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Sci Fi Channel Becoming Less Geek-Centric "SyFy"
narramissic writes "According to a TV Week article, NBC Universal has decided to change the name of their Sci Fi Channel to SyFy. Why? To pull in a more 'mainstream' audience. If you're unclear what 'more mainstream' means, TV Historian Tim Brooks spells it out for you: 'The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.' Yes, we should probably all be offended. And telling us that a crack marketing team came up with the name because that's how tech-savvy 18-to-34 year-olds would text it really doesn't help."
My IQ just dropped 20 points reading that.
What the hell.
Shadus
...actually most kids would text SF coz it's shorter!
...and go straight to "The channel with Battlestar Galactica reruns, and nothing else really worth watching."
That's more than four letters, though.
Has the key word for the new name: "Ownable." Guess they were having difficulty suing people over the use of the word SciFi
Real science fiction fans don't call it Sci-Fi, they call it SF.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
So are they trying to say that the spelling of a word determines how the word is processed by the mind??? How about the syllables used when pronouncing the word Sci Fi, which is the same as Syfy? Oh wait, they didn't employ people who had any non-"syfy" people in invoking this b.s... Of course...
the new marketyng mandate to replace all our "I" wyth "Y"s...yn fact, yt wyll make everythyng more old tymye...why, all the tyme I spent learnyng to read myddle englysh wyll fynally be tyme well spent...
They're going to do exactly what G4 did, introduce a bunch of shitty reality shows and bad syndicated crap designed to shamelessly appeal to the "young male demographic" (as if young males are completely devoid of taste, and just want some drunk slut in a bikini making an ass of herself in front of Brett Michaels).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
with ponies!
for some reason, I'm not that surprised.
With SciFi airing wrestling....yes...wrestling...normal, steriod-loaded human male wrestling..no robots....
yea...my first thoughts about it were "WTF!" along with many other fellow sci-fi fans.
That and the end of two great sci-fi shows from the Stargate realm pretty much spelled the upcoming doom of the network.
That is quite possibly the stupidest network name I've ever heard. Who comes up with this stuff?
I should. But it's hard to feel indignant when the SciFi channel hasn't been a serious SciFi channel in damn near a decade. They used to show collections of all the great old SciFi TV shows and movies with some (often quite good) original new series and movies thrown into the mix. Unfortunately, this has been significantly pared down over the years. SciFi Channel friday nights are good, but (with the exception of Eureka) that's about it. They fill the rest of the time with crap like wrestling.
If SciFi went under, I'd dearly miss Stargate and Eureka. But that's about it.
Marketing departments tend to be disconnected from reality. They want everyone to believe that SciFi would be texted as "SyFy" to prop up their position. The truth is that alternatives like "SF" (what you'd actually text it as) are difficult to trademark and don't roll off the tongue as nicely as "SciFi". (Gee, maybe they should have kept the name? ... Nah. Then they couldn't convince everyone that wrestling is futuristic.)
Perhaps they shouldn't have reinforced the stereotype with all those Poe-style ticking clocks, suitcase cars, monsters turning into people, and other SciFi channel ads? It's not like your average movie goer is unhappy about watching a SciFi movie. Look at the Matrix for a great example. As long as you don't present the concept in too geeky of a light, the general populace can (and does) get on board.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I thought being a geek was chic at the moment. They want to move away from being cool because..... of brilliant marketing ideas?
Smart move there.
I could careless about this channel. They screw people over with the shows all the time.
BSG is the last show I will watch on that channel ever.
Boycot SyFy since all their best programing will be gone soon AND they are insulting us.
Sigh (seriously, one of those good Charlie Brown one's), this is so dumb, and dumbing down to all of us and their future viewers they hope to have.
Can an entire network jump the shark?
"When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually this is how you'd text it," Mr. Howe said. "It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise."
I think Slashdot mostly falls into that "techno-savvy crowd," but somehow, I don't think the reaction is going to be quite so receptive. Changing a name because that's how someone would text it?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
NBC is going to be true to their Big Three Network heritage and completely destroy something that doesn't need any drastic changes. Of course I saw this coming the first time I discovered that they were running goddamned wrestling on it, but I'd hoped against hope that it wouldn't happen. I'm running out of reasons to keep paying for cable; wish Comcast wasn't the only choice I had for broadband. For entertainment, I guess there's always Netflix and bittorrent..
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I read the article and it says it has to "appeal to a more mainstream audience", and yet it's earnings and revenue are up sharply this year. So, what logic says that they need to appeal to a wider audience?? Do they think that going more mainstream (which I suspect means also changing some of the type of programming as well....) won't cause any of the existing audience to leave? This sounds like the media equivalent to New Coke.
Wouldn't it have been better to rename it Speculative Fiction channel or something like that.
The Long Now Foundation
They didn't consider their Welsh-speaking demographic. To them the channel now reads (phonetically) soo-foo. Haaahaha!
Methinks the submitter of this were a few days early with his April Fools joke.
Maybe they were just concerned that the title was inaccurate since 75% of their content is terrible low budget horror films and retarded stuff like Ghost Hunters? I can't imagine the kind of person that is going to be "fooled" by the new title (OMG, I think I saw a spaceship on that channel! They tricked me! I thought it was a channel for people who like sticking 'y' in inappropriate places! Isn't that right my little Madysyn?"
I read the internet for the articles.
The Sci-Fi channel has been dead for years now. Other than the occasional gem like BSG, there is nothing good on that channel. When they started showing professional wrestling and Ghost Hunters, I gave up on it...and that's not even dealing with their Sci-Fi Original Movies. Features with names like "Giant Alligator Attack" showing, essentially, a group of young hipsters being chased by a few badly animated polygons get real old, real fast.
Ride the skies
To me it's more like short hand for "syphilis" Which the channel will probably turn into when they make the change over...:D
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Meh. TV channels are getting obsolete anyway. Who watches a particular channel religiously nowadays anyway. Other than the news, I rarely watch TV. I get most of my entertainment from my DVD collection of movies and series. This has the advantage of no commercials and I could go back and forth between the seasons (Babylon 5 comes to mind).
It can't be the professional wrestling or Mansquito. It's obviously the name that's the problem! Quick! Change the name!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Remember how MTV used to play music? Now its media saturated drivel?
Im sorry but they have sucked ever since they canceled Farscape one of their flagship shows..
Frell them.. :)
With BSG over, and this evidence that nothing as good will ever occur on that channel again, I can get rid of cable!
Syfy wouldn't be pronounced sigh-fie, it would be sigh-fee, like Dolly, or murky. If they spelled it "SyFi", it would work.
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x"â" bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez â"tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev alojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
-Mark Twain. /Dude was ahead of his time.
I'm sorry that today isn't April 1st. I remember signing a petition to get the Sci-Fi channel carried by our local cable operator way back in the early 1990s. It's sad that they don't want to stick with us geeks who helped get them started.
Abandoning their niche isn't the way to gain ground, they should be bettering their niche instead. With the budget they currently spend on the CG equivalent of rubber monster movies, they could hire real SF writers to create high-quality Science Fiction -- less frequently than the crap, sure, but it would build an audience. Imagine two BSG series and no weekly monster movie. I think that's a win-win.
Seems like it's too late now. The old Sci-Fi is dead. Long live the new Sci-Fi (pass the petition, willya?).
Behind ever corporate headquarters should be a well-equipped firing range and adjacent mass grave, in order to swiftly and appropriately rectify decisions as piss-poor and stupid as this one.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
How many fake ghost hunter episodes and crap made for tv movies can you cram on a channel that is suppose to have sci-fi on it? Now, we know the answer. Sad part is that if they actually had good programs, which there is a lot of for sci-fi, they would have a built in very loyal audience and probably have made a lot of money.
Hard to see how texting "OMG Syfy SUCKS. WTF" is going to make more money.
Is that you, Sify?
For years now, companies have been switching their names from meaningful terms to meaningless symbols - and have to for legal reasons. Ex.: "General Electric", a well-regarded company with a name having meaning, changed the name formally to "GE" and made it clear that was NOT an abbreviation for anything; "Xerox" spends considerable money ensuring people do NOT equate the otherwise meaningless name with a verb for photocopying. That a company name not have debilitating associations with other public domain (or otherwise owned) terms is important.
Likewise, the fact that "Sci Fi" is cultural terminology and not an abstract name is a legal liability. Changing the name to a similar, but legally disconnected from anything, term "Syfy" relieves them of a lot of BS regarding trademark & copyright law. Of course they spin it as something cool, but most likely their legal department made it clear "change the name or we're going to lose a LOT of money".
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
They don't actually show science fiction anymore anyway.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
"as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular"
Isn't the the whole point of having a channel dedicated to one subject--to go after people interested in that subject?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
- So they've renamed the channel?
- Si.
- Er, what is the new name?
- Sy.
- Sy?
- Si.
- Well, that's sounds like a terrible name.
- Si.
- I wonder what we can do about it.
- Sue.
- You think we should sue them?
- Si.
- I don't think we have the grounds to do that.
- Sigh.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
But if they better not nix the Twilight Zone marathons.
Even though all of the episodes are on DVD to be watched at any time, there's something to be said for the events that the marathons were.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Doesn't "syfy" mean "like syphillis"?
what exactly is too keep me coming back? Rubber dinosaurs? I liked a few of their movies, mainly their take on Wizard of Oz was refreshing if a bit quirky, at least it wasn't a rehash. It was fun to watch.
If it had not been for BSG I doubt I would know what is on their channel after they canceled Stargate.
