Next

Network

MTV (USA)

Original Air Dates

April 4 2005 – May 9 2008

Seasons / Episodes

6 seasons • ≈ 250 episodes

Format

One single person dates up to five contestants who arrive from a “Next Bus.” Each can be “Nexted” at any time; the longer they last, the more money they earn.

Production Company

Kalliope Films / MTV Networks

Filming Locations

Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas, and New York

LGBTQ+ Focus

A bunch of same-sex episodes aired 2005–2008, making it one of MTV’s largest queer dating catalogues.

Loud, campy, and unapologetically 2000s, Next became the definitive MTV dating show of its era.

By including dozens of same-sex dates within its regular rotation, MTV treated queer dating as comedy, chaos, and fun — not exception.

For millions of teens, the gay and lesbian episodes were their first casual exposure to LGBTQ+ flirting on daytime TV.

The show’s fast editing and snarky captions made representation feel modern and normal, embedding queer visibility deep in 2000s pop culture. 

Next normalized queer dating as part of MTV’s everyday programming, breaking away from “special episodes.”

Its same-sex casts appeared with equal screen time and tone as hetero ones — a radical move for mid-2000s network TV.

While its humor was crude, the effect was quietly revolutionary: it told a generation that gay and lesbian youth belonged on the bus too.

Decades later, those short, chaotic dates still resonate as some of the earliest examples of normalized queer visibility in youth-oriented reality TV.