Gay TV Network Goes Black

[movieguy]

Gay TV Network Goes Black

by Matt Johns, 365Gay.com Los Angeles Bureau

May 25, 2006 - 3:00 pm ET

(Los Angeles, California) The slow lingering death of gay television network Q-TV came to an end Thursday with an announcement from the company that it had terminated transmission.

Lloyd Fan, the white knight brought in to sort out the troubled network's finances, announced Thursday that he had been unable to secure funding for the network and therefore unable to meet the financial obligations of the company.

"When I took over control of the network on March 7, 2006, the company was roughly 7 million dollars behind in payments to vendors; numerous lawsuits had been filed against the company and over $600,000 was owed to former employees," Fan said in a statement.

"The financial challenges that the network faced proved too difficult and I was simply unable to turn around the network."

Fan's statement said, "Given the GLBT demographic and the success the network had experienced in distribution, I thought securing funding would be easy -- I was wrong. I am deeply disappointed that the network failed. Many talented people devoted themselves to saving the network."

When he took over the network Fan fired the board of directors, founder Frank Olsen, the company's chief operating officer and its chief financial officer.

In February Q-TV laid off all of its contract employees, ended most live programming and said it was "retooling". Fan closed the network's Los Angeles headquarters and had been broadcasting reruns from a rented control room in Texas.

Fan said that a full forensic accounting and bankruptcy proceedings will follow but did not give details.

At its highpoint the digital channel reached about 3 million homes in the U.S.

The closure leaves two remaining LGBT stations in the country - here! TV, a pay per view network and cable channel Logo, owned by MTV Networks.

©365Gay.com 2006

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