Will there ever really be any horror channels?

I was under the impression that Fangoria TV was already launched in certain HD locations.

It will happen. If a video game channel can get launched and become succesful a horror channel sure as hell can. I'm just worried about what kind of programming they'll offer.

ahrm

If a video game channel can get launched and become succesful a horror channel sure as hell can.

There's a difference between being successful and giving the fans what they actually want. Successful means it's just making enough ad revenue to justify keeping it around. Keep that in mind when you're wishing for a horror channel. Would you rather just not have one, or have one that insults you for your taste and never fulfills the promise of what it could be?

I was actually gonna try to get that VOOM HD satellite system in April when I get my new TV. They actually do have a horror channel in HD with a good lineup. And it's all movies, no actual shows that I saw. But then it had to go and get bought out by DISH network. So now I have no idea what is going to happen with that channel.

Horropr channel is soliciting independent films for it's launch, but they aren't saying when they are lauching.
Universal also said they wanted to launch a horror channel but again, no one is saying when.
I think it will happen. But I also suspect they are waiting until they have enough systems signed up to carry them before the actually go on the air.

In all honesty, I had forgotten .... and in thinking about it, if it takes this long with these problems, it's probably better if it doesn't happen .................... If money/backing is such an issue, then the quality of the programming will be compromised and most likely lame .......

I can just hear "It'll get better once we get going" once one is on the air ........ at this point, even if one gets launched, I can't imagine it being any good ....

If a video game channel can get launched and become succesful a horror channel sure as hell can.

Hmmmmmmmm.......
I am assuming you guys are all refering to G4. The parent company of G4 (I can't remember it at the moment) purchased TECH TV this past year. I'm sure most of you guys were aware of that. I'm also betting that any other tech-minded individals that watched TECHTV previous to the buyout would also agree that G4'a merge COMPLETELY RUINED THE TECH TV NAME.
My point is that the purchase was only to get the G4 name onto the COMCAST lineup around the nation so that millions more can keep up with the latest MADDEN CHALLENGE news while getting rid of many of the shows that had drawn an audience to the channel to begin with. Granted not all of the shows on the G4 suck but how many times can you really want to watch 8 people play SOCOM and UNREAL CHAMPIONSHIP competitively.
I don't know if anyone has noticed but soon the channel will be changing the name from "G4 Tech TV" just to "G4". Just so you guys don't think I'm some old fogey talking down on the kids new channel, I'm a hardcore gamer at 24 and I have been since I was 10.

LOL
anyway excuse the rant
I've gotten way off topic and now I'll stop. that's how G4 became successful. It would be hard for any horror channel to follow the same path. It's going to be a lot harder for it to get off the ground.

I just find it funny how it's been 7 months and nothing has happened with THC. No updates, info, anything. Not to mention that it isn't even on the air yet!

As for the other channels, they probably won't air either. I think that the only channels that will have horror movies will be AMC, and the other pay channels. Hey, you know that AMC is having a Friday the 13th marathon this Friday? Sure, it will be censored movies, but at least it's on the air. Another missed opportunity for THC. Pathetic.

I can't imagine there are more SF films than Horror. Odd that there is a SF channel and no horror compliment.

Although scifi used to play a lot of horror.

I remember the days when SciFi first started. Its growth since has been pretty extraordinary. A lot of credit must go to those who have been involved.

There are a lot more Sci Fi TV shows than Horror shows though. That makes it very easy (and very cheap, I imagine) to fill up the schedule with shite. As the UK Sci-Fi channel proves every single week.

Time was, they actually used to play classic SF - or at least fun B-movies. Now they show endless re-runs of cancelled US shows and films like Stigmata and (for some reason) First Knight.

Best thing they did was the SF:UK series.

sooner or later high quality video streaming over the net is going to be the norm in US households, people are going to actually watch stuff over the net like they do now via satellite or cable. when that happens, there will finally be a horror channel

Films and shows still cost money to make and/or buy. Streaming them over the net will just make a dedicated horror channel even less financially viable, because the revenue streams just won't be there. The only thing people will pay to watch online is porn, because it removes the embarassment factor.

To sustain such a venture you'd need a significant number of people who would:

a) be interested enough in watching an online horror channel regularly
b) be willing to pay to watch the channel
c) would keep watching the channel
d) would be happy to watch it all on a computer

That's a pretty tight set of criteria to meet and, once the novelty had worn off, I doubt you'd be able to find enough regular viewers to make the finances add up. The only solution would be what we've seen with the UK Horror Channel - the programming has to be ultra-cheap, or completely free, and that means wall-to-wall crap movies.

