{"id":26972,"date":"2017-11-20T21:26:46","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T02:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=26972"},"modified":"2017-11-20T21:26:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T02:26:46","slug":"the-pc-thug-rest-in-peace-chiller-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/20\/the-pc-thug-rest-in-peace-chiller-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"The PC Thug: Rest In Peace, Chiller TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>2017 will go down as a truly banner year for the horror community. We had great highs and massive lows. It was also the year of Stephen King where we celebrated genuinely brilliant adaptations like \u201cIt,\u201d but bowed our heads in shame at the TV adaptations of \u201cThe Mist.\u201d Good god that was terrible. I digress. We lost a ton of horror greats, and a good portion of horror hit makers spent a lot of time trying to convince the public that their films were not horror.<\/p>\n

And who can forget the infamous \u201cPost-Horror\u201d crap? One of the bigger news headlines in the horror world that sent 2017 out with a bang has been the news that effective January 1st<\/sup> 2018, Chiller TV is shutting down.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Chiller isn\u2019t the first channel to go down over the span of the aughts, as the excellent Monsters HD shut down in mid-aughts, while FearNet shut down its entire operations much to the ire of horror fans everywhere. There was also the development of the Horror Channel in America that never turned in to anything. That said, the creation and duration of Chiller TV was impressive, which is why shutting it down is kind of surprising.<\/p>\n

The channel lasted an entire decade and over the span of its time in various cable markets, it managed to carve out a brand for itself, however small it was. While in the beginning the channel was subjected to re-airing leftovers from its mother network Syfy, repeating really bad indie horror films over and over, the channel tried constantly to become something of a label with Syfy. Over the years the channel aired a series of epic horror documentaries, and even staged its own horror based reality show.<\/p>\n

One of the most notable developments from Chiller was the establishing of Chiller Films which, with the partnership with Shout Factory, managed to release highly anticipated films of varying quality. I\u2019d be lying if I said every film Chiller released were even remotely good, but for every \u201cRemains\u201d and \u201cBeneath,\u201d there was solid horror entries like \u201cGhoul,\u201d \u201cSiren,\u201d \u201cThe American Scream,\u201d and the great anthologies \u201cChiller Visions,\u201d which allowed various horror indie filmmakers to deliver great short films with recurring themes.\"\"<\/a>Shortly before Chiller basically threw in the towel, they began airing their original horror series called \u201cSlasher,\u201d which was a shockingly good and eerie mix of a slasher, murder mystery, and small town drama. The series never returned officially on Chiller. Sadly in 2016 the channel seemed to lose a lot of what made it so much of a novelty, as the programming seemed to revert back to nothing but Syfy leftovers like \u201cFact or Faked?\u201d and \u201cHaunted Highway\u201d marathons, and replays of \u201cGhost Hunters\u201d and \u201cWorld\u2019s Wildest Police Videos,\u201d believe it or not.<\/p>\n

In 2017 when my cable provider took Chiller down from its line up officially, I was disappointed but I could kind of see the writing on the wall for the channel. It just wasn\u2019t as good as it once was. When news broke that Universal was completely shutting down the channel in 2018, I was once again disappointed but not at all surprised.<\/p>\n

In any consolation, ten years is a decent run for a niche channel, as most of the channels established in the aughts never quite last too long. Remember the \u201cEsquire\u201d Channel and \u201cG4\u201d? And despite their best efforts, \u201cSpike\u201d TV stopped being the \u201cman channel\u201d years ago and is now the \u201cWe throw any shit at the wall and see what sticks\u201d channel.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough my main love for Chiller came with the marathons of eighties and nineties horror shows that once aired in syndication. At one time they were airing rare series like \u201cNight Visions,\u201d \u201cBeyond Belief,\u201d and \u201cRipley\u2019s\u201d as well as classic horror like \u201cTales from the Darkside,\u201d \u201cMonsters,\u201d \u201cThe Twilight Zone,\u201d and \u201cFriday the 13th<\/sup>.\u201d I happily watched hours upon hours of those series re-visiting their greatness.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s surprising that on cable television, horror channels have struggled to stay on markets for a very long time. In a period where horror is as popular as ever, and horror movies are so cheap to make, you assume there would be about six horror channels on cable alone. With the changing demand for television and programming, the end of Chiller TV was inevitable. In either case, there is hope as now horror streaming services are taking the place of traditional channels. Horror fans looking for fixes of classic programs and movies need only look online for what suits them.<\/p>\n

That said, as a TV junkie, I\u2019ll miss Chiller TV. It might just be the last gasp of cable television appealing to a niche audience, which was what made cable so novel back in the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2017 will go down as a truly banner year for the horror community. We had great highs and massive lows. It was also the year of Stephen King where we celebrated genuinely brilliant adaptations like \u201cIt,\u201d but bowed our heads in shame at the TV adaptations of \u201cThe Mist.\u201d Good god that was terrible. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,17],"tags":[477,737,1832],"class_list":["post-26972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pcthugs","category-tv-tomb","tag-horror","tag-nostalgia","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26974,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26972\/revisions\/26974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}