sycld: King of Queens, According to Jim, The Drew Carey Show, Seinfeld, and Everybody Loves Raymond also had large male viewership without even reasonably attractive male characters.
I think you'd find that given a choice between a show with all characters (male and female) being attractive and a show in which male characters were unattractive and females were attractive, men would prefer everyone be attractive. But that's a product of comparison, not deep-seated homoeroticism the way you'd like.
I mean it's a pretty easily demonstrated phenomenon in selection bias that slightly uglier versions make the normal version appear more attractive. Given a choice between an all-expenses paid trip to Paris and an all-expenses paid trip to Venice, the distribution will be basically even 50-50. If you add a third choice of an all-expenses paid trip to Paris that does not include complimentary coffee in the hotel lobby, suddenly the all-expenses paid Paris trip selection looks more attractive and Venice loses share (no one chooses to skip the coffee except Mormons.)
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