Sorry, I don't a commercial laden channel of crap, I got a few dozen more of these as it is. Their popularity isn't great because they cancel what people watch and load it all up with so many commercials you just have to TIVO it so you can fast forward through to get that 2 hour show back down to the 90 minutes it used to be. Weren't these the guys who ran original star trek episodes uncut but took 90 minutes to do it?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So Mark Twain hung out on 4chan?
I'm not offended, I just see it as though NBC are as lowbrow and pathetically retarded as the groups they appeal to. I feel if possible even more superior than before.
Your IQ has just placed you within 1 stdev of mainstream intelligence. Prepare to laugh at fart jokes, cry at the plight of 2 dimensional characters, and rabidly justify gaping plot holes with the theory of intelligent design! We the broadcast executives in collaboration with the brain slug planet would like to thank you for your added support.
Well, I gotta say, I'm convinced now more than ever that I did the right thing canning my TV service. Oh, I have a TV. I just download my shows, burn them to DVD so the family can watch them, but that's it. I am APPALLED at this bullshit. Syfy? Really? What halfwit jackass marketing exec came up with nonsense? Obviously they don't have children. NO ONE shortens Sci-Fi to Syfy. It's SF always has been.
Man, I'm gonna hate the loss of Eureka, since it was the only show worth watching on there now that Stargate is gone.
Fucking idiots. I HATE marketing majors.
Pax Vobiscum
was a diminutive for an STD when you read it? "Stay away from her, she has a roaring case of Syfy".
Monstar L
WOW - Someone in the marketing department REALY is trying to justify thier exeistance.
This is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. And that is quite a but to say considering the news now a days.
So stupid I had to post even though I am not registered here.
This is RE-TAR-DEAD, (since we are changing everything up).
SciFi - Stay SciFi. Dont alientate your core audience at the expense of people who may not be interested anyway.
Well now they will have an ignorant name to match the ignorant lineup. I don't think i could take any more of these lower-than-b-rated piece of monkey crap "original" movies they keep churning out faster then unwanted teen pregnancies on prom night.
Yn some unyverse, the name "Syfy" ys less geeky than the name "Sy Fy." Dave Howe, presydent of the Sy Fy Channel, ys bettyng yt's thys one.
To that end, the 16-year-old networkâ"owned by NBC Unyversalâ"plans to announce that Syfy ys yts new name March 16 at yts upfront presentatyon to advertysers yn New York.
Syfy logo
"What we love about thys ys we hopefully get the best of both worlds," Mr. Howe sayd. "We'll get the herytage and the track record of success, and we'll buyld off of that to buyld a broader, more open and accessyble and relatable and human-fryendly brand."
Sy Fy ys comyng off the best year yn yts hystory. Yn prymetyme yt ranked 13th yn total vyewers among ad-supported cable networks yn 2008. Yt's a top-10 network yn both adults 18 to 49 (up 4%) and adults 25 to 54 (up 6%).
Duryng yts fourth-quarter earnyngs call, parent General Electryc sayd Sy Fy racked up a double-dygyt yncrease yn operatyng earnyngs despyte the begynnyngs of the recessyon.
Nevertheless, there was always a sneakyng suspyyon that the name was holdyng the network back.
"The name Sy Fy has been assoyated wyth geeks and dysfunctyonal, antysoyal boys yn theyr basements wyth vydeo games and stuff lyke that, as opposed to the general publyc and the female audyence yn partycular," sayd TV hystoryan Tym Brooks, who helped launch Sy Fy Channel when he worked at USA Network.
Mr. Brooks sayd that when people who say they don't lyke syence fyctyon enjoy a fylm lyke "Star Wars," they don't thynk yt's syence fyctyon; they thynk yt's a good movye.
"We spent a lot of tyme yn the '90s tryyng to dystance the network from syence fyctyon, whych ys largely why yt's called Sy Fy," Mr. Brooks sayd. "Yt's somewhat cooler and better than the name âSyence Fyctyon.' But even the name Sy Fy ys lymytyng."
Mr. Howe sayd goyng to Syfy wyll make a dyfference.
"Yt gyves us a unyque word and yt gyves us the opportunytyes to ymbue yt wyth the values and the perceptyon that we want yt to have," he sayd.
Dave Howe
Dave Howe
Yn terms of televysyon, the new brand better reflects that the channel has programs that are not about the typycal sy-fy themes of space, alyens and the future.
"We really do want to own the ymagynatyon space," Mr. Howe sayd. "We want to get the credyt for the range of content that we already have on our ayr and that we'll be doyng more of yn the future."
Mr. Howe sayd Sy Fy looks at yts brandyng every couple of years. He added that when new executyves joyn the network, they usually ask yf yt has ever thought about changyng the name.
The network worked wyth the brandyng consultancy Landor Assoyates and went through about 300 possybylytyes before selectyng Syfy.
"When we tested thys new name, the thyng that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, whych ys quyte a lot of our audyence, ys actually thys ys how you'd text yt," Mr. Howe sayd. "Yt made us feel much cooler, much more cuttyng-edge, much more hyp, whych was kynd of bang-on what we wanted to achyeve communycatyon-wyse."
The network plans to make the changeover July 7, when yt wyll launch the new seryes "Warehouse 13."
The seryes, about a secret government faylyty yn South Dakota where all mysteryous relycs and supernatural souvenyrs are housed, ys emblematyc of the channel's programmyng dyrectyon.
"Yt ys a dramedy and yt ys set yn the here and now. Yt's a kynd of an Yndyana Jones meets âMoonlyghtyng' meets âThe X-Fyles,'" Mr. Howe sayd. "Thys ys a very accessyble, relatable, fun show."
The network wyll begyn bryefyng cable operators about the transytyon thys week and plans a trade ad campaygn yn Apryl as part of the upfront. The new campaygn wyll use the slogan "Ymagyne Greater," whych Mr. Howe thynks wyll resonate wyth both consumers and medya buyers.
"Yt's a call to actyon," he sayd. "Look at the everyday and how you can turn yt to the extraordynary. Yt's an aspyratyonal, optymystyc message about enhanyng people's lyves."
"We spent a lot of time in the '90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it's called Sci Fi," Mr. Brooks said. "It's somewhat cooler and better than the name 'Science Fiction.' But even the name Sci Fi is limiting."
Fuck, then what differentiates you from the "We" network?? Go ahead & call it "My Li'l Ponies Channel" and be done with it. This is the reason why I don't bother watchin' TV anymore. It's ALL geared towards women now. What's the point anymore? I'm waiting for that pink April Fool's theme to come back to /. only this time it's a permament change. ... Sorry- that was way the hell offtopic, but I'm in a bad mood right now so, >
will remain ECW.
Yes, for over 2 years now the highest rated television show on the Scf-Fi channel is ECW, a wrestling show featuring the guys who aren't over enough to get on RAW or SmackDown!
-Mark Twain. /Dude was ahead of his time.
I saw that episode of ST:TNG too.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
New executives are stupid.
Feel cooler, maybe, but not actually cooler. Yes, yes, change the name. Make it easier to "text". Now that's "cutting-edge".
What the fuck is "SyFy" suppose to mean anyway - SciFi for people who lisp?
God-damn marketing morons.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
NBC is taking a page out of Microsoft's play-book. It wasn't broken so they decided to fix it.
"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,â said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network.
So, as a father of 4, working the tech sector for over a decade, early adopter in tech, when it comes to TV, I'm a horrible demographic to want? I'm not the general audience because I am a geek and a man?! WTF!? Thats f'cking sexist and rude.
I'm rather insulted by these guys statement. The whole statement is a slam. Maybe they should be paying attention how well sci-fi does in the movie theaters, how well our demographic buys electronics...
Dave Howe and Tim Brooks, you both need a good punch in the nose for those comments and selling out the people who watched and supported that channel.
Oh, and good choice on the new name, now it sound like a disease. syfylis.
I remember when TLC was "The Learning Channel". They had all sorts of great stuff on there, including Junkyard Wars and fistfuls of great documentaries. Then they drove Junkyard wars into the ground, brought in a bunch of "Pimp my X" and "Flip this House" shows. Now the channel is dead to me.
A similar thing happened recently to the Discovery Channel. Anyone who thinks that Mythbusters has science content is kidding themselves.
Looks like the Scifi channel is next. Stargate has no new episodes, the "good ol' shows" like Farscape and the Outer Limits are banished to 1AM in the morning, and now the name change.
I see lots of great channels being run into the ground. Does anyone know any that are rising to the top?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
After Stargate, there's not much left any more. Maybe their problem is quality, not brand identification.
SF seeks DS for M & S
Deleted
To hell with trying to placate people by trying to describe myself as a "bright" or "humanist" or whatever or whatever term is politically correct this month. If people are too stupid to use an objective definition of a word rather than some emotionally-charged mental imagery, then they're not worth the effort on my part. NBC/Syfy can coddle them if it wants, since clearly it seems to want to part those fools from their money.
In Canada, our version of the channel is called "Space" - Of if you prefer the longer version: "Space, the Imagination Station."
They have used the name "Sci Fi" for many years now, and it all-of-the-sudden (sorry Stewie) has become a legal issue?
If anything- I suppose someone could sue them for false advertising as implied by their name, given the waning amount of SF content they provide.
Seriously. And here I thought AIG had a lock on the crown of corporate stupidity.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
to switch stations. Argues about it. Even if it's a movie/show she might actually like, the watermark logo drives her to distraction. Her Dad used to watch trek and we grew up in the days of single-tv households. So now I suffer if there is a bit of SF I might want to watch.
