HBO RANKS HIGHEST IN THIRD ANNUAL “GLAAD NETWORK RESPONSIBILITY INDEX”
ABC Leads Broadcast Networks for Third Year in a Row; NBC and CBS Receive “Failing” Grades for Lack of Inclusion of the LGBT Community
Los Angeles, CA, July 27, 2009 – The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today released its third annual Network Responsibility Index, a report that maps the quantity, quality and diversity of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television. Primetime programming on the five broadcast networks was evaluated as well as original primetime programming on 10 of the highest-rated cable networks.
HBO scored the highest rating of the 15 networks evaluated with LGBT characters on shows including True Blood, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and Entourage that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of the LGBT community. Of HBO’s 14 original series, 10 included LGBT content and 42 percent of the network’s total programming hours included LGBT representation.
“This year programming was not only inclusive of LGBT people, but networks like HBO are beginning to reflect the broad diversity within our community,” said Rashad Robinson, Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD. “With upcoming fall programming and new storylines there is a tremendous opportunity for networks to share the stories of all members of our community including lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as well as LGBT people of color, all groups which continue to be underrepresented across all networks.”
GLAAD reviewed a total of 4,901 hours of primetime programming for inclusion of LGBT characters or issues on the five major networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox and NBC) from June 1, 2008 to May 31, 2009. GLAAD also examined 1,212.5 hours of original primetime programming on 10 highly-rated cable networks. Each hour was reviewed for on-screen LGBT representations. Based on the quantity, overall quality and diversity of these representations, a rating was assigned by GLAAD’s Entertainment Media Program to each network: Excellent, Good, Adequate, or Failing.
Additional findings from the GLAAD Network Responsibility Index:
Good
- HBO and Showtime received grades of Good, with HBO leading with 42 percent of programming hours featuring LGBT representations.
- ABC, with shows including Brothers & Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty, again received the highest ranking of the five broadcast networks, earning a Good grade with 24 percent of their primetime programming hours including LGBT representations.
- The CW also received a grade of Good, with 20 percent of their primetime programming hours including LGBT representations.
Adequate
- While Fox received an Adequate, rising from last place and a Failing grade in 2008; 11 percent of its programming hours were LGBT-inclusive, yet some of those hours included problematic content.
- Among cable networks evaluated, TNT showed the largest growth, jumping from one percent of LGBT inclusive primetime programming hours last year to 19 percent. FX posted the sharpest decline, dropping 32 percent over the previous season. Both were graded
Failing
- NBC and CBS received Failing grades, for their 8 and 5 percent, respectively, of programming hours with LGBT images. CBS moved down from third place in last year’s GLAAD Network Responsibility Index to last among the five major broadcast networks.
- A&E, Sci Fi and TBS received grades of Failing.
“Television shows that weave our stories into the fabric of the series present richer, more accurate representations and are the kinds of images that help Americans understand and embrace their LGBT family members, friends and neighbors in a more meaningful way,” said Robinson.
The third annual GLAAD Network Responsibility Index was delivered to programming executives at the 15 graded networks, and GLAAD’s Entertainment Media Program will continue discussions with them to advocate for improvements in the quality, quantity and diversity of their LGBT representations.
The Executive Summary of the report can be viewed online at GLAAD.org. A PDF of the full report can also be downloaded at GLAAD.org.
The 14th Annual GLAAD Where We Are On TV report on diversity will be issued in September 2009. This analysis will examine LGBT inclusion as well as the gender and race/ethnicity of all scripted characters scheduled to appear during the 2009-2010 season.
About GLAAD
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. For more information, please visit www.glaad.org.
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Homosexuals dispel myth of “progressive”
Each year in Germany, from the end of June through August, gay and lesbian rights’ activists celebrate the “Stonewall” uprising - named after a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York, where homosexuals fought back against police brutality in 1969.
Participants in the German parades known as “Christopher Street Day” join other activists around the world who take to the streets to demonstrate gay pride and demand greater freedoms.
