The Horror Channel

What is The Horror channel?

It is a British Television channel that shows Horror films, television series and science fiction. It is broadcasted in the UK, Ireland and Italy.It specializes in Cult films, classic horror, comedy, B movies, Modern thrillers, series, home-produced specials, biographies and documentaries. It was formerly available on the youveiw platform through TalkTalk Plus Tv; This came to no extra costs for the audience. After being removed on 2nd June 2015, it was then launched on Freeveiw on Channel 70 as of 13 March 2015. This was a great marketing technique as they had released it with the Friday the 13th Event.

HistoryThe Channel was created by Tony Hazell in 2004. I find it extremely interesting that Tony Hazell used to previously work for the God Channel, which links to the fact that most horror films in present time are based around religion, such as topics to do with possession and devils. Films like this include The Exorcist and The Omen. Hazell however states that this has nothing to do with his idea of the horror channel, he simply wanted ‘a change in career’.

Types of films shownThe Horror Channel airs a wide range of films. The main is Horror, but there are films and tv series that contain horror themes such as action, comedy and thriller.Initially the channel began airing classic films of mixed genres such as The killer shrews, Lady of burlesque, carnival of souls and The city of the dead.After being rebranded in 2010 to ‘Horror Channel’, it started to show more recent horror films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre which is extremely popular amongst the teens. More recent films such as All the boys love Mandy Lane, and An American Haunting are shown more which could create more views to the Horror Channel.

Audience The Horror channel has many difference audiences. This is because of the wide range of sub genres they air.From my basic knowledge, I can interpret that Teens might not be the main target audience for this channel as they prefers the newer and most recent horror films. They find the ‘old’ horror films to be outdated and don’t get the thrill from watching it. I will need to research further into what type of audiences are fans of horror films.

The purposeThe purpose of a Horror channel to even exist, is mainly for entertainment. Just like all other channels, its purpose is to entertain the audience. As Horror is such a popular and growing genre, a channel dedicated to it, would show the importance of the demand of horror.