Maybe this will finally reverse that stupid shift that took place in the early 1980s where every girl's name that ends with an -ee sound was changed to -i. (E.g., Debbie --> Debbi, Cindy --> Cindi, Tammy --> Tammi, etc.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I can almost make out the whole thing, but where did that "a" with the "^" over it, followed by the quote character, come from? I don't remember seeing that in the original Mark Twain quote.
It's dead, Jim.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The Sci-Fi channel was created because a study determined that overwhelmingly the public wanted a new channel that focused on - - - Science Fiction... In fact, it was over twice as popular as any other choice.
Now we have Sci-Fi showing tons of marginal or completely unrelated garbage. For example, I know wrestling is fictional, but then again, so are political speeches... (Though I do see how Comedy Central has justification to cover the presidential elections.)
I guess they've so totally lost focus with what they were meant to be that they are flailing about trying to help themselves. Too bad they think rebranding will solve their issues, when the problem is they've strayed from their foundation and purpose.
And just a side note: I agree with the other posters that SyFy only brings to mind Syphilis.
Extended glyph copy and paste error:
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/humor/marktwain.cfm
What this chumwits fail to realize is that geek is bigger and broader than ever. Consider the inroads computers and video games have made into the landscape. Video games are an umpty-billion dollar a year industry and are either threatening to or have already surpassed music and movies as the biggest consumer entertainment market. This really surprises me. I mean, I like gaming but I didn't think it was that huge but there it is.
There's always been a demand for escapism entertainment. Now you can argue about hard SF and sci-fi like geeks argue trekker vs. trekkie. It doesn't really matter -- escapism is huge. Now you could be talking comic book fantasy or spaceships and aliens scifi or brooding sexual vamps and werewolves, it doesn't matter. Those of the female persuasion have embraced this sort of thing just as vigorously as the boys. Let's not overlook the amazingly huge impact of Japanese media as well -- manga, anime, etc.
The difficulty the big media types have here is they want to go for the biggest audience. They're still stuck in the 50's when a popular show could capture half the audience across the entire country. They simply can't abide by the idea of serving a niche and serving it well, keeping the overhead low so that they can enjoy a modest, dependable income.
There's a huge market out there for brain-boggling entertainment. People want the unusual, want the unexpected. The problem is that the Sci-Fi Channel has insisted on doing it in the most ignorant, pigheaded, and insulting manner possible.
For starters, Sci-Fi Channel Original Movies universally mean piss awful drek spanked together with the most miserable of standards, CGI monster of the week crap that's poorly conceived, written, acted, and directed. Rod Serling was able to create art with crappy cameras and a SFX budget of cigar butts and sawdust. Sci-Fi doesn't care. They just want to crank out low-expectation shit and expect people to lap it up. What about when they put that contemptible fuckspat John Edwards on? Not the presidential candidate but the spook whisperer. How in the hell is this sci-fi? And what about that Ghost Hunters crap? I can well appreciate the odd UFO and cryptid show but Sci-Fi stuck to this tabloid crap the way the History Channel clings to WWII shows.
I think the biggest problem they have here is that their product is aimed at bright geeks but management wants to market it to idiot chump TV watchers who throw money at anything with tits and explosions. Proper geeks will either Tivo what they want to watch or buy the DVD's -- advertising-supported television will simply not be cost-effective here. But this is going to be the future, folks. People are getting used to watching their TV curled up in bed on the laptop or on the train with the ipod or just plug the computer into the TV and watch the torrent. People have demonstrated they will pay money to watch the show but they're not going to pay through the nose. And there are so many new areas of entertainment to explore, the market for old school passives is going to keep suffering from greater competition.
I think what we're seeing here is the same cause for the failure of Air America. Right wing radio listeners tend to be whiter, older, and have grown up listening to radio. There's not many converts amongst the youth. The target audience for Air America, the liberals, tend to be less likely to listen to radio to begin with and more likely to be getting their news and views from alternative media or television. This was a fight Air America could not win because the market simply wasn't there, even as Air America hosts in other venues such as Rachel Maddow are enjoying phenomenal success.
Once Galactica is finished will they even have anything scifi-related in the line-up? I know they canned the Dresden Files on account of being too expensive and the push to end Galactica is along similar lines. What, are these people stupid? Do they not realize scifi shows are always the most expensive there are to produce and have been so sinc
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Insist on pronouncing it "siffie". Also, snicker a bit afterward.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Leave the name alone and stop messing with the content. If the content doesn't match a certain target criteria then create a new Channel!! DUH!! G4 is another prime example. Sorry but when it was the TechTV and they have shows about computers (Leo comes to mind)it was fun. Not just another TVLand wannabe. This is what happens when TV gets over run by network executives. All the original content that really draws viewers is run out. Then a name change and then a different genre. Sorry folks but us computer geeks like shows with Linux and other operating systems being shown the general public and where you could ask questions while being entertained. I bet the black helicopter theorists will start with M$ did that to stiffle competition.
It's a trick to see which of us would recognize a pedobear!
Wait. What. Mark Twain invented Danish?
See, this is why PHB needs to go back to their retreats and stay away.
SF used to be the preferred correct name as well. "SciFi" was considered a bastardized derivative. But we sorta lived with it because it was a language-shift thing.
So now they had to go with a completely useless name that fails ALL counts. Beautiful.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If scifi isn't completely dead by the time battlestar ends, it will be soon. This is just the last nail.
You can't take the sky from me.
"BGRR Requires the Information on Who To Blame for the Name"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Personally i have not gone to the sci-fi channel for my daily fix of Science Fiction in years. Probably not since Richard Dean Anderson left Stargate. Netflix is my new home to get my geeky fix. So many great shows that for some reason never make it back on tv.
Sci-Fi to fans: "No, it's SyFy!"
Fans to Sci-Fi: "EetADik. You never should have canceled Farscape."
They stopped being about real Sci Fi a long time ago. This name much better reflects the actual content, and might help stop unsuspecting sci-fi fans from accidentally watching it.
I haven't watched much of Sci Fi in a while. I used to watch Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, but they're done. I would have continued watching Battlestar Galactica, but it kept jumping around, so now I'm waiting and just getting it on DVD.
Nothing else had really jumped out at me lately. But then again, ever since the whole Farscape fiasco, it's been clear that the management doesn't have a clue how to run a channel that is targeted towards a particular interest group and then use that for better advertising prices.
The more this crap goes on, the more likely I am to stop watching a lot of TV and just buy stuff on DVD or watch it on the Internet.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
they had "Man vs. Machine" death-match combats with the victor tearing the loser apart, either rivet by rivet or gibbet by gibbet.
They screwed the pooch years ago.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
So they had a fairly "open name" and they left it for a Proprietary Solution? Is Microsoft or the **AA helping?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Their name will be Buh Bye.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
SyFy: Though market studies clearly showed room for a mainstream channel catering to action/tech/paranormal fare, the stigma of having been the "Sci Fi" channel doomed NBC Universal's efforts to woo mainstreamers from the start.
SciFi: The channel formerly known as SciFi abandoned its core audience in 2010 an attempt to lure mainstreamers away from Fox. Immediately, a trio of new channels emerged in the unpopulated geek fringes. The strongest of these was soon purchased by News Corp., allowing it starve the former SciFi channel of geeks as well as mainstreamers.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
The audience is going to abandon Sci-Fi after BSG airs its last episode anyhow. After that, they ain't got a pot to piss in.
So, NBCU has decided to do to SyFy what it did to all the other peacock channels: dumb them down to the point eh shows don't require writers or competent actors. Christ -- the new Knight Rider is probably going to get yet another season!! Some day we're going to look back and think Idiocracy was a documentary about the gold age of American intellect.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
This is, indeed, an interesting coincidence. "Syf" (sing.) or "syfy" (plur.) in polish means filth, scum, acne and also syphilis: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/syf. Makes also an interesting metatextual link to another recent Slashdot submission because of the common saying "syf i malaria" (syphylis and malaria) denoting a complete and utter mess, SNAFU etc.
j.
I just told my boss this and he asked if it was from The Onion. nuff said.
Does that mean we can have a Science Fiction channel now that actually plays Science Fiction?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
NBC knows that the real SciFi demographic now gets its media fix from filesharing services.
Its only option is to market its products to the mainstream populace that hasn't yet given up on broadcast.
These troglodytes, sorry, wrestling fans, can barely stop dragging their knuckles through the dust.
They ain't exactly a wealthy and learned examples of the social upper crust.
They're poor but simple folks who, dull and slow, yet sullen, manage to handle a pistol with alacrity, just don't ask them to aim it too well (they think its loaded with bird shot.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It would be NICE if History Channel would go back to showing WWII documentaries all the time. It would be better than the bullshit they have on there now.
Lately it's been the 2012 end-times prophecy channel. Every other show on that channel is now Nostradomus, The Bible Code (ha), and psuedo-science shows that have catchy names like "Earth's Black Hole" in which they interview the quack John Hutchinson (google hutchinson effect for his quackery) about the possibilities of a black hole being located in the ocean....
Who could possibly care.
They now feature......god-awful made-for-tv monster movies, which I suppose COULD be considered SF if they weren't so badly done.
Now you're dissing Sci Fi's Canadian content.
Huzzah, now every show will be Firefly: a bland thematic drama, but set in space! Just think of the variety that is possible! Firefly is a western... but set in space, we also could have one that is a medical show... set in space!, one that is a sketch comedy... SET IN SPACE!... one that is a mobster show... SET IN SPACE!!! It's all so brilliant!