Some of those freedoms would include expanded civil rights. In Germany, civil unions, for instance, have been permitted among same-sex couples since 2001, but full marriages are not. Homosexual couples therefore do not enjoy the same rights as married heterosexual couples when it comes to taxes, retirement, civil servant benefits, or adoption law.
For more on gay and lesbian rights and the community in Germany, click on the links below, or listen to this week’s “Living in Germany” program to hear a more personal account of a homosexual civil union.
DW-WORLD.DE
Audios and videos on the topic
See Homosexuals dispel myth of “progressive” Germany Deutsche Welle
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A transgender star sparkles in India’s TV firmament
The neighbourhood is choked with rickshaws, bullock carts, spice stands, saree shops and bangle stalls. It’s India from central casting.
The TV star, not so much. With a long stride and a curvy sashay that sends her chiffon dupatta fluttering around her, Rose Venkatesan emerges from the dust and the crowd, more than ready for her close-up – but with a somewhat anxious air that suggests she is a bit worried about just what that close-up may bring.
Rose is, as she mentions at least once in every conversation, India’s first transgender television star. Once an engineer named Ramesh, she began to transition to female six years ago, to the horror of her conservative family.
Today she is a star, both in India and in the Tamil diaspora, including the large community in Canada. Her first TV talk show had an audience in the tens of millions. She has helped advance the political agenda of transgendered people, typically reviled but recently afforded a rare degree of accommodation by the government in Tamil Nadu. Her second show – which she is producing and directing and writing herself, as well as hosting – has just hit the air and early signs are that it’s a hit too.
Yet Rose, 30, also lives in a strange world of half-acceptance – sharing a home with a family that still calls her Ramesh and forbids her to wear a saree in front of them; hitting the town with her queer friends to flirt and party but insisting on a dark and empty restaurant when she meets a journalist to tell her story. “Weakness is death, strength is life,” she signs every e-mail – but strength, it would seem, can be exhausting.
See A transgender star sparkles in India’s TV firmament
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What will parents do to avoid having a gay son?
In the early 1990s, when genetic research was far less advanced than today, Jonathan Tolins posed the question: If a woman knew in advance that her male baby would be born gay, would she still go through with the pregnancy?
That’s the premise of his 1992 drama “The Twilight of the Golds,” which was filmed for cable television in 1997 and which receives an emotionally gripping staging courtesy of Theatre Out.
Through her husband’s medical research firm, which has devised genetic testing of fetuses, the pregnant Suzanne Gold-Stein (Jennifer Pearce) has discovered that her baby boy has the genetic markers of homosexuality.
The question of whether to keep the baby is, in fact, illuminated by the family’s firsthand experience: Suzanne’s brother David (Tim Woods) is gay, a factor that has, despite their denials, always affected his bond with her and with their parents.
The play is told from the opera-loving David’s point of view, its title a pun drawn from “The Twilight of the Gods,” the fourth opera in Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle. He frames the play’s focal issue when he asks, “What difference does being gay make?” As the story progresses, its ethical complications are magnified, even as Tolins takes time out to assail the materialism of the 1980s.
Complicating the ethical dilemma posed by Tolins is the way it splits the family. For David, who is, ironically, pro-choice, aborting the baby is tantamount to killing him. As much as she dotes on David, mom Phyllis (Karen Harris) has to admit that “it hurts to see your child become something different.”
Seeing genetic testing as a boon to mankind, Suzanne’s husband Rob (Eric James) insists that he and Suzanne “don’t need David to tell us how to live our lives,” while patriarch Walter Gold (Rick Kopps) maintains that “it’s Rob and Suzanne’s decision.”
See What will parents do to avoid having a gay son?
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Hindu guru claims homosexuality can be ‘cured’ by yoga
The world’s most popular Hindu guru, Swami “Baba” Ramdev, has claimed homosexuality can be “cured” by yoga in a petition to India’s Supreme Court.
The television guru whose yoga programmes are watched by an estimated 85 million people throughout the world, made the claim in an appeal to the overturn a ruling last week which legalised homosexuality.
He has warned he will launch nationwide protests if the ruling is not struck down and said all of India’s main religions regarded homosexual acts as sins.
In his petition, he argued that homosexuality was a curable disease and that sufferers could seek a cure.