I can only hope the reason for this is a lot of number crunching behind the scenes in getting the perfect horror channel on the air. If, after all this wait, it sucks, if we're not getting nights of Argento and Bava, afternoons of Craven and Del Toro, and mornings of Lynch and Cronenberg, then this will all be for naught and I, for one, will be pissed.

IMO, ultimately (in our lifetimes), the internet is going to be the primary distibution channel for all media, including what we know now as television. already even basic nerds can watch TV on flat screen computer monitors, which are about as big as flat TVs at a fraction of the cost. People love stuff like TIVO and "on demand" pay per view programming-- when the connectivity is widespread, mark my words, somebody is going to be ahead of the curve and offer TV-like programming over the web. when the floodgates open its going to be anything goes, and niche programmers who have been ignored by monopolized cable are going to have their day in the sun. There's no reason web video content cant make ad money just like tv. and, unlike the vast wasteland of monopolized tv, web video "networks" are going to see content from hoardes of creative young people who have digital video cameras and final cut pro on their macs. Everybody thought cable and satellite were going to offer such a wide variety of programming and the fact is they don't, because airwave ownership resides in a very small handful of mega-conglomerates. DSL is just barely not good enough for watching TV. When that changes, everything changes.

And the thought of those marathons happening makes me horny.

I think he's referring to a system where your PC is not the only device connected to the internet. You'd download (or stream) content to your TV on demand. And we're not far off from that becoming a reality.

However, that doesn't change the fact that horror is a niche market, where quality programming is scarce and often in the hands of larger entertainment conglomerates already.

It's a vicious circle - you won't get advertising until you get customers, you won't get customers until you have quality programming, you won't afford quality programming until you can get advertising.

I think horror fans have a tendency to overestimate the size of the genre fanbase. At least as far as dedicated fans who would make a service like this viable. Sure, people might go to the theater at the weekend to catch House of Wax or similar populist fare, but that audience doesn't automatically translate into a TV market. You can already get the latest horror movies on the usual movie channels, there are plenty of genre-flavoured shows on network TV, and then there's DVD.

I just don't think there are enough horror fans who aren't already served by the existing media, with the technical means, the disposable income and the commited interest required to turn a viewer into a subscriber to support an independent and dedicated horror channel - especially if you're expecting that channel to show marathons of movies and directors you've heard of.

I'm open to being proven wrong - in fact I hope I am - but I can't help feeling that if there was a way to make this work, someone would have done it already.

I watch a lot of DVDs in favor of TV too! in fact one of the other great technological breakthroughs I am waiting for is when harddrive space becomes really gigantic to where you can have tons and tons of DVDs loaded in and DJ them like itunes does with music. when you combine something like that, with greater streaming bandwidth, basically anybody could run their own TV station. and while I am all for that, of course it would be illegal in the present society. but you can point at that and say This is possible, regardless of whether the industry manages to put something together like that or not.

again, this is a valid point, but only because the industry wont react fast enough for whatever reasons. Why have people heard of he directors they've heard of? because they saw them on tv or in the theater, and now you can add to that maybe they picked up a DVD. and down the line it's gonna be because maybe they went to the directors website and watched his movie there. so I think things are really going to change, whether hollywood plays along or not. certainly the US courts have recently squashed thier well-lobbied FCC pals pretty good (ruled they couldnt interfere in the manufacture of various computer based hardware devices and appliances)

That still doesn't change the fact that the cost of quality horror programming, the cost of showing the sort of films that would drive fans to subscribe to a channel, remains prohibitively high compared to the potential customer base.

Hollywood is slow to react, but it does react. There may come a time when a director will be able to distribute their movie online and build up industry buzz that way, but even then - how does that solve the problem of how to make a dedicated horror channel financially viable?

You need more than just a few hot new directors. You need 24-hour programming - you need round-the-clock movies, and they need to be movies that people will pay a subscription fee to receive.

Let's use Cabin Fever as an example. Pretend Eli Roth directed that in 2010, and the technology was there for him to get it out there over the Internet and make money off it himself. Now say you're starting up a horror channel using the same technology. Why would Roth give the movie to you, and eat into his own profit? More to the point, how many Eli Roth's would you need to make it a real horror channel worth paying for, and not the One Good Movie And A Load Of Filler Channel?

The idea of filling the schedule with up-and-coming talent is an altruistic one - and one I'd love to see - but it'd be commercial suicide. Nobody would subscribe to a channel like that.

I have to say, despite the crappiness of the UK horror channel, it keeps showing this show called The Fear Makers, which is ace. Yesterday it had a whole show about Jack Arnold, and THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, which was greatness.

Yeah, I've caught a few episodes of The Fear Makers. There was a good one on Stuart Gordon as well. I've got the book somewhere as well.