Maybe, it's just me but I haven't enjoyed the Sci-Fi channel since I was a kid in the 90's back when it used to be more of a horror movie channel. I hardly watch it anymore as I don't find anything interesting on it. I thought tech-tv was good for awhile but that got merged and sucks as well now.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Well, thank god for anonymity, because it allows me to say that, as a college English professor, all but two of the marketing majors I've encountered over the years have been as stupid as a mildly retarded box of rocks. This experience only confirms what I learned working as an intern during my undergraduate years, where all the marketing folks were bleached blonde collections of grinning teeth and over-stuffed bras crammed into knock-off Channels. It's a wonder they didn't come up with SoFa.
Bill Nye the Science Guy has decided to officially change his name to:
Bill NySyGy
... just to cheer this post on. SciFi stopped being about, well, Science Fiction (even good, 'cheap' science fiction) a long time ago.
Anyone want to lay fiver down that says the term "SyFy" won't get associated with crap in a few years?
The powers that be seem to think it's the name and not the content. Boy, will their faces be red!
And I'll be taking fivers all the way to the bank! Well, I would be, except I don't particularly trust the banks right now, since the powers that also be kind of fell asleep at the switch. In God, we trust. All others pay cash.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
alojikl,
"a lojikl"
Sincerely,
A Pedant from the Future.
People with bad breath get offended when you tell 'em they need to brush.
Are you that much of a stereotype? It's cable TV. It's not like there are no options
for content.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev alojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
We've already got two languages that look like that - Welsh and Klingon.
April Fool's Day isn't for two more weeks -- I say somebody screwed up.
Not A Jew
What's the big deal? It still sounds the same. Everyone's just trying to make more money. Wait until they change programming and cut shows you like before complaining. They only changed the spelling!
This reminds me of Bill McNeal on News Radio trying to be "cool" with his Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor promos:
"Gazizza, dilznoofuses, this is Bill McNeal saying, get with the crazappy taste of Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor! Rocket Fuel's got the upstate prison flavor that keeps you ugly all night long. So when you wanna get sick, remember: Nothing makes your feet stank like Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor. Damn, it's crazappy!"
In SF fandom "Science Fiction" (or speculative fiction, etc) was the general term with "Scifi" (skiffy) used for the late-night B-movie type of SF media.
I'd figured they originally used Sci-Fi to be ironic.
I think from now on I'm going to call it CeePhee.
Well, time to boycott the sci-fi channel.
I'm not too surprised - they show more horror/trash than they ever did science fiction.
But, way to dump the viewer base that has kept you going for over a decade in favor of a smaller one that will as soon change the channel when the next reality show starting porn stars starts on the E channel.
Stupid marketing execs will never go out of style. I knew Scifi was going downhill when they cut Eureka to broadcast shitty b and c rated movies like Warwolves and Sea Beast, 24/7.
Kinda ironic isn't it...she hated Trek but she married a scifi fan just like her daddy.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
...maybe someone who understands what science fiction is, will start producing it and carrying it on a channel they can name SciFi now.
Not that I'm bitter over the horror channel/ECW channel changing it's focus or anything.
You never know...
You people spend your time downloading the shows on the Internet instead of watching it on TV. Sci Fi caters to one specific audience: nerds. What did you nerds expect to happen to its ratings? Stay steady or high, but while its target audience decides to watch them (not by means that SciFi/Syfy currently allows, i.e. Pirate Bay) on the Internet? Those (sci-fi) shows aren't going to pay for themselves. I hope all your favorite TV shows gets canceled this way and that this trend gets worse.
- A very important TV exec. (for reals!)
The SciFi Channel's programming has become incredibly lame and so commercial-laden I can hardly bear to watch it anymore...
bittorrent, the solution to all retarded network executives.
I thought most channels were for the so-called "mainstream", meaning common, plain, and ordinary people (a bunch of Joe Six-packs and Jane Winecoolers).
Science Fiction is perhaps the biggest money maker that Hollywood has going. And from what I can tell, ever since Star Trek first aired, people just can't get enough of 'good' science fiction. The problem is that most of the crap on the Sci-Fi channel isn't Science Fiction, it's fantasy somehow involving some science in it.
Consider Star Trek (and the spin-offs), Star Wars, Terminator, ET, Fantastic Voyage, and even Firefly. There is an insatiable appetite for GOOD Science Fiction. As soon as someone comes up with a great idea, and if the industry is smart enough to recognize the good idea - money is made. Sci-Fi includes classics like Batman, Spider-Man, Iron-man, Fantastic Four and many others have made gazillions, and entertained us for decades. Other stories, dealing with the simple topic of (if only the techology existed ... .then ....) all encompass the realm of Sci-Fiction.
The problem is that there are too few imaginations who care to write Sci-Fi. You don't need major bucks to tell a good story. Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Night Gallery and Star Wars managed to tell a compelling set of stories all on a tight budget. It just requires a talented and imaginative set of writers.
Unfortunately, today Sci-Fi writers have been dumbed down into telling inane stories with little or no character development, original thinking or any real motivation. Such a pity. There are so many good Sci-Fi books that could be done on a budget and tell a compelling story.
I think they're trying to be MS when they had a shot at being Apple.
Mainstream works good for the couple players who dominate the mainstream, outside of that you need a niche. Right now they have a niche and they're just throwing it away, they might do better in the short term but I can't help but think they're overlooking the fact that they have(had?) a loyal audience which is a pretty damn rare thing for a network to have.
At least here in Canada we still have Space which is doing a pretty decent job with SF content. Hope we don't fall into the same trap.
I stole this Sig
I thought that the promise of digital television was specialized programming for niche communities. From what I can see, all the channels now carry the same crap.
I can't tell the difference between SciFi, Spike, or even Soap TV (not that I watch it or anything.)
From what I can tell, the future of television will be 250 channels of "Law and Order" re-runs.
Mark Twain invented the first LOLCat
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
go down that path that will eventually make me cancel my cable tv. After rtfa, it's pretty clear that they are intentionally telling their old guard, true blue fans to GET BENT! Yes, I've ignored the wrestling and the fact that I'm watching fewer and fewer shows on that channel, but up until today I've held the mantra that "sci-fi is why I still have cable". Seems that if 'sci-fi' isn't there any more and it's this 'siffy' thing, I guess that's the final straw.
I'll probably wait til BSG ends, but I suppose if someone can tell me where I can watch it streamed, maybe not. I hadn't really realized that I was only watching it on Friday nights, but I guess that's accurate . . . . let's see $50 a month for a channel that I only watch 4 nights a month. Put's it into perspective. . . . .
...to [Sigh.] Fie! That's how I feel every time I contemplate the channel's long succession of horrid decisions. I don't think they need to worry about how the channel's name is texted; I can't imagine anyone I know caring enough to ever mention it.
who've been dumbed down. There's some scary-good ones out there. (Haldeman, anyone?) The problem is the gatekeepers: the publishers, the producers, the editors, the agents. They're all desperate for the-story-that-makes-a-trillion-bucks, so all they'll buy is remakes of old success. Then they can't figure out why it's not a success now.
The problem is our distribution system, such as clothheads who think Syfy is going to appeal to anyone. Sounds like some new fizzy drink.
who exacly should be offended?
another network that targets just the male demographic, or everyone else who thinks your comment implied slashdot is only a bunch of male nerds?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
...that they will cover the Syence Fyction genre now and it won't be as geeky?
Maybe they just polled the people who watch wrestling and they couldn't spell the old name?
Truly the most utterly moronic thing I've seen a network do. This is straight from 30-Rock. It smells so bad that its probably fake...like the UFO stuff they show.
I don't really see them distancing themselves from Science Fiction...that is fiction.
Granted, I'm kind of closer to the upper end of it at this point (I was old enough to see "Transformers" in the theater) but DAMN that is a shitty new name they came up with.
Let me describe the situation with an analogy: Suppose the old name, "Sci Fi Channel", is a venerable old VW bus. It's been kicked around for a long time, and it kind of drags up images of the past one might not be too proud of these days - of Sci Fi Channel's humble origins: episodes of Dr. Who that take up more than a regular half-hour block, padded out to an hour with old rocketman serials... FTL newscasts, reruns of "Swamp Thing" and lots of old sci-fi TV shows...
Now, to complete the analogy, "SyFy" is like a giant, steaming pile of dog shit - probably ejected from the back side of a large dog after it's eaten a rancid piece of roadkill. Looking at it makes one want to vomit forcefully, probably without great regard for direction.
Bow-ties are cool.
I would think Sifi looks cuter to chicks....or a cutesy name for syphilis.
How about PsyPhi for the frat boys or quantum mechanical mentalists....
"And telling us that a marketing team on crack came up with the name..."
There, fixed it for you. Just don't get too close to your screen when the new name displays, or you'll catch SyFyLys.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
They became "the monster channel" a few years ago, as even reruns of real science fiction is rare now.
While i personally don't like 'horror', Its perfectly fine if they want to be wall to wall evil fling fish with teeth and weird guys that wear hockey masks, but please don't call it scifi..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Thys ys as vacuous as yt gets. Honestly, gang, try somethyng substantyve. Lyke fynyshyng Galactyca a season earlyer, wyth a coherent story lyne.
No, wayt, another season of advertysyng? Bryllyant! Keep yt up!
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
No - my aykyu ! IQ looks so geeky...
Seriously - the management are total idiots... Sci Fi is going downhill for some time... the last good show is BSG and after that - there will be nothing to watch...
