Richard Parent: Channeling for Diverse Audiences
Before joining the legal profession, Richard Parent’s ambitions were singularly focused on show business. Today, they still are, but in a different way. As vice president of business and legal affairs at Logo, the gay and lesbian channel from Viacom’s MTV Networks, the former actor is the channel’s sole dedicated lawyer. In addition to overseeing all talent, production, and license agreements—without which much of the digital cable channel’s travel, news, and entertainment programming might never be broadcast—Parent’s other duties include pre-broadcast review of promotional spots and online materials to guard against defamation or copyright infringement, multiplatform digital rights management, personnel agreements, and contracts with strategic partners.
Photo by Jonas Gustavsson
As the only 24-hour advertiser-supported gay channel, two-year-old Logo not only faces the same tests as its more mainstream counterparts, but must also strive to meet its own unique challenges and growing pains. “We’re subject to more scrutiny and required to be more sensitive than other channels,” explains Parent, who is gay. “For example, in certain agreements and releases, we have to make it explicitly clear that Logo is a gay channel; and we need to be very careful that anyone referred to as LGBT in interviews on the channel and online is officially out.”
Early on, Parent heeded the advice of his librarian mother, and hit the books hard and often. After graduating as the salutatorian of his high school in suburban Portland, Oregon, he fulfilled a longtime dream by studying acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 1986, he graduated with a BFA in drama, and before long set forth on a seemingly ceaseless round of auditions and odd jobs to make the rent.
Achieving some good reviews but limited success, by the eve of his 30th birthday Parent had become dissatisfied with his life as a struggling actor/waiter in Manhattan. “When it got to the point where I was so bored and frustrated that I was afraid I might stab a customer with a fork, I knew it was time to make a change,” he recalls wryly. “Law was appealing to me. Not only had my older sister and an actor friend recently begun law school, but it appeared to be the only course of postgraduate education that didn’t require any specific prerequisites and there was a reasonably secure career path after graduation.”
Parent remained local. At New York University School of Law, he quickly took a shine to both intellectual property and the law school’s Bisexual Gay and Lesbian Law Students Association (BGLLSA). “It’s the place where I made my friends and my first law connections,” says Parent, “and unlike some other law schools of that time, whose LGBT organizations were discreetly holding their meetings off campus, BGLLSA was extremely visible and very well-supported by faculty and the general student population. In fact, the annual coming-out day celebration was always one of the most well-attended parties of the year.”
After graduating with honors from NYU law in 1997, Parent went to work at Irell & Manella LLP, a full-service California firm known for its intellectual property practice. Through an ad in the back pages of Variety, Parent happened upon his next job at Sony Pictures Television, where he spent six years in the legal department. Prior to joining Logo a year ago, Parent was with the California office of Britain’s Granada Television.
Seen in 27 million cable homes, Logo began with three advertisers and now boasts more than 100, says Parent. It is also the first LGBT channel to be launched by a Fortune 500 company. For these reasons and more, Parent is understandably proud. “Personally, it’s exciting to serve an underserved market, hungry to see itself depicted on TV in a fair and realistic way. As a gay man, being part of the first venture of its kind is especially gratifying.” DB
Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.
From the September/October 2007 issue of Diversity & The Bar®