Live sports and news event programming  have been huge ratings plays for cable networks  this year, from ESPN’s cable record-setting  audience for the Jan. 12 Ohio State-Oregon  College Football Playoff National Championship  game to Fox News Channel’s stunning performance for its Republican Presidential Debate on Aug. 6.

Three other networks this week are  looking to tap into the excitement and unpredictability  of live programming with  specials that, if successful, could usher in a  new era of live entertainment fare on cable  beyond awards shows.

National Geographic Channel kicked things off  Sunday (Oct. 25) with Brain Surgery Live, featuring a  renowned surgical team performing a deep brain stimulation  surgery on an awake patient in real time. The neurological  procedure — performed on a retired Navy chief  petty officer who suffers from tremors due to the early  onset of Parkinson’s disease — was billed as the first live  telecast of its kind, acknowledging the remarkable technological  achievements in the medical field.

Catering to viewers looking for thrills and chills during  Halloween week, A&E on Monday (Oct.  26) digs up a special that will test the limits  of fear among three participants who have  volunteered to be buried alive, live. A&E is  marketing the special, Fear: Buried Alive, as  more of a psychological experiment testing  — and hopefully conquering — fear itself,  but many viewers will undoubtedly tune in  to see how long it will take for the contestants  to freak out within the constraints of  a sealed, underground coffin.

On Halloween Eve, Destination America  follows suit with the first-ever live telecast  of an exorcism when it goes to the  house that inspired the 1970s horror film The Exorcist  to investigate paranormal activity.Exorcism: Live even  brings an interactive element: Viewers can access multiple  live camera feeds set up around the house online at  DestinationAmerica.com/ExorcismLive.

While these shows aren’t expected to generate the  20 million to 30 million viewers that some live cable news  and sports events have already done this year, the specials  will shed some light on whether the mix of live and entertainment  programming can generate big audiences. 

A&E and GSN have each tapped major horror film producers to scare up viewers this month within the competition/ game show arena.

Eli Roth (Hostel) will team with A&E on a special to help contestants face their fears by burying them alive on live television, while Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity) will look to thrill contestants with grizzly and gruesome tasks as part of GSN’s new game show series Hellevator.

With the two shows, A&E and GSN will join other networks celebrating Halloween with programming stunts seeking to deliver frightfully good ratings.

A&E’s Oct. 26 special Fear: Buried Alive will feature three contestants who will be placed in underground coffins as part of a psychological experiment to test the limits of their fears and their strength to conquer them. The live special, produced by Roth, will take a more psychological approach to fear rather than delivering full-fledged scares to viewers.

“We wanted to get to the psychology of what’s going on around fear,” said Elaine Frontain Bryant, executive vice president of programming for A&E. “There’s no cash prize — they’re really volunteering to see if they can push themselves in a psychological social experiment conquering fear.”

Bryant said, though, that viewers will undoubtedly tune in to see how people react under scary and stressful situations.

“Some people maybe drawn to this because it’s thrilling to watch people be scared on live TV, not knowing the nature of what might happen, while others might be drawn to the psychology of it,” she said. “Certainly the live nature of it — and being in the week of Halloween — may attract either adrenaline junkies or those viewers that like the horror genre.”

She said the network is already exploring another show within the format that tackles a different common fear. “I don’t know yet if we roll it out as a series or keep it as an event,” she said. “I certainly hope there are more.”

GSN’s Hellevator is more in line with a traditional game show/competition series. A team of friends ride a haunted elevator into various level of an abandoned slaughterhouse where they encounter frightening challenges.

The series, which debuts Oct. 21, is the brainchild of Blum, who told Multichannel News that he was looking for a vehicle beyond movies and television series to tell a horror story.

“The scary genre is not the first thing you think of when you’re thinking about competitive game shows,” said Blum, who professed to be a huge game show fan.

“We have a lot of other outlets to do horror, but doing it through the game show format, we thought, was very unique.”

The series joins GSN’s lineup of original, non-traditional game shows/competitions that include the body-painting series Skin Wars and fashion design show Steampunk’d.

Buried Alive and Hellevator also join a list of specials and stunts cable networks are developing leading into Halloween. A partial list follows.

• FX will air a special six-hour marathon of Fox’s thriller/drama series Scream Queens Oct. 31.

• Nickelodeon is running several Halloween themed original movies and premieres from such shows as Blaze and the Monster Machines, Wallykazam, Dora and Friends and Bella and the Bulldogs.

• ABC Family today (Oct. 19) will launch its “13 Nights of Halloween” stunt featuring special episodes of its procedural drama Stitchers.

• Syfy will launch a new original movie, The Hallow (Oct. 24), as well as Halloween-themed episodes of Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Witness on Oct. 28 as part of its Halloween “spook-a-thon.”

• Destination America’s Oct. 30 special Exorcism: Live will air a televised exorcism from the house that inspired the film The Exorcist.