It’s the end of the road for thriller, suspense and horror-themed FEARnet. Comcast has bought out its partners in the joint venture — Sony Pictures Entertainment and Lionsgate Entertainment — to take 100% ownership. Following the transaction, which closed this morning, FEARnet will no longer be a stand-alone brand but will be folded into Comcast’s NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment division. “NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment has acquired all remaining interests in FEARnet from its productive venture with Lionsgate and Sony,” the company said in a statement to Deadline through a spokesman. “FEARnet, along with its popular content, will be integrated into NBCU Cable Entertainment. This process will take place over a yet to be determined period of time.”
FEARnet is expected to be folded mainly into Comcast/NBCU Cable Entertainment’s similarly thriller, suspense and horror-focused Chiller, though some content could also migrate to Syfy. I’ve learned that 10 of FEARnet’s 25 employees will stay on through the transition. The other 15 are being let go today. NBCU would try to find job opportunities for some of them across the company. FEARnet president Peter Block will stay at least through the transition.
FEARnet, a cable channel, website, and VOD service, was launched on Halloween 2006 as a three-way partnership between Comcast, Lionsgate and Sony, each of them owning a third. Four months later, NBCUniversal launched its own horror-focused digital cable network Chiller, which became part of Comcast’s portfolio via the company’s 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal, which also included sci-fi network Syfy. While Comcast, Lionsgate and Sony worked together for more than seven years to build the FEARnet brand, I hear Lionsgate and Sony ultimately opted to monetize their minority stakes in what had been a noncore asset for them rather than continuing.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
Forget Disney—soon Comcast will own everything.
Sux, but not surprising. FEARnet had the chance to dominate a very niche market opting to go for the TV distribution model, rather than digital, which hurt them in the long term.
Anonymous is completely right,for with the Comcast merger of Fearnet,Chiller,and SyFy(Sci-Fi Channel) the Comcast dynasty has just officially begun…
And they still don’t have Chiller.
Nevermind
this means nothing… fear net was a joke and has less carriage than EPIX….. this was a good move…
Comcast should keep the ENTIRE staff on board. They are dedicated, loyal hard working people who know their stuff.
Sad to see it go.
For all the people on the right who think that what’s good for corporations is good for the people. Tell that to the 15 people they fired. These corporate entities become bloated with their gluttonous acquisitions but the quality of the product we get goes steadily down and, for so-called “job creators”, they sure seem to screw the little guys who work for them an awful lot.
What the hell does a cable channel firing half its staff have to do with “The Right” Cant you leftys accept ANYTHING without putting a political spin to this? In fact, Comcast is a big LIB outfit, so blame your left-winged brethren first, capisce?
Can’t believe some troll wants to make this simple business decision as a rant against the “right”. Businesses make decisions like this everyday. Instead of ranting against the “corporation” how about ranting about this anemic “recovery” we are experiencing under Obama?
For me, this is GREAT news. As the owner of American Horrors, a 24 hour 7 day a week uncut horror channel available worldwide via Alki David’s Filmon, FEARnet seemed to be my only real competition as a horror channel, but they were corporate cut for broadcast horror.
With them gone, there’s a lot more room for my creators to stand out and a lot more of the audience pie to carve. Best of all, it shows to me the corporations are pretty clueless on how to deal with or service the needs of the horror audience.
So I have to say, I’m dancing with joy. Bye Bye FEARnet, I knew you wouldn’t, couldn’t last.
Sincerely,
Hart D. Fisher
If you need a movie critic, grab Scott Weinberg off the waiver wire.
There’s no such thing as a “lib” corporation.
Hart Fisher you sound like an a-hole. People lost their jobs. I hope your company prospers but don’t dance on peoples graves.
Uh, what about Comcast subscribers who get Fearnet, but NOT Chiller, since it’s not available in their area?! Does this mean Comcast will finally have Chiller available for every subscriber who now gets Fearnet?
Sony was looking to dump since they’re in trouble anyways, and Comcast is just going to create a new crappy version of Fearnet within the next year or so, why bother shutting it down? Also half the fearnet staff was made up of freelancers, so it’s more like they laid off 25-30 people, not 15.
Go get em Hart ! Big fan of the Hart Attack podcast. American Horrors kicks ass !!!