FearHQ is a first-of its-kind partnership between AMC Networks and Twitch with the aim of melding the production and vision of a known media company with the kineticism and intimacy of live-streaming.

AMC Networks has been at the forefront of television programming for decades now, but with the rise of digital platforms and live streaming, we wanted to expand into this new space and transfer a drive for bold storytelling to a new and intimate medium.

FearHQ’s goal has been to push the boundaries of live-entertainment, reward fan-bases, and capitalize on the unique engagement opportunities that Twitch allows.

FearHQ was created with the intent to give genre fans a new home to celebrate, discuss, and experience all their favorite horror stories. This also includes driving new levels of engagement with AMC’s core properties like The Walking Dead and Shudder by activating a younger audience that naturally lives on Twitch.

The channel would host a full suite of rotating shows from diverse and unique voices to expand and modernize the AMC brand.

The strategy was to balance Twitch-friendly discussion-based formats with innovative, high-production narrative shows.

Live-streaming itself has a certain culture of relatability. And we knew going in that in order to avoid alienating viewers we wanted to embrace this. A lot of Twitch is people talkinging to you from their bedroom. It’s intimate. So, a lot of our content should be built with that in mind. We put strong personalities on camera, let them talk about what they’re passionate about, and build a strong, core community.

After the initial foundation has been laid, we can expand our content to high-production shows that stand-out from typical live-streams. We can establish connections by utilizing the strengths of the platform - and then innovate and expand on it with original stories to keep excitement high.

In short, the goal was to do what we know works, grow, and then break the rules.

We made sure to start-off very fan-focused and capitalize on the brands that AMC cultivated. The Walking Dead was a big one. We celebrated its past by deep-diving into earlier seasons, but also stayed current by doing watch-alongs of the newest episodes. And the voice of the fans was always something that was incorporated - either by direct communication from the hosts or with our custom interactive tools like polling comment amplification.

The next step we expanded into innovation experiences and storytelling. We’ve done “in-real-life” content - providing viewers with a boots-on-the-ground perspective of haunts, seances, and more. And, moreover, we’ve been bringing new stories to life with a focus on live, interactive narrative where the audience has a direct impact on the show.

Now we are at a great balance of tried-and-true personality based content serving as a lead-in for our high-production events.

FearHQ has exceeded our expectations.

Since launch, we’ve gotten over 30 million views. And we’ve had over 850 thousand messages in our chat, which means that people are deeply engaged with the shows thanks to their dynamic interactivity. Plus, we've repurposed our live content on other platforms like TikTok and YouTube and gathered hundreds of thousands more views across those, as well.

Moreover, this partnership has spawned many more conversations between Twitch and other media companies about following AMC’s example and utilizing the strengths of the Twitch platform for their own content.

And we’re still going! Every week, we’re pushing ourselves even further to innovate the live-streaming space and to introduce the AMC Networks brand to a world of new fans.