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If a straight man successfully made it to the show’s end, he would win $25,000. But, the leading man didn’t know the twist beneath the surface: nearly half of the men were straight, looking to trick him into picking them. But the very few examples of queer dating shows thus far are nearly all connected by a dangerous thread meant to spark entertaining drama: deceit.īravo’s 2003 Boy Meets Boy acted as a sort of Bachelor style show, where its gay male lead whittled down a group of 15 men until he found the one.
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So what about original programming dedicated to queer people looking for love? Though not existing in the same breadth and scope of straight-focused dating shows, it would be factually inaccurate to claim that no one in TV history has ever tried. Whether they’re right or wrong, most producers of straight-focused dating competition shows still find themselves unwilling to take a big risk in breaking their mold - a mold stable enough to reap constant success over the span of decades, but fragile enough to collapse with the introduction of queerness. He doubled down on this stance further as recently as 2019, saying “The Bachelor doesn’t create and drive social issues… It’s an entertainment show, so let’s stay in our lane.” When Love Island premiered a recent season, they addressed similar issues in terms of a disturbance to established formatting as production cited “logisticaly difficulties” preventing queer cast members appearing on the show. He suggests that disturbing that carefully crafted mold could alienate viewers and affect business. When asked about the possibility of a gay lead, he made it clear that this was not in the realm of possiblity, saying, “The question is: Is it a good business decision?.Look if you’ve been making pizzas for 12 years and you’ve made millions of dollars and everybody loves your pizzas, and someone comes and says ‘Hey, you should make hamburgers.’ Why? I have a great business model, and I don’t know if hamburgers are going to sell.” The established market that Harrison and early pioneers of the reality dating competition show have created is formulaic, with a new cast of characters fitting the mold each season. Chris Harrison, former host of the Bachelor for nearly 20 years, spoke on the matter in 2014 for an interview with the New York Times. Would it not be easy to make queer versions of already existing reality shows? Apparently not, as according to hosts and producers of television’s most popular dating shows, this lack of queerness is not a coincidence, but rather an intentional choice made for a variety of business factors. For straight reality TV, just about every geographic location and odd set of circumstances seems to have been covered, but even naming three shows featuring LGBTQ+ cast members would be nearly impossible for most of us, because in truth, TV has not produced them. You can watch heterosexual couples disguise themselves with prosthetics as furry-like creatures to date each other without the influence of looks, you can watch them pine after a Prince Harry lookalike, or you can watch gorgeous heterosexual singles struggle to stay abstinent for a month - even with the promise of $100,000 if they do. You can watch straight couples hand out roses to each other, you can watch them fall in love on the beach, you can watch contestants hand roses to each other on the beach.
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And when it comes to reality TV centered around heterosexual couples, there is truly no stone that producers have left unturned in producing shows. Not only is it a universal and timeless theme, but the way love can make a character behave - irrationally, emotionally, even viciously - creates a gold mine of opportunity for drama on reality television. Love sells, right? Nearly every television show has an element of romance to it, from the bond between Mickey and Minnie on early morning children’s TV to the deeply complex relationships grounding prestige dramas on HBO, love is perhaps the most stable bet to make as a television producer when crafting a program.