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GAY CHANNEL DEBUTS -- WHERE ARE THE PROTESTS?
Wednesday, June 29 2005
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Conservative religious and family groups have remained surprisingly silent in advance of the debut of Viacom's gay channel Logo on Thursday. The channel is due to roll out in 10 million homes on basic cable in major markets serviced by Time Warner Cable, Adelphia, Cablevision and RCN. (Although a spokesperson for the channel said Tuesday that it was confident Comcast would also carry the channel at launch, Comcast issued a statement Tuesday denying that it would do so.) However, as today's (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times observed, "Logo faces one stumbling block most start-ups never have to contend with: to some, its very existence might prove offensive." In fact, the operator of the pay-TV channel Q, which also targets the gay population, has predicted that the backlash for Logo is coming. Frank Olsen, president and CEO of Q, told the Times that he deliberately made Q a subscription network rather than a basic cable channel in order to protect it from conservative pressure groups. "Sometimes you cannot push your agenda too far," Olsen told the newspaper. "I don't know how you can be a gay station and not offend people.... I don't know if the Christian right is willing to accept this."
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