Scream will have a different name and lineup come September, when it will be rebranded as Dusk. The Corus-owned digichannel will move away from its stock-in-trade gore and horror to more female-friendly paranormal programming.

The change is an effort to draw more female viewers in the 18-49 demo, says VP of marketing Jim Johnson. ‘Over the last year we included the show Supernatural, which gave us a nice lift during primetime. We increased our ranking among digital rankers from 14th for women between 18-49 to sixth,’ he says.

This, paired with the successes of other, more accessible titles both on and off the channel led to the decision to rebrand.

‘We also looked to see what’s happening in the industry with the success of Twilight and True Blood,’ says Johnson, nodding to the women across North America who continue to swoon over the former’s Robert Pattinson, and to the popular HBO series. ‘There’s lots of programming out there that speaks to that.’

Originally licensed as HorrorVision in 2000, the channel has played movies both classic (The Thing) and schlocky (Bad Girls Go to Hell), as well as shows such as Friday the 13th: The Series.

Following the relaunch on Sept. 9, its lineup will include more female-geared movies such as the thrillers Along Came a Spider, The Gift and Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia. The move does not involve a change to the channel’s licence.

According to a CRTC report for 2008, Scream had about 1.2 million subscribers and saw profits of $1.2 million on revenue of $6.2 million.