The first openly gay host of a Chinese mainland show will debut in a 12-episode online video series on homosexuals from today.

The video series, the mainland's first interactive online program on gay issues, will be broadcast on www.phoenixtv.com run by the same media company that runs the Phoenix satellite TV station, the China News Service reported.

Host Didier Zhang, 27, was chosen from more than 800 applicants, the program's producer Gang Gang was quoted as saying.

"One fifth of the applicants were lesbians," Gang Gang said.

Zhang, who received a college education in France, is a program director with the Hong Kong Chi Heng Foundation and mainly involved in anti-AIDS/HIV education in Beijing, Gang said.

He said that the one-hour weekly live program will carry out online discussions on issues concerning gays.

The first episode, to broadcast at 3:00pm today, will see Qiaoqiao, a female singer and boss of a lesbian pub in Beijing, discuss homosexual issues, according to the report.

"The program will not encourage the public to pry into the lives of homosexual people, but to demonstrate how open the country has become," the South China Morning Post quoted Zou Min, vice president of Phoenix Satellite Television, as saying.

Editor: Yan