Today, I learned that CBS has been collaborating with Focus On The Family for months massaging the message that will go out to millions of Americans.  According to FOTF spokesperson, Gary Schneeberger, “We’ve worked with [CBS] almost since the beginning.” He continues, “Our senior vice presidents talked to CBS executives throughout the process. It was a very cordial, very professional, fruitful relationship.”  Fruitful?  When citing network standards and practices when rejecting the gay dating website, www.mancrunch.com, did the central network labor with them to define and re-define their message and vet the dialogue?  Of course they didn’t, because that would be a “fruit” of a different color. I have been writing about CBS for months, and whether daytime or prime time, CBS network standards are a double standard.

Initially, I attributed the CBS/Tebow family ad as simply the continued prostitution of fixated Family values. Focus is getting off on it’s political agenda and desire to proselytize, CBS is pimping its stable of airtime, and the mother Tebow is the beck-and-call girl.  After today’s revelation that CBS is not only pimping out its corporate conscience, but shaping the message, it’s quite evident that the network has a vision with a very narrow aperture in regard to social issues.  It seems CBS has a commercial preference for anti-choice (with the exception of corporate choice), anti-gay (with the exception of Danica Patrick in the shower with another woman), and anti-women’s rights (with the exception of the right for women to bare arms, butt, and boobs).  Curious…the latest independent polls from Quinnpiac University and CBS News/New York Times show a greater than 50% favor among Americans in regard to a woman’s right to choose and same-sex rights.  I guess when it comes to our public airways, choice is in the corporate EYE of the beholder.

Well, first CBS extinguished the Light, and now the corporate giant has stopped the World from turning.  Sounds like media executive edicts of biblical proportions.  What’s next, they make the Bold move to eat their Young?  Not much would surprise me.

Now that ATWT has been canceled, I wonder what will take its time slot?  Let’s Make a Deal, is there an overwhelming desire to bring back Match Game?  After all, CBS needs somewhere to put it’s pseudo celebrities from Big Brother and Survivor.  Perhaps a talk show?  I heard Balloon Dad has hot air to share.  No matter, daytime programming is losing its history to cheap imitations of warmed over mush the likes for which I have no appetite.   As long as daytime network programming continues to offer up dollar menu selections, I will continue to find my fill from the full plate that cable and the internet provide.

As the World Turns will air its final episode in September of 2010.  Will ABC’s OLTL follow All My Children’s once and future king, Charles Pratt, to the unemployment line?  Move over Venice and Gotham.  By 2011, I’m predicting many more series with municipal monikers will populate the world wide web, thus freeing up creativity from the stifling clutches of standards, practices, and just bad management.  It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see Procter and Gamble, hat in hand, trying to ride the Tide.

Stay tuned…

Take a look at the footage and the evidence will show there is no daytime conspiracy theory among producers of the dramas, but a networked effort to desexualize same-sex pairings.

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Oy vey! GL, did you really do it? Is Natalia really pregnant? I would love to win a fabulous dinner off my partner, but I admit it would be bittersweet.  Yes, I bet her an expensive dinner at the restaurant of our choice that Natalia was going to end up pregnant with the Frank-furter’s baby. I called the old soap ploy from the first inkling of the suggestion; Nat throws up.  I hope I am wrong, but all indications for now point to a knocked up Nat.

I’m usually pretty savvy that way because I have been a lesbian more years than I will publicly admit.  I’ve seen a multitude of attempts at trying to portray my life, but sadly, they always come up just a little bit wanting…as in wanting less cliché, wanting fewer platitudes, and wanting more than a few crumbs thrown my way.  As a result, my first inclination is to jump to the obvious conclusion, but I have to ask myself have you planned it this way?

