin and Darren live in Portland Oregon and are a gay, committed couple. We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all...regardless of sexual orientation, gender, race, nationality, financial status, and being. Erase man-made borders and "they" become "we". New Site: HERE.Monday, November 8
In France, gay TV channel is a 'small step in heels'
PARIS -- Along the boulevards, images of two cuddling men can still bring some pedestrians to a halt below a slogan promoting Liberte, Egalite and Tele.
But the advertisements for Pink TV, France's new gay television channel, delivered their most provocative message with a 1984 photograph of two politicians, Francois Mitterrand of France and Helmut Kohl of Germany, in suits and sober expressions, hands linked. With it was a caption: "There's more to life than sex."
The ad ignited exactly the outrage that Pink TV's founder and president, Pascal Houzelot, savors. "It's a joke, and everyone knows they're not gay," he said. "But there is some truth that men can have a deep relationship and sex is not part of it."
Such is the approach of the pay channel, based in Paris, which bills itself as a "giant leap for television, a small step in high heels." Pink TV's founder is gay, its sportscaster is a transsexual, and its investors are among the titans of French media: TF1, Canal Plus and M6 along with Francois Henry Pinault, of the retailer Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, and Pierre Berge, the co-founder of Yves Saint Laurent.
The station's debut comes a few months ahead of that of Logo in the United States, a cable channel backed by MTV that also intends to devote its programming to gay issues.
Pink TV, which went on air Oct. 25, glorifies the gay lifestyle without the politics, and it offers some X-rated fare, shown four times a week after midnight.
The programming is a mix of camp and culture, reviving the career of the '70s U.S. action heroine Wonder Woman. The channel offers Japanese manga cartoons and profiles of Princess Diana and Freddy Mercury of the rock group Queen.
The fiercest criticism has come from people outraged at the exploitation of the Mitterrand photograph. But within the gay community, the reviews have also been mixed. Alain Piriou, a spokesman for Inter-LGBT, a gay and lesbian rights group, said Pink TV's programming emphasized consumerism and created caricatures.
"We don't all live in beautifully decorated apartments with lots of money to spend," Piriou said.
Houzelot estimates that he needs 180,000 subscribers to pay 9 euros (about $11.60) a month to produce 80 percent of Pink TV's revenue. The remainder is expected to come from advertisers. Ads for Nissan, BMW and L'Oreal have already been commissioned. Another sponsor is Gaz de France, the energy company.
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