There was a time when Carson Kressley was the golden boy of a little network called Bravo, an underdog in a sea of cable channels looking to cement their voices. He led four other charges on a New York metro area witch hunt for heterosexual fashion mistakes on a show called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, later chopped down to just Queer Eye. After a season or two, his show began tanking in the rankings, and its buzz factor wore off as other programs with similar formats entered the market. Kressley looked doomed to be ushered into the shadows of reality television has-beens. And then Lifetime came knocking. They had a little show called How to Look Good Naked naked they wanted him to host, and in February 2007, word arrived he'd be leading yet another makeover show about feeling good about yourself, but this time for women. When the show premiered nearly a year later in January, it set record numbers with Lifetime; 1.6 million viewers tuned in, and Kressley was solidified as a television commodity. Very quickly, Kressley became the male face of Lifetime; perhaps more importantly, it was Lifetime's acknowledgment that its unofficial tagline, "Television for women (and gay men)" was part of its operating procedure. So it's only logical, then, that Lifetime wants to extend its investment in Kressley. With his own talk show. This is big.

Lifetime has agreed to a pilot for Kressley's yet-untitled daytime talker, with niche veteran Ray Giuliani, most recently of The Greg Behrendt Show, executive producing.

It's part of Lifetime's own makeover — the same one Bravo went through just a few years ago as NBC Universal wisely repositioned it as the thinking man's reality competition/drama network. Lifetime is also absorbing Bravo's Project Runway beginning with the show's sixth season. It's also eschewing syndicated series Golden Girls (headed to Hallmark and WE) and The Nanny (headed to MTV Networks). In their places, Lifetime is hoping for more of its own original programming in the daytime.

But Kressley's move to a talk show is interesting in one other arena: the domination of gays and blacks on the daytime television circuit.

Oprah, Tyra Banks, Ellen DeGeneres all command the ratings in this niche. Rosie O'Donnell did once, too, and Wendy Williams may soon join the pack.

The only big daytime host not in this category is Dr. Phil. Attempts from Jane Pauley and Megan Mullally (though is she bi these days?) failed. And Martha Stewart and Rachael Ray's dominance is in another category altogether: Food-and-crafts.

That Kressley is Lifetime's pick — and, by its own admission, perhaps the only candidate it was willing to entertain for the part — is evidence of a cultural trend that's still not exactly understood. It is profound, because it represents yet another area in entertainment where gays (and blacks) have pushed through glass ceilings, and can only suggest that American audiences, especially women, are growing ever more comfortable identifying with the gays.

[THR]