Things may be going bump in the night at General Electric
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
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
Like Fox's
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.