juan said:
Lets see The Asian Community is much larger than the "gay" community yet the dont have any channels in e*'s regular line up!! the African-American community only gets one channel !! There are no channels for disabled Americans!! No channels for "straight" Americans(I mean that cater strictley to straight Americans) No channels for most other ethnc minorities!! Why should gay people get their own channel?? because the bitch and moan louder than most other people!! percisely why I say E* should never ever consider adding this channel unles they treat it like they do every other ethnic/minority channel..put it on a side satellite and charge an outrageous fee to subscribe!!!
Asian-Americans make up 4.2% of the US population- smaller than the generally accepted numbers for the gay population. I'm not saying that makes them less important, just correcting your statement. And DISH carries Chinese news from CCTV in English, Spanish and French in the "regular lineup". Again- just correcting your facts.
Even when you look at that 4.2%, you have to break that into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, ect.
I agree with you completely on the African-American point... DISH should be carrying The Word, MBC, the BET Multiplexes, or whatever else.
Regarding "no channels for disabled Americans"- well you've answered your own question...there is no such channel. It's actually a pretty good idea from a financial standpoint. Disabled people may watch more TV in general if they are homebound, and there are plenty of specialty products to market to them. If one ever exists, I would expect DISH to carry it.
I'm not sure what a "straight" channel would be. Seems like 70%-80% of all channels have no "gay" content whatsoever. I don't know how to make a channel that's "straighter" without getting into KlansVision territory again.
As for the other "ethnic minorities"- well the problem is you are comparing foreign language to special interest. And there are dozens and dozens of different languages on those channels, all of which can only be understood by a tiny, tiny, TINY minority. Sure, DISH carries a couple Spanish language channels in the basic tiers. But Spanish is understood by a huge portion of America as opposed to Japanese. Even so, they charge extra for most of them.
Of course, there are a few of the expensive ethnic channels that ARE in English...I know most of Arraing's (a Korean interest channel) programming is in English. I would have no problem if this was added to a basic package. There are many Korean-Americans that don't even speak Korean, and I'm sure they would appreciate this channel. Better yet, someone should come up with a general interest, English language, Asian-American channel along the lines of SiTV. Have different programming that appeals to all different Asian races
The point is, most of these channels are useful to such a microscopic portion of the population, mainly because of the language barrier. I have watched Arraing when it was in free preview mode because it was interesting to see a different culture. But if it was actually in Korean, I wouldn't have. I also watch SiTV occasionaly. SiTV was a great idea. There are millions of Hispanics in America that don't speak Spanish, but don't get to see their culture represented on English-speaking TV.
Logo is kind of the SiTV of gay channels. This is not gay porn. It's not HERE, or the aborted Triangle TV. It's a mainstream channel that has mainstream entertainment that appeals to gays. But it can also appeal to straights as well. I have zero interest in HERE.
Logo must be compared to special-interest channels to judge it's value. It should be compared to Style, Fine Living, Outdoor Channel, ect. But unfortunately, there are no widespread phobias regarding those channels, so Logo has to fight harder.
If gays, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, ect were properly represented in mainstream media, we wouldn't need specialty channels at all. But they aren't. Straight white people are over represented.