All-gay television. (Network Q monthly>

     From Progressive Inc. 1993

     How do gay and lesbian film and video makers overcome the political
and regulatory obstacles that prevent their work from reaching television
audiences without network filtering? Start an alternative network.

     Last year, former advertising director David Surber co-founded
Network Q, a Las Vegas-based company dedicated to commissioning,
producing, and delivering gay and lesbian programming directly to
subscribers through a monthly videotape magazine. "By having home videos
as the delivery vehicle, Network Q sidesteps all the censorship issues and
local prejudices you come across" when dealing with broadcasters, says
Surber, who serves as the network's on-air host. Direct access, he notes,
allows the viewers "an unfiltered portrait of the community" that
originates with its members.

     For many of the filmmakers contributing to the network, says Surber,
"it's the first time they have been paid to do what they do, and it's for
a gay and lesbian audience. So there's economic empowerment. And we're
helping to provide an audience to people who didn't have that before,
outside of festivals," which provide important screening opportunities but
little financial compensation.

     In addition to providing entertainment and an outlet for the work of
gay and lesbian artists, Suber says, Network Q enables subscribers living
in more rural areas to hook into events and information previously
accessible only to people living in cities with large gay and lesbian
populations.

     For $20 a month, network subscribers receive two hours of news,
features, and entertainment programming. Supported entirely by
subscription, Network Q airs commercials that advertise community support
services. Regular segments, focusing on different cities each month,
include profiles of openly gay activists and artists, travel spots, book
reviews, film clips, and theatrical venues. A recent issue included
coverage of "the largest queer cinema event in the world" - the
Seventeenth Annual San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival; reporting
on the Gay Travel Expo; bits from comedian Marilyn Pittman's hilarious
routine at a San Francisco nightclub, and interviews with Michelangelo
Signorile (controversial author of Out in America), Lenny Broberg (1992
Mr. International Leather), and Canadian filmmakers Lynne Fernie and
Aerlyn Weissman (creators of Forbidden Love, a documentary on lesbian life
in the 1950s and 1960s).

     Political events are also regularly featured, allowing subscribers in
various regions to observe the scope of gay and lesbian activism. "The
point is to help hold the community together," says Surber, noting that
the network has subscribers in all fifty states and a dozen foreign
countries. Over the past year, Network Q correspondents have reported on
New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade controversy, the fight against antigay
measures in Oregon and Colorado, and the military ban against gays. "The
activism happening on the grass-roots level is really important to our
whole civil-rights agenda," says Surber. Prior to the March on Washington
last spring, Network Q literally crossed the country - in a motor home -
to document local organizing for the event. "We plowed from one end of the
country to the other in ten days," Surber says, featuring preparations in
eleven different cities.

     Along the way, he adds, he met lots of subscribers, who have been
encouraged to provide input via surveys, mailed along with their monthly
cassettes. "They're not shy about telling us what needs to be done," says
Surber. "But more often than not, they'll say: I really appreciate what
you're doing.'" And some tell how they've used the cassettes to forge
links with people outside of the community. Surber says he gets letters
every month from subscribers who have shared the programming with straight
audience.