Hollywood has always been about giving the people what they want.

That’s why NBC this week will air a full-length episode of Bravo’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” – a show that’s so far been talked about by more people than have actually seen it – in place of a rerun of “ER,” which last week drew fewer than 6 million viewers.

Right now, more of us may want to see the Fab Five at work than want to watch Carter and Abby argue one more time about which of them had a worse childhood.

Still, I wouldn’t read too much into Bravo’s summer splash with “Queer Eye,” an amusing makeover show that nevertheless reinforces some stereotypes I think should make less-than-fabulous gay men (you know who you are) a tad nervous.

I’d read even less into NBC entertainment president Jeff Zucker’s enthusiasm for the show. The guy is also hot for “Fear Factor” and “Who Wants to Marry My Dad?” and if putting “Queer Eye” on in primetime meant anything more than ratings to him, well, the show that precedes it this Thursday would be called “Will & Greg,” not “Will & Grace.”

It’s not, though. Will, a good-looking gay man with no apparent repellent qualities, continues to have a stunning lack of luck with men, season after season.

Like the gay quintet on “Queer Eye,” he’s there to serve a purpose, not to serve himself.

Which doesn’t mean that the impression some conservative watchdog groups have that the entertainment business is going to the liberal (gay) dogs is completely off base. If television had as many writers and producers who belong to ethnic and racial minorities as it does gay ones, it wouldn’t be taking so long to have our TV brought to us in truly living color.

Gay writers, producers and executives ARE having an effect on the shows that we see, but they’re not exactly doing it surreptitiously, or without the consent of a large chunk of the audience.

Viewers who’ve come to accept their gay neighbors, friends and relatives don’t seem to have a problem making the leap to gay sitcom characters or “Survivor” contestants.

As long as they’re entertaining.

That’s the lesson poor Ellen DeGeneres learned the hard way. It’s also the possibly unintentional lesson imparted in Monday’s “Gay Hollywood,” the latest installment of “The AMC Project,” which looks at the efforts of five not-so-fab gay-Mafia wannabes to make it in a town that’s tough for everyone, gay and straight.

“Hollywood is like the gayest city in the world,” declares Micah, an aspiring comic/drag queen, in the opening moments of “Gay Hollywood.”

I’m not sure whether producers hoped to smoke out Hollywood’s gay power structure – most of which is visibly missing from this documentary – by watching their subjects network. But in including Micah, who performs under the persona “Bridgette of Madison County,” in their tight little band of contenders, they kind of lost me, since in my naivete I’d always assumed drag was one area where gay men had never been discriminated against.

Discrimination, or its flip side, favoritism, turns out to play almost no role in the progress, or lack thereof, of “Gay Hollywood’s” subjects, who include a writer/director named Lance who’s clearly not thrilled to find himself in a group he seems to consider stereotypically gay.

“This is a story of getting a very limited view of what it is to be gay in Hollywood,” he declares at one point.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

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You can reach Ellen Gray by e-mail at elgrayphillynews.com, by fax at 215-854-5852 or by mail at the Philadelphia Daily News, Box 7788, Philadelphia, PA 19101.

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AP-NY-08-08-03 1509EDT

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