Black Gay Talk Show to Debut on Television

Herndon L. Davis, author of last year’s controversial book, “Black, Gay & Christian,” is preparing to enter television.

The Herndon Davis Reports will debut on DirecTV channel 227 and Comcast Cable on Sunday July 17. It will reach nearly 16 million households and Davis is hopeful the show will be expanded on other cable services.

The show will be world’s first black gay/lesbian, TV news/talk show. The one-hour weekly program promises to "empower the black gay/lesbian" viewer - an audience long ignored by even the gay media.

Davis says the show will be a cross between the Chris Matthews Show (MSNBC) and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

"It aggressively tackles a variety of socioeconomic and political issues impacting the gay/lesbian community but from a distinctly black gay/lesbian affirming perspective," says Davis.

Among the shows already in the works is one devoted to understanding the DL “down low” phenomena and another on gay marriage rights.

Davis says that other topics will include spirituality, raising children, and coping with depression and homophobia,

"The Herndon Davis Reports will deeply explore into the vibrant and diverse lives of the entire black gay/lesbian community, past, present and future” he adds.

In 2004, Davis self-published the spiritual empowerment book, “Black, Gay & Christian,” a book which challenged the status quo of homophobia within the black church as well as its scriptural interpretation of biblical text surrounding homosexuality.

The book also provided inspirational and motivational resources and texts for black gays/lesbians in order to jointly embrace and reconcile their homosexuality with their spirituality.

It appears that Davis has been able to secure airtime on local or independent broadcast channels on these two service providers, however I wonder if we can ever expect to see such a show on BET (maybe, now that it's owned by Viacom), of TVOne, the network owned by Comcast and RadioOne founder Cathy Hughes. With the advent of the new gay channel LOGO, I would expect to see more black gay media ventures spring up.