GLAAD Awards still only for mainstream media...

It was interesting to not only attend the GLAAD Awards Saturday night, but to also pop into several parties and panels at the three-day Q-MeCon - the 2nd Annual Queer Media & Entertainment Conference over the weekend. The GLAAD Awards are given to mainstream media [like best comedy series winner "Ugly Betty" pictured above) for positive portrayals and coverage of the LGBT community and do not have competitive categories for shows that are produced on such exclusively-gay media as MTV's Logo channel or the here! network or magazines like The Advocate or Out.
Gay media outlets, led my here! and Logo, want to be included in competitive categories and have become increasingly vocal about it. The two gay networks received a special award at last year's ceremony but this year, the network's performers and executives seemed to have stayed away from the event.
I asked GLAAD President Neil Giuliano (pictured with Neil Patrick Harris and Cobie Smulders) about the policy Saturday night and asked him if things might be changed before next year's awards.
"I don't know yet," Neil said. "The GLAAD board of directors makes those decisions. The GLAAD organization actually did give awards to the gay media in the 90s and in 1999, after the gay media said, 'Who is GLAAD to be telling us which is good, better or best?' they stopped doing those. So now we have broadcast media saying we'd like to be included and the GLAAD board will probably look at that issue and talk about that issue. The challenge is that we don't lobby and don't try and influence the LGBT broadcast media outlets because that's their mission: they do fair, accurate and inclusive programming. That's what they're there for. We don't monitor them or work with them but we do certainly recognize them."
On the closing night reception of Q-MeCon, here! founder Paul Colichman gave a passionate speech about the role of gay media in society right now: "If we don't have our own media images, then we are all screwed....There has never been a more important time in history [for LGBT media] than right now, there's a little crack in the door. Are we going to trust GLAAD to do it? I don't think so. If we can't even acknowledge ourselves, how do we expect anyone else to?"

I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this!