I admit am skeptical that once this boulder is in motion there is little force to stop its Newtonian progress.  There are rumors about false positives and “pregnant doesn’t always mean baby”…well, I think the latter is disingenuous and opens a Pandora’s box of controversy with this character.  A false positive is something I gave little consideration considering Proctor & Gamble would never allow one of it’s well place products to come up short in accuracy.  I gave it little consideration until yesterday when Natalia picked up the aptly disguised “OPT” box.  There is no OPT, just a very cleverly and legally defensible transformation of a competitor’s product.  Is this a cheap ploy to ramp the rhetoric of a marginalized community and check the temperature of its fever pitch?  Pregnant or pregnant ploy, how is either one of these plot devices loyal to the representative narrative you set in motion?

I am the biggest cynic south of the stratosphere, but I have to give you credit. This storyline began beautifully.  I even called the label-less approach genius as we could apply our own labels according to life’s lessons learned.  The slow, quiet build was a traditional soap ploy that worked.  It gave us time to buy in with little preconceived notion…even those of us who resisted for so long couldn’t deny there was something there, something different.

What happened?  That glacial soap movement soon turned into something just short of continental drift.  OTALIA became the melodramatic Pangaea.  De-sexualizing this couple out of whatever corporate pressure you are under anesthetized the pace.  And now you are impregnating or simulating the impregnation of Natalia as a logistical answer to Jessica’s maternity leave?  I cannot begin to tell you how many ways that is insulting whether plot or ploy, but I can offer you a few suggestions on how an alternative would bring about a better result and a happier ever after…especially since this thing is a wrap in a month.  Who knows, this is a soap, and things change.  Depending on which way the public or corporate wind blows, Natalia could wake up from a very bad dream of failed pregnancy tests and soap fan blow-back.

Ok, why not have a little fun, shall we?  It’s healthier than ranting about how pathetic another stereotypical and trite, pregnant, lesbian couple, that can’t stand alone as an independent family unit, is portrayed on TV.

4-Week Arc Suggestions Better Than Pregnancy

Kidnapping – Blake and Doris concoct a scheme of misadventure to create Doliva and Nake, their very own portmanteau.
A coma – Father Ray is the Prince of Darkness and sucks the life out of Natalia.  He’s got a good start; just allow this over-bearing element of the storyline to continue to suck for the next month.

Buried alive – Natalia gets wrapped up in one of those huge scarves and is stuck in her closet for a month.

A fat farm – Considering the only cooking going on between Nat and Olivia is limited to what comes out of the cookie pan, Natalia needs more hiking.

Demon possession – It’s not quite as trite as lesbian pregnancy and it gives Father Ray just one more reason to damn Natalia to hell.

Cloned – No, that would ultimately create an Olivia sandwich, and since they can limit the eats to only cookies, then CBS would never go for that.

Unexplained Illness – IDK-itis manifests as a four-week blank stare.

Now, these are only a few suggestions quickly thrown together by a non-professional.  I realize the point is probably moot now the Frank-n-bun is baking, but come on how long did it take you to sit in a room and come up with pregnancy?   I just can’t fathom how even a potentially pregnant OTALIA would fit into the deserved ideal of canceled happily ever after.

As a follow-up to my blog questioning CBS’s apparent decision to de-sexualize the same-sex OTALIA storyline on the now canceled daytime drama, Guiding Light, I thought it would be insightful to examine these network standards and practices, or Program Practices at CBS.

Standards and Practices, put simply in the vernacular, is the department of the network censors.  Broadcasting licenses are a finite resource, and thus acting as stewards of such, broadcasters have been the paternal overseer of the content of the airwaves for decades.  The crusade of the Standard and Practice has been to review all non-news broadcast content for compliance with community standards.

Network censors serve as surrogates for the network’s affiliates, assuring that the programming is acceptable to the mass audience. They serve as the chaperones of taste with respect to language, sex, and other subject matter deemed inappropriate for children.  According to CBS’s own website, “The review process involves an interaction among producers, program executives and Program Practices executives (censors), who ensure that CBS entertainment programs conform to generally accepted standards of public taste. The extent and degree of Program Practices involvement in ongoing series, ranging from general consultation to close episode review and supervision, depends on the nature and subject matter of the series generally and of particular episodes.”

