Viewers of every stripe for Pink TV

France’s first gay cable channel, Pink TV, launched with an opening-night party at the Palais de Chaillot, bathed in hot pink light for the occasion, its grand staircases laid with pink carpet for the VIPs. Inside, media, entertainment, sports and political figures -- and anyone else who could get their hands on a red-hot pink invitation -- sipped (pink) Champagne and elbowed through the noisy, overheated room. In a crowd of 2,000 maybe one out of every 10 people had taken the pink theme to heart, and among the scattered fuchsia boas and raspberry-colored scarves only about five men had bothered to show up in a dress, let alone a pink one.

During the opening ceremonies, Pink TV founder Pascal Houzelot, a former executive of France’s network channel TF1, called his private pay-TV channel, which has backing from TF1 and several major French networks, “a strong sign of integration of the homosexual community in French society.”

The partygoers included the openly gay mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, the lesbian tennis player Amelie Mauresmo and several other local French personalities that Agence France-Presse characterized as “le tout Paris ‘gay-friendly.’ ” It was fashionable that night (or “tres, tres fashion,” as one Frenchman put it), in speeches and private conversations, to say that Pink TV was not simply a gay channel but, more important, that it was “gay-friendly,” an English phrase that had been batted about in the highly publicized media-blitz run-up to Pink TV’s Oct. 25 launch, on talk shows and in newspaper articles and on the nightly news. Indeed, backers say it is the first gay channel with a national audience in the world, ahead of MTV Networks’ planned Logo and two other American independent projects -- Here! TV and the Q Television Network -- and follows local cable channels in Italy and Canada.

When asked in an interview at Pink’s headquarters in the gay-friendly Marais area of Paris whether there was a French translation for “gay-friendly,” Houzelot said with a smirk, “Si -- gay-friendly.” In interview after interview, Houzelot had used the phrase to describe a channel that he said would be engaged but not militant, affirming homosexual identity but appealing also to more than France’s gay population (estimated at 7% to 8% in the company’s research).

Gay personalities have proved popular in mainstream French reality TV in the last few years, but Houzelot insists that this trend has nothing to do with Pink TV, which he said is not designed to distract viewers by the millions but to serve a particular audience; he won’t say how many subscribers his channel has at this point.

Pink TV, which costs about $10 a month, offers 50% gay-themed programming, including reruns of series such as “Queer as Folk” and documentaries and panel discussions with themes like “le coming out.” There is also a daily show called “The Set” that features 30 commentators on subjects from opera to design to sports, which is hosted by 45-year-old Brigitte Boreale, a transgender reporter who once covered sports for the mainstream press as a man. Boreale’s segment will cover everything from soccer and darts to sports traditions and uniforms “with a bit of fantasy, looking at the side that’s a bit malicious, philosophical, sociological, humorous,” Boreale said at the launch party, flipping back long blond-streaked locks with two palms.

“The gay, transsexual, transgender and lesbian community has always been interested in things that are original.”

Pink TV will air experimental videos in the wee hours, and four times a week it will offer midnight “films de charme,” a French euphemism for porn. Houzelot says that the programs will be accompanied by public service announcements for AIDS and insists that X-rated films are an economic imperative for a pay-TV channel.

Houzelot says that the other 50% of programming, including nightly reruns of “Wonder Woman,” will be gay-friendly but will appeal to non-gays as well. This includes the most high-profile bit of original programming -- a weekly half-hour interview show with Claire Chazal, TF1’s popular weekend anchor. “Having a person like her is hyper-positive for us,” said director of programming Caroline Comte. “TF1 is watched by millions of people; it’s the biggest opening we could have to the French public.” Houzelot said that Chazal is “extremely gay-friendly.”

Chazal smiled at the comment. “It means being nonmilitant but concerned by a community to which we are close,” Chazal explained in the VIP room, adding that some of her best friends are gay. She said that her work made her aware of incidents of homophobic violence in a country that is both tolerant of people’s private lives and conservative in its traditional family values; while France passed a domestic partnership agreement several years ago, it still prohibits gay marriage and adoption. “I see the problems and I want to treat them, and this channel is a way of fighting against those kinds of problems,” Chazal said, “not by establishing a ghetto, but by creating more freedom. It’s a channel about tolerance, modernity and the avant-garde.”

French media watch groups have tracked a rise in coverage of gay issues on TF1. And Pink TV has arrived at a moment in France when several high-profile gay men have been featured on major network reality shows -- including TF1’s “Big Brother” clone, “Loft Story,” in which a boy named Thomas came out when he fell in love with one of the other male participants. A homosexual couple won the house on “Le Chantier,” France’s version of “Under Construction.” On the highly popular “The Celebrity Farm,” 39-year-old Vincent McDoom did his hair and makeup and wore heels to feed the pigs. And most recently, TF1’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” clone, which is called simply “Queer,” has made a splash, most notably with young people under age 24.

When the publicist for the show was asked if the stars could be reached for phone interviews, he asked, “Who, the Queers?” Calling Xavier (gastronomie), Zacharie (beaute), Junior (deco), Benjamin (mode) and Gilles (coach) “les Queers” -- a word that until the French “Queer Eye” started at the end of September meant nothing to most French people outside the gay community -- doesn’t have the same connotations that it would in English. It’s a virgin word in a country where it is already more politically correct to use the English word “gay” -- not to be confused with the French word “gai,” which is still widely used in its original sense.

“To use the words gay or homo would have put the accent on our sexuality,” said Benjamin Bove, the blond fashion adviser, in a phone interview, “and the idea is that we are experts before being gay.” (The show identifies them as trend experts.)

Anecdotal evidence suggesting that French men, who famously cooked, decorated and preened before there was such a thing as a metrosexual, don’t need a “Queer Eye” is quickly dispelled by the slobs they manage to drum up in this virtual carbon copy of the American version. The boys have an SUV with a license plate that reads “QUEER”; they run about and ransack the straight guy’s house, insulting his taste and laughing all the way -- though the boys are more likely to yell out an “oh la la la la” than an “Oh my God!,” though they say that too.

The high Franglais content of the show is largely thanks to Bove, 23, who lives and works as a stylist in Los Angeles. “For the first time in France, five guys are on a major network in prime time, who own their sexuality fully and who aren’t victims,” he says. “Homos have always been around to make people laugh, but whether it was ‘La Cage aux Folles’ or whatever, we were always laughing at them. It’s almost as if the heterosexual has become the caricature and now we’re laughing at the straight guy.”

Some critics have said that the happy band of makeover brothers does not represent France’s gay community. But producer Angela Lorente says that she adapted the show for a French audience chiefly by changing the culture guy to “un coach,” the French term for a life coach.

Enter Gilles Tessier, a journalist with Elvis Costello looks and an endearingly earnest manner that makes straight guys open up (and sometimes cry). He gets the dirt on their troubled relationships from their wives and girlfriends, and uses “common sense” to help the straight guy take his life back into his hands. This gives the show a psychological edge that is largely absent in the American version.

“It was important for us to say that not just because we change your house, your clothes and your hair that your life will change,” Tessier said by phone. “I think that maybe Americans believe that, but in France it’s impossible for us to believe.”