"The simple reality is that gays and lesbians are invisible in broadcast media in America - you can't do an all-gay show by all-gay people and put it on the radio or TV," says PlanetOut CEO Tom Rielly.
On the Internet, of course, it's a different story - and PlanetOut on Thursday announced its latest step toward becoming the largest all-gay, all-the-time media company with the acquisition of the GLOradio gay and lesbian broadcast network.
"Becoming a part of PlanetOut gives us the opportunity to ride a very big wave into the future - collectively we are the largest gay and lesbian media company in the world," says GLOradio founder John McMullen. Combined, GLOradio and PlanetOut (with Web and AOL areas that boast the largest gay community online) will have an audience of almost 400,000 - as compared to Out magazine's circulation of 120,000 or The Advocate's 76,500. (Of course, circulation figures do not measure the number of readers.)
GLOradio began as a side project for McMullen during his tenure at Progressive Networks, and launched last September with a daily news show, a weekly talk show, and an audience of six people. A year later, the audio network offers 15 shows, 27 weekly broadcasts, and boasts 50,000 listeners per month on its Web site. The network focuses exclusively on gay and lesbian content: Shows range from Dr. Ruthless, who answers those burning sex questions, to the Daily Dose of gay/lesbian/bi/trans news, to weekly commentaries and talk shows on culture, politics, and finance.
GLOradio's scope is already beyond the Net: Local radio stations in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and London regularly download the shows off the Web and broadcast them on the air. PlanetOut plans more of these kind of Net-to-air transmissions as part of a syndicated radio network that, combined with its Web broadcasts, could reach into the remote corners of the world, where gay radio content is currently unavailable.
"We consider ourselves to be in a position to do the opposite of what's happened on the Net with radio - it's mostly been audio broadcast material that's repurposed for the Web," explains McMullen. "We want to go the other way."