Now that the roll of network Program Practices has been established, one big question remains, who decides?  Who is it exactly that determines a ménage à trios after-scene is more acceptable in the children’s hour than a same-sex kiss between two loving, adult women in a committed relationship? Who provides that elusive checklist that determines appropriate content and the correct compliment of family values?  Is it the moral majority, who ironically according to the latest CBS News/NYT poll, are not quite in the majority anymore?

Who really knows; it is a very well kept secret among the corporate boardrooms of the networks.  What we do know is that Guiding Light after September 18th will be illuminating little more than a historical montage of the beacon it once was.  Some of those commenting on my blog have suggested as a result, what do the producers have to lose, just do it.  It’s a nice thought, but content is released out over the broadcast airwaves only when the networks say it is appropriate.  So for now, Crystal Chappell and Jessica Leccia have as much chance of pulling off an impromptu over-the-air kiss as my partner and I have making out down the halls of Focus on the Family.

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What you just witnessed was a professional lead straining against the invisible suppression of network standards and practices.  The actress put up a noticeably internal struggle, but then succumbed to the pressure. The video is all the evidence required.

Once again I am here at my desk questioning the courage of a network to move forward in a natural, yes, natural, progression of a same-sex storyline.  I give CBS Daytime and the other networks of daytime television deserved credit for being the only genre with an extended commitment to LGBT issues, but to produce a coupling that is a veneer of their potential, is merely symbolism over substance.

It is no secret that lesbians will watch anything that remotely represents our circumstances.  Just look at the Netflix history or current queue of a Sapphic sista, and you will find every low budget, single camera, and late-night Logo channel offering out there.  To find a love story with a happy ending where the gay girl isn’t violated, murdered, left for a man, or burned is an accomplishment, and when we do find the odd Imagine You and Me, Saving Face, or I Can’t Think Straight, we will watch it again, and again, and again.

The OTALIA storyline began with such enormous potential.  It wasn’t the first of its kind, so it was able to fly below the conservative radar.  It was “label-less”, so it required no public classification by the powers that be.  It was the first mature storyline that involved an undeniable daytime diva voluntarily offering her heart to another woman and having it accepted with a loving confidence.  OTALIA is not a coming of age storyline where sexuality is questioned; OTALIA is a love story where the prejudices of society and religion are questioned.

Perhaps the network never expected such a worldwide sisterhood alliance to this pairing, but this is the Internet age, and the Twitter era.  Real time information is at our fingertips.  Though the elusive Neilson families may not tune into Guiding Light, there is at least one online family of five thousand plus international members watching and waiting for their story personified on screen. Their loyalty and their commitment deserve better than a sterile version of fruition.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for gratuitous afternoon titillation, I can get that from those DVDs I keep in the back of my lingerie drawer.  What I am demanding is that the OTALIA storyline be unleashed from these archaic network standards of a time past.  Yesterday’s video evidence of Crystal Chappell’s craft caught in restraints is not the first time I have witnessed the censorship, but the last time my tolerance will allow.

As I have said publicly before, the network billed this storyline as label-less, but it is not lifeless.  Gay people touch, gay people hug for longer than what appears to be a celebratory chest bump, and gay people in loving relationships kiss each other, if not in public, then definitely in the privacy of their own homes.  Shocking, I know.

CBS and the other powers of controlling deprivation, out of some misplaced responsibility to the public interest, have created an atmosphere where the kiss, or the no-kiss, has become the story.  Affection between the two characters should have occurred long ago with little fanfare, just as with those mundane family moments of baking cookies and getting the kid ready for school.

Look at the video again.  Crystal is a method actor.  She engenders in herself the thoughts and emotions of the character, Olivia, in an effort to create a lifelike performance, but something is circumventing the immersion.  I can only surmise that it is the network succumbing to corporate pressure of one kind or another.

CBS, where is your courage? You canceled the show, what is there to lose except more respect?  Cease the accommodation of the most conservative members of your audience.  Only by continuing to push the envelope with respect to same-sex family portrayals can the medium advance.  After all, if our community is as dirty as some would like to believe, wouldn’t a little soap be the answer?