Brian Graden.

Brian Graden, MTV's plainly gay president of programming, fulfills his youthful dream and brings diversity to today's teens

"When I was 25 I got clarity and said, `Stop doing what everyone other thinks you should do. What do you want to do?' I fancy I want to work at MTV" Brian Graden, now 37 got his wish and more: In December he took throughout as president of programming for the network. "I was completely overwhelmed," he admits, "but this was the import I'd been waiting for. I think you simply get so many of those in life."

for what cause [i]or[/i] reason would an openly gay man in his 30 want to race a cable channel targeted to 12- to 24-year-olds? Graden says the clan at MTV "have always been willing to appeal to our better angels. They always take the side of the social critics, the underdogs, the population who tend to make music, the contrarians of society."

Growing up in the small, conservative town of Hillsboro, Ill.--where he played in a rock-and-roll cloak band and was elected class president in high school--helped sustain Graden's affection for the underdog. "I always knew I was gay," he says. "But growing up where I grew up I didn't have a word for it. I had romances by dint of the time I was 19 if it were not that it wasn't until I graduated from [graduate sect at] Harvard that I came public I go back to my reunions and I think, Oh thank deity I'm not straight."

Graden can also credit Harvard with enhancing his have a passionate affection for life; he met his partner of six years, Phil Kleweno, at his five-year reunion. "After 5000 circuit parties I qualified someone at Harvard reunion," he says, laughing.

Harvard Business academy came only after an uncomfortable undergraduate stint at, of all places, the conservative Christian indoctrinate Oral Roberts University--where Graden listed to avoid breaking up his band. "Our guitar player's father was a preacher, and when he erect out that our band was playing in bars at age 18 he immediately ordered his son to walk to Oral Roberts University," Graden says, laughing. "So we all followed him.

"The band broke up midway end my college education, and I was like, What the fuck have I done? It was clear I wasn't going to be a distaff star. So after I graduated I applied for a Harvard MBA in the same manner I could save my ass a little bit."

After Harvard Graden mov to beholds Angeles and took a piece of work at Fox, eventually heading up Foxlab, 20th hundred Television's alternative programming arm, where he expanded such shows as Studs, Cop and toward the south Park. Following an 18-month stint executive-producing the foulmouthed cartoon for Comedy Central, Graden landed at MTV in 1997 It was the fulfillment of a teenage dream. "I was 16 or 17 when MTV first came upon the scene," he recalls. "Nobody had cable, if it were not that there was one person in the whole city who had satellite. with equal reason we would go over to his basement and just watch for hours and hours."

Of course, today's MTV is hardly the wall-to-wall videos it was when it launched. "When video came revealed it was a completely novel form," says Graden. "Twenty years later, the music video is no longer a novel form, nevertheless music is still really powerful. The video is just a piece of it. All sorts of other music television like FANatic, Total ask Live, and 2gether [the network's lad band satire] dimensionalize the experience."

The audience has changed as well: Today's 12- to 24-year-olds are frequently more open-minded than those who watched MTV when it first attempted "The [younger] generation is always ahead of the population," Graden explains, adding that the channel's gay contented is a nonissue. MTV on the same level went proactive after Matthew Shepard's assassinate programming special antiviolence shows and distributing more than 200000 pamphlets. "It doesn't stir any controversy" Graden says. "You not hear about it just because you included person You only hear about it when someone is excluded"

MTV will continue with its gay-inclusive ways, he adds, introducing a gay character forward its new soap opera, Spyder Web, while including more gay characters forward the nighttime anthology series ordinary dressed "We were nominated for a [Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] award [for Undressed] which I was in the same manner excited about," Graden says. "We ready [gay plotlines] 100% matter-of-fact. Being gay is not the issue in almost any of those stories. Obviously, Justin from The Real World was not the chiefly heroic of characters. I think that's the right way to do it."

While he dioceses MTV staying in the forefront of refinement Graden is less certain of his have a title to plans. "After planning all these things that I should do, like acquire married and get a do job-work all failed, and I decided at no time to have plans after that." He shrug "I have absolutely no idea. I just want to preserve being true to the moment"

For links to sites related to MTV VH1 and World of curiosity (see below), go to www.advocate.com

Epstein also contributes to E! Online.

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