Changing channels.

"I didn't think anyone would touch it," says Greg Louganis, speaking about the prospect of turning his best-selling autobiography, Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story, into a made-for-TV movie. "I always thought it could be a good movie, but the subject matter is very tough."

He should know; he lived it. As told frankly in his 1995 book, Louganis's life contains as much tragedy as triumph. His troubled upbringing at the hands of an abusive father, his coming to terms with his homosexuality, his HIV-positive diagnosis and the moral dilemmas it created during his final Olympic showing--it all makes for some rather imposing shadows behind those moments in the sun of Olympic victory.

But despite the darker sides to Louganis's story and Louganis's own initial pessimism, Breaking the Surface will make it to television as a USA cable network movie on March 26, starring Mario Lopez (from TV's Saved by the Bell) as Louganis. It isn't the only made-for-TV movie to include gay or lesbian content this spring. On March 23, Showtime premieres The Twilight of the Golds, a drama adapted from Jonathan Tolins's 1993 play about a family torn apart when a woman is faced with the choice of delivering or aborting a baby she knows will be gay. On April 20, HBO will telecast its much-anticipated drama directed by Christopher Reeve, In the Gloaming, about a man dying of AIDS complications who returns home to reconcile with his parents.

Meanwhile, all is quiet on the network-TV-movie front, despite the fact that the history of gay-themed TV movies is marked primarily by critical and popular successes. Indeed, if this season is any indication, it seems an evolution may be taking place in the TV environment for gay-themed projects, as cable increasingly becomes the home of choice--or the only choice--for "controversial" subject matter of all stripes.

"We'd gone to several major agencies, all of whom said, `You'll never get this on network television. There's no way they're going to do this,'" says Breaking the Surface director Steven Stern, who helped sell the Louganis project to the Hollywood suits. And, as predicted, the broadcast networks, formerly the only game in town, weren't interested. But cable's USA network, previously known for its women-in-peril programs featuring stars a grade below those generally found on the "big three" networks, was seeking to broaden its appeal--and heighten its profile in the increasingly crowded cable market. Louganis's story was a perfect fit for the network's new strategy.

"We're willing to take on more controversial subjects than the broadcast networks because we have everything to gain and less to lose," says Ian Valentine, vice president of long-form programming at USA. "We can't sit here and play by rules created by ABC, CBS, and NBC. We have to create our own rules."

There was a time when the networks had less to lose. More than two decades ago, when cable was just a glimmer in an entrepreneur's eye, television first began tackling homosexuality in TV movies--or MOWs, the industry slang for "movie of the week," a promotional title with which the networks used to herald these "event" offerings. Ironically, back then gay subject matter was an exponentially more controversial theme than it is today.

The first TV movie to brave the subject--and still considered among the best--was ABC's 1972 drama That Certain Summer. The movie, which explored a teenager's reaction to the revelation that his father is gay, starred Hal Holbrook as the father and Martin Sheen as his lover and was written and produced by William Link and Richard Levinson. Even in the comparably adventurous days of the early '70s, when antiwar demonstrations had gained popular support,and liberal wasn't yet a four-letter word, the producers had trouble getting the movie into production.

"It would never have been on the air if it weren't for Barry Diller," Link recalls. "He was then the chief of TV movies for ABC. We had tAken the idea to NBC, with whom we had a relationship, but they said that basically, they wouldn't touch the subject with a ten-foot pole. At ABC, Barry fought to get the movie on the network, and I know there was a lot of conflict."

Link also notes that they had a hard time casting it too. "Cliff Robertson said, `I'd rather play Hitler,'" he adds. "We had a lot of nice comments like that. But then Hal Holbrook looked at it, and while he was reading it, his son asked him what it was about. Hal told him, and his son said, `Dad, you'd be a great homosexual.' Hal said, `That did it, I called you guys right up.'"

The movie garnered much praise--despite a bomb threat to one of ABC's affiliates when it aired--and went on to capture several Emmy nominations, including a Best Supporting Actor win for Scott Jacoby, who played the teenage son. The ramparts of the gay experience were thus breached in the broadcast world, and over the course of the next two decades, the TV audience was treated to a steady trickle of pictures tackling gay themes--at a time when the gay experience was virtually shut out of theatrical movie houses.

The subject of lesbian love--and a child-custody battle because of it--got an airing in 1978's A Question of Love on NBC, starring Gena Rowlands and Jane Alexander. Marlo Thomas portrayed a mother coming to terms with her gay son in 1985's Consenting Adult. Another landmark came that year with An Early Frost, the NBC movie that broached the subject of AIDS well before the disease made it to the big screen in 1990's Longtime Companion.

But the more things changed, the more they remained the same. James Duff, who wrote the TV movie Doing Time on Maple Drive for the Fox network, recalls that in 1992 it was still a battle to bring his movie, featuring a gay man as the primary protagonist, to TV.

"We would not have been able to do it four years ago on one of the `big three' networks; as far as I know, they still have not aired a TV movie where the hero is a gay man," says Duff, who is openly gay. "They've done movies about AIDS or some other issue, but not one that deals with a gay man as just a member of a family. Fox did not have the same mind-set that the,other three had at that time, which was the censoring mind-set."

