An article at Video Business News reminds us that Tower has a lot of video debt as well as its mountain of debt to music companies. The article confirms what Coolfer has heard from multiple sources about its arrangement with labels: Vendors are shipping product to Tower on a pre-paid basis.

"It appears that most suppliers, including Image Entertainment, have agreed to work with Tower on a cash on delivery basis. However, Tower has not taken in new product from at least one of its music suppliers and one of its DVD suppliers for several weeks, indicating that its cash flow situation is dire."

One distributor is pleased that Tower is working hard to get through this, which is in contrast to the way Musicland's financial problems were handled. "With Musicland, there was no communication. But [Tower] has been forthright with information. They are very communicative with suppliers, but they aren’t optimistic."