Things may be going bump in the night at General Electric (NYSE:GE) someday, and it won't be because of a settling turbine engine or a falling lightbulb. That's because its NBC Universal division is considering a cable network dedicated to the horror genre, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Nothing has been announced -- it's still in a very speculative stage and may never happen -- yet the concept is compellingly logical. In fact, I'd be shocked if NBC Universal weren't developing such a channel. NBC, like Disney's (NYSE:DIS) ABC and Viacom's (NYSE:VIA) CBS, continues to battle against the one-two punch of dwindling audiences and inflating programming costs. Owning stakes in cablers makes a lot of sense, since viewers who are tired of network fare will switch to these properties in search of entertainment. In addition to advertising revenues, there is another income source in the form of carriage fees paid by the cable and satellite operators, and that income will grow once the property becomes hot (these fees can lead to fights).
And breaking ground -- hopefully the ground of an evil, blasphemed graveyard on the outskirts of a corrupt village in Transylvania, in this case -- on a horror network makes incredible sense. Horror is hot, has been hot, will always be hot, and it's become a phenomenon with today's teens, especially since Wes Craven's Scream in the late '90s. The pipeline for horror will always be like a cornucopia, full and fertile, and these teens will access a horror channel to see films after their theatrical runs and to get information on all products related to the genre, whether it be a video game series such as Resident Evil or a gothic tome by Anne Rice.
These fans tend to be devoted, and that coupled with their youth and their spending prowess makes them, as the cliché goes, attractive to advertisers. As many have observed, teens aren't yet set in their ways in terms of the products they use, so they can be transformed into buyers of competing products if effective campaigns are launched on platforms that cater to them -- which can obviously be profitable to a cabler such as a Sci-Fi channel or a horror channel.
This is not a unique idea; there already is a horror channel in development, and it is set to launch soon. That's going to set up some interesting competition if, in fact, two (or more) networks actually launch -- remember when there were two comedy channels (Comedy Central was the result of a merger between separate comedy networks run by HBO and MTV)?
Maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, but maybe someday we'll be looking at consolidation in the horror industry. After all, World Wrestling Entertainment (NYSE:WWE) eventually bought out Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) WCW wrestling asset, and I think there is a useful analogy in that. The point is that it can be difficult for any genre of high specificity to be served by multiple platforms (as an example, imagine if there were 10 channels for bass fishing).
Like Fox's (NYSE:FOX) foray into a network for reality TV, NBC Universal will find that creating another market will serve it well in terms of synergizing with its own library (reminder: there is no guarantee the company intends to do this). And it'll serve me well, too. I'm a horror fan, just as Alyce Lomax is, and I can tell you we're looking forward to all horror channels that come down the line.
Fool contributor Steven Mallas owns shares of Disney and General Electric and has been involved over the years in a cable access show dedicated to horror.