Maple Drive was the highest-rated Fox TV movie at the time, but Duff wasn't particularly surprised when the floodgates remained closed for such subject matter. "Part of the problem is that the established rule in TV is that you can't do a movie like that," Duff explains. "If you manage to do a movie and it succeeds, they say that every rule has its wonderful exceptions. They don't change the rule. It's a no-win situation."

Many artists within. the industry agree. "The networks think it's enough to take on these subjects once," says Daniel Lipman, who with partner Ron Cowen wrote An Early Frost. "If we went to DPC even now, ten years later, with an AIDS-themed movie, they would probably say, `We've done that. We did An Early Frost.'"

Link believes that times may be tougher now in the network-TV arena, not just for gay subject matter but also for all projects that can be classified as controversial--or merely serious. "I think cable has put a real dent into any brave efforts the networks would once have tried," says Link, whose credits include some of TV's most lauded movies, including The Execution of Private Slovik and Crisis at Central High. "The networks are afraid of losing advertisers, and they don't have much money."

In other words, even though cable TV has created a new outlet or adventurous subjects, it may have diminished the broadcast network so willingness to take risks. As it gradually began to take a larger slice of the TV viewing pie, cable also forced the networks to guard more carefully their dwindling audience--and rely increasingly on easy-to-promote, Tori Spelling-in-terror fare to fill their original movie slates. Perhaps as proof of the networks' waning willingness to go the high toad, look at this year's list of Emmy nominations for best TV movie: The nominees come exclusively from cable networks.

"There was a lot more fearlessness in television when it had its audience," Link concludes. "But now that it's lost half its audience, it's more cowardly than ever."

And with a TV ratings system now in place, there is a distinct possibility that the picture may get grimmer still. Although most agree that it's far too early to tell what the fallout from the ratings setup will be, some worry that the new system, used with the V-chip--by which parents will be able to block access to adult-rated TV shows--will have a chilling effect on the networks' appetite for sophisticated, serious fare [see related story on page 33].

Craig Zadan, who with his partner Neal Meron produced the NBC movie Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story, says, "There's always a danger that we'll end up with massive censorship because advertisers can say, `We're not going to advertise on anything that's rated this or that.' And then networks simply won't make those kinds of shows anymore. It's a subtle squeeze play, where networks just start shying away from anything that looks too `adult' in nature. If that happens, it will change the entire face of broadcasting. It's terrifying."

And even though Zadan and Meron, both of whom are openly gay, are by no means averse to the cable universe (they're developing Randy Shilts's Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military at Showtime), they believe that the far greater audience available to network fare remains a powerful argument for the importance of the broadcast outlets. "With this kind of important subject matter, you want to get to the broadest audience possible," says Meron. "Serving in Silence was seen by more than 25 million people, and you'd get only a fraction of that on cable."

The outlook for gay subject matter in network movies isn't entirely bleak, however. Zadan and Meron's recipe for success is simple: star power. Serving in Silence starred Glenn Close and boasted Barbra Streisand as executive producer. For their next gay-themed network project, the CBS film What Makes a Family--about a lesbian's battle to regain custody of her daughter--they've again lined up Streisand behind the scenes and are getting ready to sign a major star. "For the networks, it really is about who's going to star in it," Meron says. "That's how you get difficult subjects on the air."

An Early Frost's Cowen points out that part of the reason the networks no longer spring for tough subjects in TV movies may be that those subjects now make it regularly into series in television. "We wrote several gay story lines for Sisters and NYPD Blue, and there are other shows that have gay characters," Cowen says. "We did a plot about a drag queen with AIDS on Sisters that we thought would raise the network's hackles, but they didn't bat an eyelash."

Still, the networks' cable rivals continue to have a distinct advantage: They have far greater latitude in covering potentially controversial subject matter--particularly the subscriber networks such as HBO and Showtime, which do not rely on advertisers for income. Cowen and Lipman recall that the topic of abortion always sent up the reddest of red flags on Sisters, but HBO's abortion-themed If These Walls Could Talk last fall was the network's most-watched original movie in its history.

Another case in point is the sequel to PBS's Tales of the City, which was declined by PBS despite the miniseries's smashing critical and popular success; with its funding under attack from Congress, the Public Broadcasting Service decided it couldn't afford to take another trip to the sexually adventurous '70s in San Francisco. Showtime now has the sequel in development.

Even partially ad-supported networks such as USA can afford to be more courageous when it comes to programming; the income they derive from subscriber fees insulates them from the kind of advertiser pressure that their broadcast brethren can't afford to ignore. "The Greg Louganis movie is a reflection of our ability to take more risks than others," says USA's Valentine. "Our movie certainly doesn't shy away from depicting Greg's sexual relationships, and that would be very difficult for the broadcast networks."

As the push and pull between broadcast and cable networks continues to escalate, the environment for gay-themed projects will shift. But despite the absence of gay-themed films on broadcast television this spring, the up-coming trio of high-profile gay-themed cable pictures suggests that this may be a hopeful moment in the history of gay life on TV--which for better or worse has become the fulcrum for all of American culture. Observes Duff: "It's going to be a very slow process, but isn't it wonderful that we're sitting around talking about how slow the process may be instead of how we are going to get into the process? You have to say progress is being made because our stories are getting out there."