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Trying to Scare Up Some Free-Spending Viewers

Posted on: Monday, 28 November 2005, 03:02 CST

By Ruth, Joo-Pierre S

GUTTENBERG

The Horror Channel aims to become the first new cable network for fans of the frightening

HALLOWEEN MAY HAVE FADED into memory, but there will be frights all year-round if Nick Psaltos has his way. His brainchild, The Horror Channel in Guttenberg, is a proposed 24-hour television channel that would deliver films and programs to scare the pants off viewers. To give fans a peek at things to come, The Horror Channel last week aired a preview of its mix of movies and television shows at its Website, www.horrorchannel.com.

The Horror Channel is in negotiations to get distribution from cable and satellite service providers interested in capturing an audience that Psaltos says spends some $9.5 billion annually on movie tickets, video rentals, video games and products in the horror genre. "Horror fans are huge collectors and spend a disproportionate amount of their disposable income on DVDs and works of art," says John Giunti, cofounder for The Horror Channel.

Getting this far has involved the channel in some Frankenstein vs. the Werewolf battles of its own. The company launched in 2001, then received financial backing in 2003 from Orchid Ventures, a Little Falls venture capital firm that led a $300,000 round of seed funding.

But last year Hakim Bangash, a principal with Orchid Ventures, unveiled plans for his own rival 24-hour horror station, now known as Horror Net, in partnership with movie producer Joel Silver ("The Matrix,""House on Haunted Hill") and the Dark Castle Entertainment unit of Warner Bros. Studios. It too has yet to air.

Another rival, FangoriaTV, a spinoff from Fangoria magazine, is also in development. All the newcomers will find themselves in competition with NBC Universal's Sci-Fi Channel, that reaches some 85 million homes and airs plenty of horror-themed movies and programming.

Once The Horror Channel is on the air, which Psaltos, 43, believes could happen within the next year, it intends to offer original programming and hard-to-find movies along with classic films and reruns of horror shows.

Initially The Horror Channel is expected to air on Saturday nights, sharing time on The Men's Channel, which is available to 22 million homes, to generate demand.

Sharing air time with another station is a way for fledgling channels to build an audience to support it on a stand-alone basis. "The idea is to do that only on a temporary basis because there are slots available to have our own channel," says Giunti. Getting one of those slots will be dependent on The Horror Channel drawing enough fans to persuade cable and satellite providers that it's worthy of its own space in their station lineups.

For Giunti and Psattos, launching has not been child's play.

The Horror Channel was founded in 2001 as a subsidiary of TerrorVision Television. Psaltos had been director of programming for Bravo IFC, a cable channel for independent films, before leaving to begin work on the channel. He has since tapped personal savings, angel investors, friends and family to raise some $1.2 million.

Psaltos hopes that landing a distribution deal will help scare up institutional financial backing for the channel, which has three full-time employees and part-time associates across the country. One obstacle he sees is the perception that larger media conglomerates are eating up space for programming on cable and satellite service.

Psaltos says the rise of the Internet should help The Horror Channel gain a toehold in the TV market. For example, last week's online preview of the channel offered fans streaming video of horror programming that included the original "Night of the Living Dead" feature film. "We believe the cable operators are faced with a changing scenario," Psaltos says. In the new reality, "broadband delivery of Internet access enables different types of niche programmers to have the same type of reach as traditional cable, and we are basically taking advantage of that."

E-mail to jpruth@njbiz.com

Copyright Snowden Publications, Inc. Nov 14, 2005

Source: NJBIZ

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