It seems not every young lass with daddy issues turns into a stripper or porn star.
Pity.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
To the producers of BSG and Stargate: GET OUT. Get out while you still can.
Advertisers feel that women buy the majority items and/or are the most influenced by TV commercials. Thus TV shows that don't attract a mostly female audience are on their way out.
Long live our female overlords.
It sucks and it's largely the reason I don't want any TV beyond BSG these days.
The sad truth is that the Scifi channel has been headed downhill for awhile now.
Ever since Time Warner bought them from Ted Turner they started on a slippery slope down.
And as they have been losing the Geek audience little by little.
Then NBC - Universal bought them and it has been picking up speed on it'd down hill coarse.
And for me the final nail in the coffin was wrestling on Wednesday nights.
Now I went from watching it all the time, to only catching the shows I like.
Because most of the shows are now crap.
When people ask what killed TV and they want to blame the internet.
I say look at what the network executives have done to their networks.
TV was not so much killed, rather assisted in suicide with the help of the network exec's.
TeTalon
You are either a part of the problem, or a part of the solution, which are you.
That started out with things like MTV (all music video all the time), which grew into VH1 (video hits). Comedy Channel. TVland (all oldies). AMC (movie classics). But then ...
Times changed, and entertainment wasn't provided mainly by cable anymore. Low power TV got involved, and this thing called the Internet that Gore built, and DVD rentals. Netflix (which is NOW truly NET flix.) The execs realized that the niches they were trying to program for were TOO SMALL to support the costs of the programming, even when it was just reruns. They got bit by the "must grow to survive" bug, and the only way to expand the niche was to not serve that niche anymore. MTV started down the "reality" path, and in the process spun off MTV2 for the niche that wanted music vids, but now both have minimal music content (MTV plays videos at 6AM west coast time!). Even good ole' ESPN got into movies. AMC plays recent stuff (hardly "classic"). And for God's sake, why does G4 run marathons of "Cops"?
The niche programming market was a dream that doesn't support itself. SciFi is broadening its "niche" because "grow == success" and there just aren't than many more sci-fi people to attract.
Here's some numbers that might explain the problem better. The difference between our local basic cable and the next higher level (digital starter) is $45/month. Assuming the typical DVD box set for a series is about $30-$40 per box, you can get 15-20 COMPLETE SERIES on DVD, viewable when and where you want, with no commercials, for the same price you pay to get those one or two niche channels you were paying cable for and could never predict when they were going to show the program you wanted to see. And when you factor in Netflix, you can get even more.
Even something as basic as Food Network isn't surviving on cooking shows alone. "Will Work For Food" is "Dirty Jobs" redux. (I long for the days of Sarah Moulton. Sigh. Teach me what a roux is, and a tasty bechamel, please?) Travel Channel has people traveling -- just to eat food (Bourdain; Fiery; and "Man Vs. Food",where the focus is neither food nor travel, but whether dorkface can stuff a plateful of whatever down his gullet without puking.) I am fearful that Samantha Brown will be gone, soon -- too 'travel-centric'.
Niche programming is on the way out. Homogenization is on the way in. Drink the coolaid and be quiet, please.
Sci-Fi has become a joke. I knew it was over when they put Wrestling on there. It's become an impossibly rare Saturday night when you can turn on sci-fi and actually watch a good Sci-Fi flick.
The channel has become a joke. Why don't they show more classic Sci-Fi? I could deal with crap most of the time if they had at least some good stuff some of the time. Instead we get shit like Mansquito. WTF?
Their content seems to be primarily silly ghost hunters, wrestling, cheap horror movies and the occasional soon-to be-canceled science fiction series.
Instead of being named after a generic term for science fiction it's now a diminutive term for a sexually transmitted disease. syphilis channel anyone!
Why bother
otherwise, I will be syfy-less and I hear that can kill ya!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
If I wanted to watch the paranormal, the supernatural, etc. I'd tune into the fantasy channel. I WANT to watch the space, aliens, and the future shows. That's why I tune in. The problem is that they're trying to roll two genres into the same channel. Keep your Farscape, your BSG, your B5 etc on one channel, and put your Buffy, your Smallville, your Vampire Cop Show That I Can't Remember The Name Of on another channel, and for the love of Pete KEEP WRESTLING OFF BOTH!!!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I read the article and it says it has to "appeal to a more mainstream audience", and yet it's earnings and revenue are up sharply this year. So, what logic says that they need to appeal to a wider audience?? Do they think that going more mainstream (which I suspect means also changing some of the type of programming as well....) won't cause any of the existing audience to leave? This sounds like the media equivalent to New Coke.
Because there is more of everybody than there is of us.
Which, theoretically, means more money from advertisers.
Of course, what they're blind to is that by cutting open the golden goose to see how they can make it loved by everybody, they'll turn it into a corpse that will be liked by no body.
You can't take the sky from me...
... ,a bit more like imitating a chicken:
bg-ARRRR!!! bg-bg-bg-ARRRRRRRR!!!!
Let rename it G4 TV, That worked great in the past.
This probably means there'll be more wrestling. Can't get enough wrestling on a science fiction channel.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
except mostly what they were selling before wasn't old Coke, and now they're changing the name to acknowledge this.
I understand Battlestar Galactica is pretty good, but every time I've happened to look to see what's on Sci-Fi, it's a bunch of hardbodies in fatigues who appear to be doing a low rent remake of Aliens, or some kind of cheesy paranormal reality show. How many times can you watch a squad of space marines run through the studio's utility tunnels shouting "go, go, go" before it gets old?
So if they're getting a crappy viewing demographic, maybe the problem isn't the name. Maybe it's the content. Why would anyone want to look at a bunch of admittedly amazing bodies posing in sweaty olive drab tank tops when you've got the Internet, where you practically have to poke your own eyes out to avoid seeing a lot of amazing bodies wearing a lot less than a tank top. To survive against that the medium has to provide more, let's say sustainable forms of stimulation. As cheap is some of their programming is, it can't be much cheaper than The Twilight Zone was. There's a lot of brilliant people in the world; who knows, there could be hundreds of Rod Serlings out there. But as soon as a production gets expensive, it's too risky take a chance on them when you can go for the old standby of boobs in a tank top. Of course once you become a cable network, maybe you're already past the point where boobs are optional.
Unfortunately, that would mean it isn't the content either. It would have to be the concept itself. I think there's an argument to be made here. There may be lot of valuable eyeballs that like science fiction, but all the people I know who really like science fiction are inveterate readers. These are people who 99/100 times given a choice of turning on the TV vs. re-reading a mediocre sci-fi book they'd put down a few months ago and which just turned up under the couch, would go for the book. In point of fact, in our household we almost never watch TV, except when we have to do something mindless like folding laundry. I realize this means that I am probably being extremely unfair to all that fine science fiction content that the folks at the sci-fi channel have been piping into my living room, but still it makes me think the concept is broken.
So the name change may simply be acknowledging the reality that the whole idea of a sci-fi channel was cockeyed to start with. Maybe you could have a go at something that would appeal to readers of sci-fi. But changing the name of the channel without changing the content isn't going to get mature people interested in watching.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Gone from The Hitler Channel to The Armageddon Channel.
I mostly watch National Geographic HD these days. Or Netflix. Or even shows on Hulu.
The TV Tropes term is: Network Decay.
I thought that the idea of having 500 channels was that you could watch the kind of programming you liked. Instead what's happening is the cable networks are reforming into identical blobs.
SciFi has been going downhill since they cancelled Farscape. The ONLY thing saving it right now is BSG.
This story was supposed to be embargoed until April 1. Now the justkidding defense is totally shot.
I tuned out of Sci-Fi after seeing ads of some short-lived series starring some busty super-heroine bouncing around in a tight black leotard. I arrived at the conclusion that "Sci Fi" and science fiction (you know, Arthur C Clarke, Kornbluth, Anderson, Asimov. Harrison, Fontana, Serling, Leguin, Lem, Bradbury, etc) are two entirely different things. I can't stand "sci-fi". It's all formula (techno-babble, women in tight clothing, cheezy makeup, overused special effects, and soap opera plots), and it's insulting crap. The Sci Fi channel should stick with the current name, as it's dead on.
I feel insulted as a techy and I don't even watch the Sci Fi channel. And seriously, why would people identify more with SyFy. That just looks like a retarded way to spell Sci-Fi
Instead of
'The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.'
its goint to be
geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial and dyslexic boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that
I would respect their descision to attract more mainstream audience. But shouldnt they change the contents to do that instead of the name? A rose, by any other name and so on....
bickerdyke
MANSWERS will have an answer. It always has an answer.
that's what major league baseball is for!
Sure, the Hyphy thing was probably dead by last year, replaced by something newer, but hey, we're not talking about the sharpest tacks in the box here, even if they've occasionally done things like BG everybody thinks were far better than the original.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They've been on the downhill slide for so long that I really didn't notice. As long as my girlfriend doesn't miss her Ghost Hunters I don't see how this will effect my life.
They are a long way from being the channel that showed Akira and CNet Central on Saturday mornings, but well, I don't own a 14.4 anymore. Geeks (and everyone else) have moved on.
So thanks for all the programming from back in the day, I hate that we won't be getting more things like Lexx or whatever, but we outgrew each other a long, long time ago. I think Dr. Quinn Space Woman, was the moment where both parties were just going through the motions. So, so long and good luck.
More like Sigh Fie!
Ironic that the most popular show they host is the WWE based ECW show. They got rid of the Zombie and Vampire characters so they moved The Boogie Man to it, and when that wasn't enough they brought in special guest Kane to beat the Boogie Man.
