AllDeaf.com - Boy meets Boy

Bravo Readies Gay Dating Show, 'Boy Meets Boy'
By Ben Berkowitz

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It's the latest twist in reality television: boy meets boy, boy falls in love with boy, and then boy finds out other boy was pretending to like boys in the first place.

Bravo, the cable arts and entertainment channel owned by the NBC unit of General Electric Co., on Tuesday said it will launch "Boy Meets Boy," billed as TV's first gay dating series, this summer.

But as with most reality programs, this one has a hook -- some of the potential suitors are actually heterosexual but were asked by producers to act homosexual.

"The idea is to have the straight men there to really challenge the audience's preconceived notions of what is gay and what is straight," Kirk Marcolina, the show's supervising producer, told Reuters.

The show marks the latest attempt by Bravo to reach the gay audience that by some estimates represents at least 7 percent of the U.S. population and spends as much as $500 billion a year.

Major networks like Showtime and MTV, units of Viacom Inc., are reported to be working on developing a gay network, following on the success of Showtime shows like "Queer as Folk."

"The gay market is less and less mysterious all the time." said Michael Wilke, the executive director of the Commercial Closet Association, which works to improve the image of gays and lesbians in advertising.

Bravo said "Boy Meets Boy" will feature a leading man who spends eight days on location with 15 potential partners and turns to a trusted female friend to whittle down the prospects.

Marcolina said the leading man, a 32-year-old who works in human resources at a California law firm, finds out halfway through the show that some of his potential partners are straight.

"We told the leading man and all the guys -- 'We want you to see this as a fun experience, don't look to necessarily fall in love,"' he said, adding that the producers wanted to avoid springing any mean surprises on anyone.

In one such notorious case, a Michigan man, Jonathan Schmitz, was sentenced in September 1999 to a minimum of 25 years in prison after killing a gay acquaintance who surprised Schmitz by declaring he had a crush on the straight man during a TV show taping.

Bravo's summer schedule will also include "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," a reality series where five gay men from various worlds of style make-over a straight man.