But that kinda proves my point - the UK Horror Channel is free-to-air. You don't have to pay for it. If you had to subscribe, would you really pay up for one decent show (repeated constantly) and the occasional fun b-movie at 2am?

why do most non-industry (and even plenty of mainstay industry) musical acts embrace P2P filesharing so vigorously? because unless you are primary beneficiary of an artificial monopoly, you recognize that the incredible distribution capacity provided by the internet is an hitherto unheard of opportunity for creating a fanbase. Every indie band trying to make money knows that if you want to become hugely popular, the first thing you need to do is get a lot of people to LISTEN to your music. The more people who actually take the time to listen to your music and like it and pass it around means the more people who know who you are and might actually buy something from you, whether its a ticket to your show or a tshirt or a record-- and moreover, that audience power makes the artist more lucrative on many other associated future fronts. the same core concepts are undeniably true for all media including film.

my prediciton is that hollywood as a whole will completely miss the boat as they try to preserve an unpreservable state of affairs. meanwhile up and coming filmmakers (and smart ones who are already successful) will not waste time utilizing the internet per above when the time really comes. And look, that time is here now in some ways. You can already download feature length movies pretty easily (legally or otherwise). maybe you cant really stream with quality yet but that day is coming (there is already a second generation internet in use at major universities which is 20,000x faster than DSL).

its a chicken-egg thing as usual, but one of these days, somebody's movie website is going to start getting so much traffic that other filmmakers are going to want to screen their films on it just because of the exposure it will get them. Maybe it will be something like Anchor Bay that tries to get in on it. maybe we'll start to see where when the first "internet-buzz-generated" films actually move on to getting played in multiplexes --with the coming advent of digital projection in theaters, it will be nothing more than a few keystrokes to screen anything anywhere (no more 35mm film cannisters shipping all around)--but that's another conversation!

You're missing my point. My point is that if the technology exists for a director to sell their movie direct to the customer, there's no reason for them to use a "horror channel" as a middle-man in the deal, and therefore even less chance of a horror channel working.

But isn't this moving quite far away from the point of the thread - will a horror channel ever be a reality? What you're talking about is a technology that would render the very idea redundant - not so much a horror "channel", as a distribution method that bypasses TV stations and even theaters completely.

well, just because you CAN sell direct to consumer online doesnt mean that the consumer is going to find you--in fact they probably WONT because it is a big internet out there. So I'd guess there is going to be an early premium on high-traffic sites that get your content to your audience-- i.e., essentially, sites that are "internet TV stations"--this is where I feel a Horror Channel will ultimately be to be most viable.

I dont think the semantics of "channel" matter. I think one reason we are not seeing an ongoing explosion of niche channels on "regular" (cable, satellite) TV is that anybody with the $ to invest understands that there is a limited life left for cable & satellite TV as the one-way street we've known it as. We're in a transitory period and I doubt anybody wants to sink a lot of resources in the old game when the digital scenarios we're discussing are looming. add to that the main factor which is the wheeling & dealing for content, for which the big catalog players call the shots, and it seems like nothing is happening.

IMO, even in spite of Netflix and Blockbuster, people WANT to have a certain amount of content programmed for them. lets say hypothetically in 10 years a big, longrunning movie production house has a website where you can subscribe and watch any of their movies whenever you like. That's pretty neat. Maybe it will even let you make your own playlist and program what you'll watch next week. Sweet. But a lot of people won't want to have to do that. So there is still going to be a market for programmed content, and maybe this company would also have a service where you could watch their "Horror Channel" featuring content programmed by experts who also comment on the films and have other exclusive content. If a site like this becomes at all successful I would look also subsequently to see deals brokered with other, smaller production houses to have their content screened as well...

digital tech isnt going to solve the content ownsership agreement issues, but it IS going to break the monopoly on who can have a channel, which is otherwise a very real factor in launching a new channel on cable or satellite. and as with music P2P I think that will light a fire under the established industry...

A good horror channel (I'm looking at you, Dread Central) would definitely keep the smile on my face by the potential goods it could deliver.

Friday the 13th Series anyone? That was a pretty decent show back in the day and for reruns to be exclusive to a horror channel along with some Franco and the like? Good stuff. I can only pray this will happen soon.

horror tv

At the recent fangoira convention in burbank it was interesting how the audience did not like a presentation of 2001 maniacs because it seemed too gory and offensive against women. All the goth posers in the crowd made me wonder what they would really want to watch on a horror channel. We probably will need a t & a horror channel as well as a more mainstream general family rated horror channel. Thank god for horror that pushes the envelope like killers in the woods.

If the Horror Channel is going to be basic cable, forget it. They would have to cut everything to a PG 13 or better level.
A premium Horror Channel is more promising, but I don't know if it's finiancially viable,unless it is a add on to existing Premium channel like "ActionMax',"ComedyMax',etc.