The SciFi network was great, until NBC bought them out. Mad Magazine called NBC as Needs Bill Cosby, as Bill Cosby used to carry the whole network to prevent them from bankruptcy. Almost every other show is crap on NBC.
If SciFi didn't keep showing Classic Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Dr. Who, Star Trek Enterprise, and other Sci Fi re-runs they would be bankrupt as well.
Much as I love comic books and Stan Lee, the "Who wants to be a Superhero" was a fake reality TV show. Then the Winner was promised his own movie, which got turned into a guest spot on some "Giant Snake" movie and they edited him in at the last moment and he was not the star, but some superhero at a carnival and his powers had no effect on the giant snake. The real star of the show had to be swallowed by the snake and do something inside of the snake to destroy it.
Rumor has it WGN is picking up ECW from SciFi.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
It's probably an April fools joke..
That, or Mark Twain invented the lolcat.
I smell a "New Coke" moment coming.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
was a good SciFi (mini-series) production that deserves a mention. I would have hoped they turned it into a regular show.
fyck uou syfy!
scuck it!
greater what?
Imagine Greater admiration from people who cannot spell.
Imagine Greater profits from the cool trademark that is stupid yet unique.
Imagine Greater trademark name in the future.
SyFy sounds like a pet name for a syphilis infection
It is actually! In most of Slavic languages that is exactly a pet name for Syphilis!!
Great marketing scheme!
"We spent a lot of time in the 90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it's called Sci Fi", Mr. Brooks said. "It's somewhat cooler and better than the name Science Fiction. But even the name Sci Fi is limiting."
My brain just isn't wired to be dysfunctionaly retarded. Sci Fi IS science fiction you bunch of gibbering monkeys!!!
Well there was Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep... not to mention Chupacabra Terror. And lest we forget Snakehead Terror... ...but how is a sexy blond robot supposed to carry the torch for the above?
Nope. Post-Mansquito Sci Fi Channel just doesn't measure up.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
From TFA:
The network plans to make the changeover July 7, when it will launch the new series "Warehouse 13." The series, about a secret government facility in South Dakota where all mysterious relics and supernatural souvenirs are housed, is emblematic of the channel's programming direction. "It is a dramedy and it is set in the here and now. It's a kind of an Indiana Jones meets 'Moonlighting' meets 'The X-Files,'" Mr. Howe said. "This is a very accessible, relatable(sic), fun show."
Hmm, I wonder if the writers of this new show forgot that they watched the TV show Friday the 13th for three whole seasons when they were younger, and just now came up with this fresh, new idea for a TV series?
Once "Eureka" is done this summer,
Eureka was done the second they turned it into a Degree antiperspirant infomercial. I can't believe they found a way to make me refuse to watch Salli Richardson-Whitfield.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
SciFi has been going down hill for years first they added wrestling then the started killing all the scifi and space themed shows. We're down to what 1 ep of BSG and um... reruns? Between the dumb ass b-movies withe giant aniamls and ecw I've not watched SciFi save for a few eps of BSG in years. When you take the scifi out of SciFi there no point in calling it scifi anymore.
I don't hold much hope for Caprica its sound like some day time soap opera with spaceships and AI mixed in a little
Use a real geek number: 49152! (C64 FTW)
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
No, Mark Twain invented LOL Cats.
SciFi is a good channel with quality home entertain... OMG, I can't even finished the sentence. When the geek channel is being totally trashed on Slashdot, the ass put in charge of the channel needs to be fired and wscorted out of the building. I knew things were hitting the toilet when BSG was being used to peddle worthless trinkets and gimics. What the frak do I need with a Cylon detector. Then there is the crap movie of the week. If Alien Vs Predator was not bad enough, they had to make a horrid Alien vs Hunter. Omg, they could not come with $10 and buy crappy AVP franchise. All I can is thank GOD I have a life. I won't miss SYFY.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Ugh. Syfy. Illiterate knucklheads!
while True: IQ = math.sqrt(IQ)
I know I won't get modded because I'm late to the party, but That woman who took over sci fi and really trashed it with stupid reality shows and pro wrestling and canceling shows like the dresden files because it attracted the wrong demographic helped me decide to cut satellite and never get cable.
I'll get the seasons delivered or streamed thru netfix,get em at the library, or just do without it.I'm commercial free on what I watch, I get my news from the web. I'm done with paying obscene amounts of money for crap.
Up yours sci fi, follow the same path mtv did in becoming totally useless as what you claimed to be on launch.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I'm just disgusted. I know Sci-Fi has changed a lot over the years. No more anime. Loss of shows like Sliders, Invisible Man, even Farscape...but no, please no.
I know they have to make a profit, and appeal to their demographics, but I just feel this sort of thing will alienate what viewers they do have without adding any new ones.
Oh well, the Rural Purge of the new millenium!
Sci-Fi has been dead for a while now, at one time I watched it more often than any other channel but cant remember the last time I actually watched anything on there. I have flipped it there a few times but its always some lame reality ghost chasing show or a "Sci-Fi original" that is so low grade it would make Ed Wood blush in shame and makes the average Troma film look like an oscar contender. Looking at their programming lineup I dont understand what demographic they are after, from the surface it looks like they are targeting undereducated, unemployed, basement dwellers but that group has no money and without boobies they will never be able to compete with Spike TV.
Today on the Yawning Puppy Channel, from 3:00 - 5:00 - Bulldogs! And from 5:00 to 7:00, Welsh Corgis! Yawning puppies 24 hours a day! Only on the Yawning Puppy Channel!!
Fifteen years later:
TONIGHT ON BEAST WARS! MECHAGODZILLA VS. DOGMAGGEDDON! WHICH ONE OF THESE CHAMPIONS WILL BE TURNED INTO A BURNING PILE OF SCRAP IRON? FIND OUT TONIGHT ON BEAST WARS!!! ONLY ON THE YPC!
You get the idea. Damn near every cable channel has pulled this. Nothing to see here, move along..
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Wait. What. Mark Twain invented Danish?
Rather Dutch.
Syfy more clearly captures the mainstream appeal of the world's biggest entertainment category, and reflects the network's ongoing strategy to create programming that's more accessible and relatable to new audiences. Syfy will continue to celebrate the traditional roots of the genre, while opening the brand to accommodate a broader range of imagination-based entertainment.
I think the name choice is horrible, but I agree with the business tactics the SciFi channel is undertaking. They realize their cash flow is about to come to a screaming halt and quickly. Producing a show as GOOD as Battlestar Galactica that pulls ratings and advertising money consistently isn't trivial. Look at rinse and repeat that occurs with many major network televisions series until a show finally sticks well enough for a season or two.
NBC realizes something needs to change with their business model to pull in more advertising money. This is their attempt at making that change. As other posts have mentioned, there are better methods for gaining advertising dollars, but, this isn't something NBC is interested in pursuing, as its outside their core competencies and skillsets. Be interesting to see if successful long-term, or, if they ultimately plan to divest the newfounded and newly failed SyFy. My guess is latter. Be a good business case study to read up on in 5 to 10 years.
I know EXACTLY how you feel, especially about The Dresden Files. I had lost all faith in The Scifi Channel when they did not renew The Dresden Files. By the way, does no one realize that Syfy or Syf is a real word in Polish? It means Waste. Congratulations, Scifi... Er.. Syfy, your name now suits your nature. It's now the Poop Channel.
Just in case we need more proof that the initial cost of a bad decision is the same as for a good one.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science+fiction
Main Entry: science fiction
Function: noun
Date: 1851
: well-written fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component
-- science-fictional \s-n(t)s-fik-shnl, -sh-nl\ adjective
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
shrift reacts to the SciFi Channelâ(TM)s planned rebranding:
The new name sounds like SciFi got a henna tattoo and a spice rack and renamed itself Ravyn Kyrie Moondancer, and has scheduled an interpretive-dance-cum-poetry-reading in the quad at 8am on Sunday. It only likes Pro Wrestling ironically, like, WHATEVER.
I drank what? -- Socrates
"'The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.' Yes, we should probably all be offended."
-Hey, the truth hurts.
"And telling us that a crack marketing team came up with the name because that's how tech-savvy 18-to-34 year-olds would text it really doesn't help.""
-And by 'Tech Savvy', they mean every earpiece wearing, iPhone-tapping yuppie.
By the way, owning an iPhone and driving a Prius does NOT count as 'Tech Savvy'. Swindling Libyans out of nuclear bomb parts and driving a time-traveling Dolorian is.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Wish all the PHB's would go gault and let the world get on with itself.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Okay, someone's obviously playing a joke. Either that or there's no longer any reason to have cable television.
-- Just my $0.02 worth...
Both Stargate Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica jumped the shark for me when the baby became the key to either "it all" or just a subplot. I hope that won't be a decade-long meme. Maybe more episode about breast-feeding, though?
They will now be called SeaEnnBeeSea
[signature]
Anyone saying that once BSG is over it's the end clearly hasn't watched BSG for the last 2 seasons. The end has been and gone.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
Well to be brutally honest the fast majority of you are low self-esteem fools brainwashed by modern 'progressive' ideals, all the while pompously thinking you've reached some enlightened view of the way things *really* work.
Go ahead, crack another joke insulting your masculinity and praising the angelic nature of females. You've earned it.
See also Turner's rebranding of "Court TV" as "truTV".
One simple rule for its versus it's
I sure hope they don't put that silly SyFy on the BSG season 4.5 DVDs! I would hate to have the set ruined by that amazingly stupid idea of a name.
