ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges conceptions of queer visibility and explores how it was not just exclusively deployed as part of the Irish gay civil rights movement’s liberatory agenda but was also utilised by media institutions to produce and represent gay and lesbians as sensational. Although mainstreaming strategies continued to be a facet of queer visibility, The Late Late Show and its talk-show format, along with the dynamics of live television, shifted the clusters of meaning around queer visibility. The chapter argues that this shift signalled the ways in which visibility became inexorably caught up in the industrial and economic dynamics of television, where queer identities were utilised for the purpose of boosting television ratings, increasing advertising revenue and keeping top-rated shows competitive. Further, the chapter notes the ways in which the production culture of television engendered the Irish gay civil rights movements to respond by becoming more media-savvy through communications training and utilising television’s patterns of production to their own advantage.
