Farewell, QTN: We Hardly Knew Ye

Well, it's now official: QTN is dead.

Already, Time Warner has replaced them with a scheduled version of here!--the on-demand version has been offered for quite sometime, but the plucky little network seemed to soldier onto the end.

What really slew Auntie Q? It's hard to say (for those in New York, there is an interview with Jack E. Jett on the whole debacle in the-soon-to-be-last-week's edition of Next).

On one hand, it was defiantly different, or at least tried to be. I liked that about it. It was rough around the edges and in contrast to Logo, QTN took advantage of its subscriber status by airing films unedited (they even aired My Sexual Harassment) and featuring swearing during their casual and informative daily news breaks. It was more of my kind of network in contrast to the sleek and somewhat chaste LOGO and personality-free here!. (Don't get me wrong, I love both of them as well, it's just sometimes you want no pretension and a lot of character in your network.) When you watched QTN you were undeniably getting in-your-face raw personality (yes, even from Reichen), which is what I think breaks down barriers and is really sort of entertainment niche that is overlooked.

On the other hand, QTN tried way too hard to do much when it should've focused on building an audience. The Gay Games idea was admirable, but somebody should've been at the helm saying "this is not the time." If you have to lay off a great amount of staff, most of whom who are doing this out of wanting to see the network succeed, well you're just cutting off your nose to spite your face. Akin to Icarus, QTN wanted to establish itself so strongly and so formidable, that they lost the fact that they had the ingredients to do so from the get go.

Quite simply, the bosses were greedy and too willing to take advantage of the workers who were in it because they believed in it.

Another network will come along. The market does call for subscription service beyond what here! offers. Hopefully they'll get it right the next time around.

1. Don't try so hard in your Freshmen Year, or even your Senior Year: Fox was a joke until The Simpsons; HBO didn't hit its stride until Dream On (and even that's debatable); Showtime wasn't even making that much of an impact until Queer As Folk; and Comedy Central--itself the product of market consolidation--was no-man's land until The Daily Show.
2. Create a cult of personalities: Hiring Steve Kmetko was a brilliant stroke of genius. This is one area where QTN did get it right. They had personalities who were not santised in the slightest.
3. News, news, news: Even without The Closet airing, I watched QTN's news religiously. Their approach was more informative than LOGO's very cut-and-dry attitude created out of the CBS culture.
4. The Fish Rots From The Head: Don't go selling yourself on the market in your first year, and don't have executives who have no idea how to do anything but fail and kowtow.
5. Ditch the PSAs: It's subscription-based network. This means I don't want to see any breaks at all during a show, and only trailers for upcoming programmes in between.
6. Give Me A Show: I mean, you gave Reichen one. Sodding Reichen!