“It can be treated like any other congenital defect. Such tendencies can be treated by yoga, pranayam and other meditation techniques,” he said.
Pranayam are a series of breathing exercises which include hyperventilation, a slow release of breath while chanting “Om”.
His followers have said there are particular yoga positions which also help prevent sexual urges.
The overturning of India’s law criminalising homosexuality was welcomed by India’s gay community and by campaigners, including several leading designers and Bollywood stars.
See Hindu guru claims homosexuality can be ‘cured’ by yoga
Telegraph.co.uk -
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Gay rights mean different things to different generations of community
Before there were domestic-partnership registries and commitment ceremonies, before same-sex marriages and civil unions — before the gay-rights movement, even — John McCluskey and Rudy Henry met, fell in love and harbored the notion that they could spend their lives making one another happy.
And for 50 years, the Tacoma men went about doing just that, all the while longing for social acceptance.
Even in gay-friendly San Francisco where they first lived together, they found it necessary to hide their relationship from prospective landlords, and on job applications they would sometimes lie about their marital status to avoid raising suspicion.
Decades later in 2006, at a coffee-shop concert on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, Amy Balliett and Jessica Trejo met and they, too, eventually fell in love.
In their 20s, the two had come out as lesbians at a time when young people could find support in groups on high school and college campuses, when they had gay role models in politics and on television, and when their parents probably knew people who were openly gay. By the time the two married in California last October, legal bonds between gays and lesbians were possible in several states.
Balliett and Trejo, Henry and McCluskey are like generational bookends to this modern gay-rights movement, launched 40 years ago this week after a group of activists at a small Manhattan bar called the Stonewall Inn stood up in violent protest to ongoing police harassment.
While older gays and younger ones share much the same agenda of equality, their needs within the movement are also divergent.
Young people, who have at times referred to their own post-gay movement, seek the protections of marriage equality as they form relationships and start families, while gays of their grandparents’ generation are more concerned about issues of aging — like survivor benefits and long-term care.
See Gay rights mean different things to different generations of community
Seattle Times -
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Panel wants openly gay guardsman discharged
A military review panel recommended Tuesday that National Guard Lt. Dan Choi, the gay Arabic translator who became a national figure in fighting the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy after declaring his sexuality on television, be discharged from the service. The four-member Federal Recognition Board of Army officers in Syracuse, N.Y., had no recommendation Tuesday for how the 28-year-old should be discharged. It’s recommendation that the Army no longer recognize Choi as an officer must be approved by the First Army commander and the chief of the National Guard Bureau before Choi would be discharged.
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Bruno — Based on a Real Gay Austrian?!
The dude caught in the middle is Alfons Haider — he’s proud to be gay, he’s into fashion, and (just like Bruno) he’s also been known to compare himself to Zac Efron.
Want more evidence? — Alfons is the highest-paid presenter on Austrian state broadcaster ORF. In the film, Bruno works for a channel called OJRF. Coincidence?
The controversy has been raging in Austria
for a while, but Haider just told The Telegraph newspaper, “I never understood the comparison to myself at all. The only comparisons I can think of is that I’m Austrian, I’m gay, and I work for television, but the rest is completely fiction.”See
Bruno — Based on a Real Gay Austrian?!
TMZ.com -
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Here Networks LLC and Its Publishing Affiliate Complete Merger Deal With PlanetOut Inc.
Here Networks LLC announced today the completion of the business combination of Here Networks LLC and its publishing affiliate, which includes the LGBT publications The Advocate and Out, with PlanetOut Inc. (formerly-traded under the ticker symbol, LGBT). The new public company resulting from this business combination will be named Here Media Inc. with Stephen P. Jarchow serving as Chairman and Paul Colichman serving as CEO.
On Wednesday, June 10, 2009 , the holders of a majority of the outstanding shares of PlanetOut Inc. common stock voted to approve the proposed business combination.
“The close of this deal represents an exciting moment for LGBT consumers across the globe,” said Stephen P. Jarchow and Paul Colichman . “We look forward to bringing new features that will enhance the user experience and keep our customers engaged.”
