Will Q be quashed? Q Television Network scrambles to stay on the air amid layoffs, financial difficulties, and broken promises.(ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT)

Publication: The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)

Publication Date: 28-MAR-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Liberation Publications, Inc.

The night of Saturday, February 11, chilly by Southern California standards, a couple and straight ex-employees of Q Television Network, the upstart independent gay premium cable channel launched in July 2004, streamed into the Scene, a small, standard bar tucked at one end of a non-descript strip mall in suburban Los Angeles. Four days earlier, after a week of missed payroll deadlines, virtually the entire crew and staff at QTN--over 100 employees--were laid off without payment for their work in the month of January [see sidebar]. This night--which was planned weeks in advance to be an "anti-Valentine's Day" QTN office party--had become, in the words of Raf Orozco, the former stage manager at QTN and owner of the Scene, a tongue-in-cheek "resume party."

The mood of the evening can be summed up by one moment: As Orozco stood on the karaoke stage to welcome the crowd, sprinkled with a few real-deal bikers looking rather perplexed by their surroundings, a member of the QTN group asked aloud, to much nervous laughter, "Do you cash unemployment checks?"

Fortunately, a handful of those staffers had little time to worry about it. According to several sources, QTN executives had initially planned to mount two...

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