Another homo finds a home in the gay-black niche

Carson’s Talk Show Shows Lifetime’s Colors

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There was a time when Carson Kressley was the golden boy of a little network called Bravo, an underdog in a sea of cable channels looking to cement their voices. He once led four other charges on a New York metro area witch hunt for heterosexual fashion mistakes on a show called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, later chopped down to just Queer Eye.

After a season or two, his show began tanking in the rankings, and its buzz factor wore off as other programs with similar formats entered the market. Kressley looked doomed to be ushered into the shadows of reality television has-beens. And then Lifetime came knocking.

They had a little show called How to Look Good Naked they wanted him to host, and in February 2007, word arrived he’d be leading yet another makeover show about feeling good about yourself, but this time for women. When the show premiered nearly a year later in January, it set record numbers with Lifetime; 1.6 million viewers tuned in, and Kressley was solidified as a television commodity.

Very quickly, Kressley became the male face of Lifetime; perhaps more importantly, it was Lifetime’s acknowledgment that its unofficial tagline, “Television for women (and gay men)” was part of its operating procedure.

Thus, it’s only logical, then, that Lifetime wants to extend its investment in Kressley. With his own talk show. This is big.

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