Looking back at Logo TV: 1st LGBTQ+ network transformed queer representation

Indianapolis Star

a day ago

Brian Graden grew up in the Midwest, closeted through young adulthood because under his beliefs at the time, homosexuality was a sin. Queer representation was nonexistent at home, school or in his community. But seeing LGBTQIA+ people on television allowed him to accept a part of himself he tried to hide for so long.
Graden, now 60, was the first president of Logo TV, the groundbreaking 24-hour LGBTQIA+ television network, which celebrates its 20th anniversary on Monday, June 30. It was on Logo that the now internationally-beloved "RuPaul's Drag Race" aired for the first time in 2009.
Not far away, Colt, who requested USA TODAY only use his first name for privacy reasons, was living a similar life. He remembers sneaking into his family room to watch Logo as a teenager.
"I stumbled upon the Logo channel during a channel-surfing adventure. There would be a pause as I watched the TV before I quickly passed on to one of my regular shows. During the nights I stayed up late, while my family was asleep, I'd navigate back to Logo and felt that difference awaken," Colt said about his queerness.
Over the past 20 years, Logo has changed since its launch on June 20, 2005, an anxious night Graden remembers well. Speaking with USA TODAY, Graden said the network had a nearly 200-page manual for call center employees that featured a decision tree for how to handle callers upset with the network.
"The shocking thing is, when we premiered, there was zero noise, just positive press. And so something had changed ... we either tamped down or got in front of or found a way or it had dissipated," Graden said.
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Before Logo was placed in Graden's lap, he served as MTV's president of entertainment, overseeing network programming. Graden said around 2002 or 2003, a "very pushy and pioneering internal exec" named Matt Farber presented the idea for Logo TV.
"(He) really, really kept just advancing this idea, would not let it go," Graden said.
Judy McGrath, the CEO of MTV at the time, asked Graden to take on the network as president.
The Logo concept was solid, Graden said, but the first roadblock the team faced was securing advertisers.
"I remember months before we were starting, we still had not a single advertiser," Graden said. "I was afraid we were going to have mesothelioma ads just filling every break constantly."
But companies eventually come through, including Subaru, Miller Brewing Company and Tylenol. Graden said many of the companies didn't have advertisements dedicated to the queer community, so Logo created an in-house advertising group to help curate specific ads for the LGBTQIA+ audience.
"It was very last minute when it came together, but we were able to go to market with enough advertisers that gave us credibility," Graden said.
Getting started, the majority of Logo's content was pulled from a movie library, Graden said. This gave the network access to plenty of content for 24-hour broadcasting.
Some of Logo's first original series were: "Noah's Arc," a fictional series about a group of gay Black men in Los Angeles, which Colt remembers watching at home; "Open Bar," a reality series about a gay man who opens a bar in Los Angeles; and "The Ride: Seven Days to End AIDS," a docuseries following the annual seven-day cycling event in California that raised awareness for HIV/AIDS.
But without a doubt, the most popular original show to come from Logo was "RuPaul's Drag Race," a reality competition series that follows contestants of drag performers competing to be "America's Next Drag Superstar," hosted by none other than RuPaul himself. The series premiered in February 2009.
In the beginning of Logo, Graden said he was hesitant about drag content on the network.
"All I could see were the images of the gay Pride parades, and I knew how those images had been used against us," Graden told USA TODAY. "I always said, 'Look, drag content is fun and funny, but I don't think it's the first thing we should put out there.'"
Graden also felt Logo had covered its drag basis by broadcasting movies like "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," the 1995 comedy about three drag queens on a road trip.
But the pitch for "RuPaul's Drag Race" was solid.
"They came in and they had thought through each beat remarkably, remarkably well. They knew how every minute of television was going to be filled," Graden said. "If you watch it now, you know exactly which beat is coming where and that skeleton was obvious then. That's how they pitched it."
Unlike Logo's other original programming, the network couldn't produce a pilot and test how audiences liked "RuPaul's Drag Race." The competitive nature of the show made it was an all or nothing.
"And so we went all in ... and it was one of the first shows to immediately have a pulse. It was thrilling. In a million years, I would've never imagined that it became what it became. Anybody who arrogantly says they know in the moment that it's (a television show) the biggest thing on earth, no way. I was just hoping it would hold its own and get a little bit of a number on Logo to justify spending all that money," Graden said with a chuckle.
After a successful nine seasons, "RuPaul's Drag Race" left Logo and began airing on the celebrity television network VH1 in 2017. Then in 2023, the series moved to MTV. The series' leave from its original network played a significant role in how Logo operates today.
Paramount did not respond to requests for comment about Logo TV when contacted by USA TODAY.
Graden left Logo in 2010, a year after the "RuPaul Drag Race" premiere. He said he was interested in starting his own media company, which he did, and didn't "fit" with new network executives.
In 2013, Logo pivoted, turning much of its original programming to social media. The network launched 10 original shows on its YouTube channel and continues to maintain new content on the platform.
As for Logo the television network, original content is not produced for the network anymore and the bulk of its offerings are re-runs. Graden attributes this to the general decline of cable.
Despite how Logo operates today, its impact on the queer community was transformational for people like Colt, who says Logo helped him process what he was feeling in a "proper way."
"Queer representation is human representation. Growing up, I saw more fire safety ads (for) 'Stop, Drop and Roll' than I did anything LGBT. I wholly expected to catch fire more often than see a gay person," Colt told USA TODAY.