(Now, I just hope they come out soon as I have no Cable or other TV watching mechanisms in our new location...)
I knew right when Mystery Science Theater 3000 was canceled that the bitch executive in charge only wanted a version of MTV or G4.
"Alternative" culture has ALWAYS been a creation of the usual mainstream drivel. Cult followings are just blind and indifferent toward their own blatant capitalism.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Their new target audience just can't seem to wrap its collective mind around the silent "c" so they're bringing the name down a notch, and making the name more "texty" at the same time!
Unfortunately the marketing team was unable to find a way to work "Xtreme" (That's with a big X, not ex...) into the name. Focus group research shows that today's teens like things that have names that start with an X and end in treme.
"Hizzouse" also showed positive results but they are saving that for next fall's HGTV rebranding.
SciFi hasn't been geeky/tech-savvy for some time. If it were, it'd have primarily science fiction. As it stands it has a great deal of bad, formulaic horror and way too much "supernatural" "reality" show crap for anyone to take it seriously (and we geeks insist on seriously). It doesn't matter if you play each episode 40 times a week intersperesed with all that other junk, 3 main SF programs remains far too little to justify calling the network after them.
SciFi has been dorky, not geeky. The name change just makes it more obvious. Next name change: Fy, because the suits don't want people to think that watching their fyction programs makes one sy with disappointment.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
what's strange is it's still somewhat readable.
GOD DAMNIT MARK TWAIN, YOU STRIKE AGAIN.
How about sci-fi changing their content to Sci-Fi?
They are slowly draining the pool--best shows on TV: SG-1, BSG...(OK Firefly wasn't theirs, but why didn't they snap it up and resurrect?!).
What hard sci-fi will they have left to showcase by mid-summer?
technical whipping boy, Occam's Strop (think about it...)
There are hundreds of comments on the article at SciFi Wire (which, incidentally, is not changing ITS name) about the name change. Not one--NOT ONE--is in favor of the name change. I laughed my way through lunch today, reading them over--and it was over 500 replies at that time. Time for someone to pony up the money to start a real SciFi...(JOSS, where are you?)
So, generally just write in Greek letters then, but spelling out English words.
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert. Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)
SciFi has been MOSTLY non-scifi sometime.
The only series they've had that have been SciFi Originals (that were sci-fi) were BSG, a remake(or reboot), and Eureka.
Mostly it's the horror, monster, gross-out and scare fest channel...
It's not been good -- NBC has has more SciFi/Fantasy series (Heroes, Chuck, Knight Rider, Medium, all this season) than their 'SciFi' channel. It's been sad. At least if they change they name, maybe the name will open up for more of a sci-fi offering...
Sure...reruns abound -- but when was the last time you saw episodes of the TimeTunnel (available on Hulu, I know), or ST:Voyager (Available where?) or, Voyagers (cut due to actor death), Wonder Woman? Dr. Who? What other couldn't they show? I saw tons of Dr Who for the first time on PBS nearly 10-15 years after they were first on BBC. Torchwood a scifi'ish show never made it to an American network that I know of, but I don't get premium cable. Wonder
It's sad in a way to see the passing of an era, but it's been passed for a while...now have buy and own old DVD's...
when, on shows I've loved on TV, I never seem to watch and they just take up space/collect dust. But neither do I
want to pay 99 cents/view....
Broadband sucks for delivery in the US. Mixed feelings about the announcement...
SyFy _does_ run Russell Davies-era Doctor Who.
1. Zenith
2. Cancel shows target audience love
3. Flail in search of new ones; Fail
4. Try to rebrand yourself to reach a wider audience (YOU ARE HERE)
5. Wider audience doesn't care, core audience leaves
6. Decline
Same thing that happened to Nickelodeon at the end of the 90s... You cancel SG: Atlantis but keep wrestling, generic monster movies and bullshit psychic stuff? WTF are you guys thinking? The only hope for American geeks now is that Star Trek XI succeeds and opens the gateway to a new ST series, since it's now gone from 'clear' to 'official' that the SciFi channel is no longer about SciFi and won't be creating any more of it in the near future. Maybe they can pick up where Enterprise left off, since it was a good show once they finished 9/11 In Space and got back to being Star Trek.
I remember when TLC was "The Learning Channel". They had all sorts of great stuff on there, including Junkyard Wars and fistfuls of great documentaries. Then they drove Junkyard wars into the ground, brought in a bunch of "Pimp my X" and "Flip this House" shows. Now the channel is dead to me.
A similar thing happened recently to the Discovery Channel. Anyone who thinks that Mythbusters has science content is kidding themselves.
the dumb-fication of TV continues with History Channel increasing its number of reality shows every season. hell, even PBS caved in to reality programming last year (see "Carrier").
however, what worries me even more is the fact that the networks are changing their programming because that's what (the majority of) people at home want to watch. it might not look like a problem now, but if things keep going this way, in a few generations, intellect will be a concept "fantastic" enough to only be depicted in sci-fi stories.
SciFi just came out of the closet and renamed herself SyFy... They will now be focusing on the girl-geek-dyke market, which may be few in number, but great in enthusiasm. With all those cable channels there has to be one for every niche. The wrestling will be replaced by roller-derby and Lacrosse.
Man I remember the old days of sci fi prime on Friday's the best of the best shows like Farscape, Lexx, and the Invisible man! Now when battle star ends so does me watching Sci Fi! "See you in hell Sci Fi"
Ghosts are not SciFi.
Vampires are not SciFi.
Magic is not SciFi.
Wrestling is not SciFi.
Horror can be SciFi, but not if it includes ghosts and/or magic and/or wrestling.
SciFi is simple - put the story in the future or on another planet or in space. Done.
How many "CSI*" shows can there be? I looked at the line up of one network and that's all they show. CSI-this, CSI-that. By picking large cities, seems they get that city to watch the CSI-the-other-place shows.
I caught a show on another network - "Hot girls in scary places" - I hope I was the only person to watch this. In **needs** to be canceled, badly. Compared to that show, the "Rock of Love-Bus" deserves an Oscar. Brittanya is HOT, well, until she spits on someone else.
Syfy? Go to HELL!
Mainstream audience? If I want dawsons crap,
reality crap, or other game-show crap I can
go to other networks.
Discovery Channel used to be good, in the 80's.
TLC used to be good in the 80's.
A&E was good in the 80's.
Then it all changed in the 90's.
NOW its useless dribble.
SyFy has joined the dribble.
Good job at catering to the LOWEST denominator.
"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.'"
Science Fiction has always been the limitless imaginative possibilities of science. e.g. "What might be". Fantasy is similar except freed of the limits of science (even speculative).
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
What has gone wrong in Slavic countries that they have a pet name for syphilis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-in-cheek
"Tongue-in-cheek is a term used to refer to humor in which a statement, or an entire fictional work, is not meant to be taken seriously, but its lack of seriousness is subtle. The origin of its usage comes from when Spanish minstrels would perform for various dukes in the 18th century; these dukes would silently chastise the silliness of the minstrel's performances by placing their tongue firmly to the side of their cheek. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as 'Ironic, slyly humorous; not meant to be taken seriously'."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Øhh, hvor kom den fra? Har du nogensinde set eller hørt dansk??
(Translation: Uhm, where did that come from? Have you ever seen or heard danish??)
Cold Equations, One of the best made-for-tv movies I've seen
Even in english the word "syfy" is somehow related to syphilis desease. In other languages, including the languages of countries where Sci Fi Channel is broadcasted (e.g. Poland), the new name has directly pejorative meaning. Good luck with it (LOL).
in pittsburgh that's 'dahn-tahn';-) then there's nor-side, sah-side & s'liberty...
Then the name of the women's network should be renamed "A Man's Prerogative" to help pull in some male viewers, shouldn't it?
"likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet"
Ehm, say what? And then in the last sentence I see a huge bunch of X's (and not the fun variety that comes in threes). Something is amiss!
Why not just use Amazon Honor System to give money directly to Joss Whedon and/or Ron Moore, and distribute the show weekly with a private Bittorrent tracker? Heck, why not just make a season a shareware app? What's a reasonable price for a season? $20? All you need is 100,000+ viewers a season, and this thing would work economically. (Heck, I'd even live with B5 level special effects if we could have a new series with intelligent writing and Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, Nathan Fillion, Tricia Helfer...)
Looks like they are just following through with the plans made for SurgeTV.
Slashdot covered this already....
I myself found the addition of WCW to not go along with the station name anyways. Wrestling? WTF...
So you're saying we'll switch to German?
So will I get more girls if I say I'm into SyFy? I really want to cast off my dysfunctional geek image. So, if talking about what I saw last night on the SyFy channel means I score with chicks... okay, I guess...
Oh, indeed.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I actually kind of like the new Knight Rider. Given that it reads like it's a newly imagined Knight Rider, I also liked the Bionic Woman, but the problem is Wednesday at 8PM EST, many people like me aren't back from Wednesday Church services when they start.
Mmmmm... Danish. Especially the cheese ones.
Maybe they should stop running D rated crap scifi movies that they produce themselves and actually play scifi shows.
I haven't watched scifi since they stopped playing MST3K, Babylon 5, Dark Shadows, Saturday Anime, etc...
I knew it was a dead channel when they started playing wrestling and SVU.
