Almost exactly one year after its namesake appeared on the cover of Time, the series was unceremoniously canceled. But as one learns in Steven Capsuto’s indispensable book “Alternate Channels” and the extraordinary Apple TV+ docuseries “Visible: Out on Television,” that interest soon waned.Īs the news cycle moved on, ABC, which aired “Ellen,” grew uncomfortable with its handling of the character’s coming-out process, which it depicted in sympathetic, radical-for-its-time detail. Six years earlier, the comedian and her sitcom character had come out, in tandem, in what remains the single most well-known moment in the history of queer television. When Ellen DeGeneres launched her daytime talk show, it felt like a flag planted on lunar terrain. (Devin Oktar Yalkin / For The Times source photo: Associated Press)