Here Media now becomes the premier global company for providing news and entertainment to the LGBT community. The company is also uniquely positioned to provide advertisers opportunities to reach its niche audience across platforms including television, online, print publishing, and filmed entertainment. Here Media’s unmatched reach positions the company as a leader in creating an interactive relationship with consumers across all its iconic brands.
Jarchow and Colichman, along with current PlanetOut Inc. Chairman Phil Kleweno , will serve as the initial board of directors of Here Media.
About Here Media
Here Media, Inc. produces and distributes niche content across all platforms worldwide. Here Media’s iconic brands distribute gay media and world cinema programming with universal, humanistic appeal. Its distribution platforms include theaters, television, VOD, broadband, online, print and mobile. It earns subscription, advertising and licensing revenue from its award-winning content.
Here Media owns and operates a variety of media assets including:
- Here Studios, a full service motion picture studio.
- Here Films, a motion picture distribution company.
- here! Networks, a premium television network featuring programming that appeals to a gay and lesbian audience airing in 96 of the top 100 US markets, including every top 10 market.
- Iconic print brands including Out, Advocate and HIV Plus, as well as Alyson Books .
- Online properties including Gay.com, Planetout.com, Advocate.com, Out.com and SheWired.com which provide broadband video and social networking.
Paul Colichman is Chief Executive Officer of Here Media and Stephen P. Jarchow is Chairman. Together, they have produced and/or distributed over 200 motion pictures including Academy Award(R) winners “Gods and Monsters” and “Departures”.
Forward-Looking Statements
In addition to the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding Here Media’s plans to launch new technologies and user experiences., .These statements include those containing the words “believes,” “anticipates,” “expects,” and similar words. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, the limited operating history and variability of operating results of Here Media and its subsidiaries; ability to achieve its operating plan; competition; timing and success of product launches; success of marketing efforts; and dependence on technology infrastructure, cable and satellite operators and the Internet. Additional information concerning factors that could affect Here Media’s future business and financial results is included in Here Media’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
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Equality California, Jordan / Rustin Coalition Launch Mobilization Effort on Marriage for Same-Sex Couples in African-American Communities, Outreach Includes TV ad, on-the-ground organizing
Los Angeles – As same-sex couples who were able to legally marry last year celebrate their one-year-anniversaries, Equality California (EQCA) and Jordan / Rustin Coalition (JRC) are together launching an education and mobilization effort on the freedom to marry in LA’s African-American communities. The effort includes a TV commercial, on-the-ground organizers and a dedicated field office, which will be based in South Los Angeles, a predominantly African-American community.
“Jordan / Rustin Coalition is happy to partner with Equality California as we do the work to open the hearts and minds of all Californians, including those in the Black community, on the question of marriage for same-sex couples,” said Ron Buckmire, JRC board president. “Our partnership includes a multi-media campaign, outreach and public education and even the nuts and bolts of staffing and supplies. I am confident that together we will see the day when full LGBT equality is restored to our state.”
As part of today’s launch, the organizations released a television ad that features a gay African-American couple, Xavier and Michael Boykin-Haggood, along with three of their five children, Dante, Emmanuel and Fatima. The family lives in LA’s Leimert Park neighborhood. Their ad is scheduled to air starting the week of June 22nd.
The office is slated to open later this summer. JRC, EQCA, and a coalition of grassroots and community leaders rooted in South Los Angeles will work collaboratively to organize outreach events and lead door-to-door efforts to talk with African-American Californians.
Equality California (EQCA) is the largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender-rights advocacy organization in California. In the past decade, EQCA has strategically moved California from a state with extremely limited legal protections for LGBT individuals to a state with some of the most comprehensive civil-rights protections in the nation. EQCA has passed over 50 pieces of legislation and continues to advance equality through legislative advocacy, public education and community empowerment. www.eqca.org
The mission of the Barbara Jordan / Bayard Rustin Coalition (or Jordan / Rustin Coalition) is to empower Black same-gender loving, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals and families in Greater Los Angeles, to promote equal marriage rights and to advocate for fair treatment of everyone without regard to race, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. www.jordanrustin.org
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