I can see this go 2 ways
1 the execs decide that "this is not our core audience" and refuse to grab the rights
2 the BBC decides to not give them the rights "because they are are stupid foul gits"
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Maybe I'm old, or just odd, but changing the i's to y's immediately brought up alternative sexual preferences and lifestyles (e.g., womyn). Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I don't see it as attracting more of the mainstream audience.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
A lot of folks have already made similar suggestions. Here's how I'd fix it:
Firefly
Dr. Who (30 years worth)
Farscape
Star Trek (all of em - even if you don't like em, they stil count)
StarGate (SG 1 and Atlantis)
Logan's Run
Blake's 7
Eureka
BSG (Classic and modern)
Max Headroom
Andromeda
Sliders
Lexx
Red Dwarf
Threshold
And sure, add in the Fantasy Genre - we're used to the mix on bookshelves
Xena
Hercules
that Robin Hood series I didn't watch, but heard was ok
You can get some great stuff by expanding the definition a LITTLE BIT
The Prisoner
The Twilight Zone
The Night Gallery
Buffy the Vampire slayer
The X Files
Fill it out with the occasional miniseries
Hitchhiker's Guide
Dune
V
Neverwhere
Goremangast
10th Kingdom
Now, add in all the SF movies available, and you've got a network that could have a reasonable "primetime" with series we love and remember with movies galore and it would probably take quite a while to get to where you're repeating yourself.
I bet they'd turn a profit. If they added in the occasional original series, all the better. If you REALLY felt you were short on stuff, there's a lot of CyberPunk Anime that would qualify (when judging this, just imagine if the show was live action instead - if it's sufficiently SF, go for it)
Instead, they decide they're too science fictiony?
Wrestling... WTF?
IF you're gonna do wrestling, GIVE US ROBOT WARS and BATTLE BOTS! That is the kind of wrestling that SciFi fans would actually watch.
I thought that one of the benefits of all these zillions of cable channels was that you could afford to have a real niche, but still gather enough of a national audience to make it viable.
Ok, /rant
The Digital Sorceress
It's not the name that makes it "geeky"... it's the content, change the content to something less geeky and you'll get a more mainstream crowd. A simple name change might result in a small spike in ratings... mostly because people don't know what the SyFy network is, but once they realize that the 24 hour Enterprise marathon is a staple, they'll probably flip back over to whatever reality show the mainstream networks are crapping out these days.
That being said, I hope they don't change the content... because it fills a niche in the market.
We started as Science Fiction, and then Hollywood - the movie monster idiots of the 1950s - coined the word "sci-fi". Harlan Ellison fired back with SF - Speculative Fiction - a term that evoked respect instead of snickers from those who are now conditioned to think Gamera Vs. Godzilla is science fiction.
But after the SF meltdown caused by the 1980s invasion of the idiocracy "sci-fi" series novels, Star Trek, and most especially TV and anime nonsense, we now have "sci-fi", the term that once meant non-scientific fake SF, the Xylitol of the science fiction universe.
Now THAT is too cerebral. Now we have SyFy, the complete descientification of the fiction. Idiot drivel with shiny happy California actors who have never read SF in their lives making Kabuki imitations of a genre that once launched real rockets to the moon.
Idiocracy. Kornbluth was right. The Marching Morons are here.
"The #1 movie in America was called "Ass." And that's what it was. For 90 minutes. It won four Oscars that year, including best screenplay."
I give it a few more years or so...
Ow. Gust playne ow.
Doubly annoying because we keep getting told that the reason no one will do a la carte cable services is because companies bundle their niche channels in with their popular ones, and the niche channels would die out if you bought channels individually b/c there wouldn't be enough people in the niche to support it. So... if the current structure of cable subscriptions is partially meant to support the niche channels, why does every channel need to un-niche itself?
More importantly, between the internet and Netflix, why would anyone "tech-savvy" enough to be included in their focus group still be paying $50+/month for cable?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I don't understand ice cream, can I get a car analogy?
Yeah. It's like they fail to take into account that "everybody" can't watch all of the channels aimed at "everybody" (though this is mitigated somewhat by DVR and cable/internet on-demand content), so they are in effect diluting their viewership when they might actually maintain higher viewship by catering to sci-fi fans. That's not mathematically guaranteed: it depends on what their current audience numbers are, and how many new viewers they can peel off with their format change, but mainstream audience does not automatically equal more viewership.
I think if you hate this as much as I do, please take a moment and email them, below is their contact information from their website:
----
If you have suggestions or comments for our Programming Department about the SCI FI Channel or any of its shows, please contact: feedback@scifi.com
Their remark pisses me off more ways than one. Obviously, it underhandedly insults geeky men -- not cool. Yet it also slyly insults women in two ways, first by ignoring the fact that we even watch their channel at all currently, and second by reading as "we at Sci Fi had to dumb ourselves down for regular folk and teh wimmins in particular". *rolls eyes* I've been watching the Sci Fi Channel ever since it started. So have all of my women friends. Of course it's a biased sample (in addition to being anecdotal); they're my friends in large part because we share the same taste in things. However, my women friends also have other women friends; I know many of them watch too. And many of the "male geeks", notwithstanding the rude characterization of the Sci Fi Channel, have girlfriends or wives -- I'm willing to bet they watch as well.
I won't be watching "SyFy" though. It's condescending to everyone involved, and like many others have said, once BSG is gone, there's really no reason anyway. A shame. MST3K was mythical.
. . . the geniuses at the network should consider gaining market through quality programming, when marketing spin can do all the work. Hey, I've got an idea! The network could start paying bloggers . . .
That combines showing sci-fi and fantasy shows and movies that also talks about Geek Culture. Show Blade Runner, Max Headroom, Star Trek and the like. Give me the best of Sci-Fi and TechTV in one channel. i loved TechTV, i learn a great deal by watching The Screen Savers. Give me something hard core techie. Create a haven for making shows about stuff that only basement dwellers enjoy. Some of us have significant incomes.
Channels are obsolete anyway. Just make shows and movies and let me subscribe to them or download them.
It's odd that Sci-Fi wants to move away from its audience, but then again, Wired used to be a tech magazine. Now it's a lifestyle magazine.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
...flooding the channel with more wrestling, Ghost Boinkers, and other shows aimed to bring in more of their new core market: unemployed rednecks.
-- Jeff
Is anyone else here old enough to remember that MTV use to actually show music videos?
-- Jeff
Because this looks like a story from The Onion!
"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular," - I associate the term with intelligence, literacy, and imagination. I'm guessing Mr. Brooks the "TV historian" didn't grow up reading Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke.
As for women, weren't they (the average non-geeky ones) doing okay when they were showing Quantum Leap all hours of the day, or at least the hours I tried to tune in? I could only take so much of "dropped into yet another life" hell.
SciFi just had their most successful year, and they're shooting themselves in the foot by insulting their core audience. Then again, if they attract the masses, they may make more money--stupid people are everywhere, and to be successful in this world, one must realize that fact. Perhaps that explains all the infomercials.
Oh well, I don't regret dropping cable in 1999. Long live Netflix, Bittorrent, and Use*ahem*.
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis
It's already happened to broadcast TV, the death of niche tv channels is next. God forbid a show doesn't appeal to the mainstream American Idol, King of Queens crowd, it gets the axe. All we're going to be left with soon are reality shows, cop, lawyer and doctor shows, and dramas that are just an endless series of cliff-hangers off-again on-again relationships and never-resolved subplots. ug.
Maybe it's the only pet they can afford....
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Geek is finally "chic" and they go and worry about the term "Sci Fi" after all these DECADES? So now instead of possibly geeky, yet understandable and known term, they go to something stupid and lame. No, the truth is they probably wanted to open up to other non science or tech subject matter (which, let's face it, they already play more than just sci-fi shows and movies)
Well, lets just hope that NBC never get their hands on Slashdot or we may end up with SlashyDotty :S
is that, apparently, "syfy" means "crusty venereal disease" in Polish.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/17/the-venereal-disease-channel-imaginatizes-greatastically/
Morons.
Hell.. why not just name it the "Fallen Kingdom Stewing Piddly Crap" Channel? (Try just saying the first syllables of that name for what I REALLY meant by it.) Cripes.. I guess I'm just too much of a cellar-ridden geek playing video games. I guess what they're saying is that my buddies and I shouldn't bother throwing together chips and KFC parties for shows like we have been for BSG. :) Apparently, we're not in their demographic. So much for THAT ad revenue they were making.
It's truly insulting--plus they defined a general genre that a LARGE population of people have always liked and subscribed to their channel for--mind you, with a few stellar exceptions like BSG, Stargate and Firefly, most of their programming are disappointing and they deserve to lose most of the revenue if things ever finally go ala carte like Hulu and Amazon.
Obviously it stands for "Shut Your Frakking Yap".
I encourage everyone to spread this idea. (Thanks to my brother who came up with it.)
SWhyFWhy!!!
Sounds like it's time for someone to come out with a Real Speculative Fiction channel. After quickly exhausting the catalogue of good sci fi it could create series like HBO does. There are so many great authors and stories they won't have trouble finding quality material. Surely there is enough money in geekdom to fund this.
Be as you would have the world become.
Why is it okay for people to insult Science Fiction fans? Here we have a channel that made its money from a certain audience that insults its audience. Does Lifetime insult women? Does ESPN insult sports fans? Does Disney insult children? No. Our money has made blockbusters out of films, hundreds of millions for merchandisers, and uncounted fortunes for many other venues. I say we demand respect. Boycott SciFi (SyFy)
And just realised now that when used strictly in plural form "syfy" could refer to some bumps/homos/tramps.
Could it possibly relate to those that made the decision about the rebranding?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Is it wrong that I fluently read all of xis?