Teligence, Cowboy

After its gay-themed programs became a hit this summer, Bravo Network found too much of a good thing and backed out of carrying commercials for two sexually-charged businesses.

The network briefly carried a commercial for Interactive Male, a gay phone chat service, in its primetime "Boy Meets Boy" and later "Queer Eye For the Straight Guy" programs, but then drew the line when a gay chat web site, mygaydar,com, also offered up an ad.

An ad rep told mygaydar.com by email: "Bravo will be unable to air the commercial due to Standards & Practices issues." Subsequently, Interactive Male's spot was pulled off air after Bravo said it had gotten "a complaint," the New York Daily News reported.

The Interactive Male ad features a cowboy dressed in a tight black tank top as he saddles up a horse and says, "If you know exactly what you want, or are just a little bit curious about it, call Interactive Male now."

While NBC-owned Bravo left the two advertisers without answers as to why their ads were not running, a press statement was issued: "After careful review it was the network's opinion that these spots were inappropriate for broadcast on Bravo. Had the ads been heterosexual in nature, the same determination would have been made."

Bravo has not officially elaborated, but an executive at the network shared off the record that the rejection came when mygaydar.com provided printed materials that included "borderline pornographic photographs" such as a naked man kneeling in front of another. The executive added that the Interactive Male spot was pulled after complaints about it, a "significant amount" of whom identified themselves as gay, though an actual number was not known.

"We try to keep our ads non-explicit and tame," says Manson Osmond, senior brand manager for Interactive Male at its parent company, Teligence, "We've gained a lot of strides in media in the last few years," noting its entry to outdoor media and network television, 97% of it after 10 p.m.

Teligence, based in Vancouver, owns five adult chat lines. Four of them are straight, pulling in $74 million in combined revenues, over $11 million from the gay one. The company targets ads at male programs and dating shows in particular. "We're not looking just for gay men but we also go after closeted and bi-curious people," Osmond says.

Meanwhile, Teligence was owed by Bravo for advertising it bought months later. Osmond says an executive with Advantage Media Services, which buys advertising for them, was told by Bravo to "wait a month or so for everything to blow over and then they would reinstate us for 'Queer Eye' " in late night.

"It did really well for us," Osmond notes of the program's response rate.

Winning its biggest ratings ever with "Boy Meets Boy" and "Queer Eye" (over 3.35 million viewers alone), Bravo has become a rare opportunity for marketers to reach sizeable gay audiences -- although specific audience demographic data is lacking. Orbitz created the first gay twist on a straight commercial and aired it with much attention.