Absolutely Pink

At first glance, it might look like any other game show. Two nervous contestants hold their hands over their buzzers while a toothy host lightly mocks them; an overdramatized countdown clock tick-tocks to build the pressure. But then there's the set: a life-sized homage to Barbie's Dream House. And the contest categories, which focus heavily on Cher and Liz Taylor. And the fact that reigning champion Maddy, the femme fatale brunet in the low-rider jeans and bust-hugging purple top, was born a man.

Welcome to Pink, one of the most popular programs on GAY-TV, Italy's 24-hour satellite channel. "I want to show that gay people are not UFOs," Pink host Fabio Canino says during a taping break. "I hate the word normal, but that's the only way to explain it."

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.

GAY-TV began in May 2002 as an experiment in niche marketing, but quickly pulled in major advertisers like Dolce & Gabbana, Eagle Pictures and Renault (with an ad for the Clio that shows a male cop pulling over a car, looking at the male driver and whipping out his pad — to write not a ticket, but his phone number). The channel claims peak-hour viewership of up to 500,000 Italian households. The numbers may be small compared to the major networks, but they do contain a fabulous little secret: nearly half of the audience for GAY-TV is straight. "We do not want to create gay programs, but programs that come from a gay point of view," says the channel's director, Francesco Italia. "If we do something funny, everyone wants to laugh. If we talk about emotions, that's something everybody knows about. Some people may turn on GAY-TV and ask, 'Where are the homosexuals?' That's because they're used to seeing the images of gays on regular TV and they always seem to be in wigs and high heels."

France's Pink TV aims to use similar programming to reach thousands of French homosexuals, as well as to "seduce people who aren't gay, but identify with the values of freedom, tolerance and openness," says the channel's marketing and communication director, Pierre Garnier. Unlike the GAY-TV audience, who can pick up the channel free with a satellite dish, Pink TV viewers will pay an extra j9 a month to watch the selection of game shows, documentaries and lifestyle programs. A secure code will also allow access to four adult films it plans to air per week. This has caused the channel's launch to be delayed for two months; while France's broadcasting regulator csa has given approval for Pink TV to show porn, it's still not satisfied that the channel's encryption system is foolproof. Undaunted, Garnier says it hopes to gather 180,000 subscribers in the next three years. "The ideal is to have one-third gay boys, one-third gay girls and one-third straight viewership," he says.

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."