LEWISTON – In some ways, it will be just another TV station. Movies. News. Sitcoms. Reality shows about couples meeting.
But LOGO, set to kick off later this month and to be carried locally on digital cable, will be a first. The channel is aimed specifically at a gay and lesbian audience.
Its stories, from New York City cops to California surfers, will be about same-sex couples.
When it starts, there’s no telling what the local reaction will be, say leaders at Adelphia Cable, which will broadcast the channel’s June 30 debut.
“We’re giving people another option,” said Kathleen Hounsell, Adelphia Cable’s Maine director of government and community affairs. “It’s part of our goal for diversification.”
This week, the company sent letters to its subscribers, telling them that VH1-Megahits was leaving and the new station, “which is predominately alternative lifestyle in content,” would take its place.
The new channel won’t affect everyone who has cable TV.
For people with Adelphia’s digital cable systems – which require a converter box and add scores of extra channels – the new station will appear on channel 188, sandwiched between a college sports channel and TV Russia.
The change is something that’s being driven by Viacom, the media giant that owns networks CBS and MTV, publisher Simon and Schuster, and Paramount Pictures. Viacom is halting production of VH1-Megahits, the channel LOGO will replace.
Nationwide, about 2 million Adelphia subscribers will get the new channel when it starts in two weeks.
So far, the announced change has drawn little reaction.
Three or four e-mails have arrived at Adelphia’s Denver headquarters, company spokeswoman Erica Snell said.
In Maine, where about 40,000 subscribers will have access to the channel, there has been no response, said Mike Edgecomb, central Maine’s government relations manager for Adelphia.
As with all digital channels – from shopping networks to foreign language stations – LOGO would be easy to block using the parental controls on the cable box, Edgecomb said.
Neither Adelphia nor the station’s advertisers want people to tune out, though.
“We don’t know what kind of reaction we’re going to get,” Edgecomb said. “We’ll have to wait and see.
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