I watched the Q! Here's my report:
Today I watched the 6 hours of QTN that my friend videotaped for me last Friday night/Saturday morning on RCN's channel 255 in San Francisco. The good news is that we are most definitely on the air. The bad news is that during those 6 hours the network was suffering severe technical difficulties with both the audio and video. I do not know if this was just a temporary problem that has since been fixed. As RCN is not available in my neighborhood, this videotape is all I have to go on.
The audio was choppy, consisting of periods of perfect sound, periods when the sound cut in and out, periods of static, and then for most of the tape, no sound at all. This was not a problem with the tape. My friend noticed the problems on the live broadcast as he recorded it.
The video picture quality was very good, but the picture frequently froze, creating a choppy series of still pictures. Viewing was thus very difficult. Obviously these problems will have to be fixed before Q is offered to subscribers. For all I know, they have already fixed the problem since last Friday.
Here's what I saw:
"Q NewsWeek In Review" – Smart looking newscast format. Well dressed, good looking female newscaster. News Director – Elazibeth MacDonald. Exec Producer – Frank Olsen. Sorry, wasn't able to hear the stories.
"Just Friends" with Stockard Channing. Written by George Bloom. According to the schedule it is about a woman who leaves her husband and moves to LA.
Commercials following "Just Friends": United Negro College Fund, anti-smoking commercial from www.everydaychoices.org, and noattacks.org
Music video titled, "Little Dear"
Feature: "Sweeny Todd" the Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim with Angela Lansbury. I've seen this before, and it's fabulous. If you haven't seen it, you should.
"Q On The Move" – I was able to make out that each week they will visit a different US city. This week was apparently LA, because there was an interview with a star from "Queer As Folk". The interview included footage of him working out at a gym. Looked like a slick, professional format, but again the technical problems made it impossible for me to judge.
"I Will, I Do, We Did" – Q's original documentary about gay weddings in San Francisco. I very much want to see this, and it was frustrating that there was no sound and mostly only choppy still frames of the video. However the couples look wonderful – people I would definitely like to hear about. There seemed to be 5 female couples and 4 male couples. Chapter titles include, "Meet The Couples", "Why Marriage?", "This Day I Thee Wed", "California Superior Court Issues An Injunction", "What If Your Marriage Is Revoked?", and "Final Thoughts".
Anti-smoking commercial
Logo: "Q is out to become the preferred Gay and Lesbian television network of choice for the 21st century."
Logo: Coming soon to cable AND SATELLITE operators and audiences all over America" (capitalization mine)
Feature: "Kiss My Cleats" Covers the Gay Games V. Format looked smart as far as I was able to tell.
"Odysseys & Ovations" – Travel and the arts. Interesting looking people and places. Schedule says "visits with artists, writers and doctors".
Commercials: fairhousinglaw.org, firewise.org, uncf. org, registerandvote.org, skincancer.org
"Style" Looked interesting. Interviews with fashion stylists. I believe the schedule titled this "The Stylists"
Tape ends
AI
