Slashdot Mirror
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."
...actually most kids would text SF coz it's shorter!
Has the key word for the new name: "Ownable." Guess they were having difficulty suing people over the use of the word SciFi
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
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.
(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).
Actually, as a 23 year old male, that's exactly what I want when I watch tv. Which of course is never. I haven't the time, and the internet exists now, so I can just youtube the good parts. or something like that.
--- He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. ---
It can't be the professional wrestling or Mansquito. It's obviously the name that's the problem! Quick! Change the name!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
No, real sci-fi fans knows that sci-fi and SciFi is short for Science Fiction, while SF is short for Speculative Fiction, which includes other genres.
Your average parasmut novel is SF, but it isn't sci-fi.
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.
"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
Um, they have already done this. Sci Fi, or SyFy has very little actual SF content anymore. They now feature "wrestling" and crappy reality and game shows, along with god-awful made-for-tv monster movies, which I suppose COULD be considered SF if they weren't so badly done.
With no more "Stargate" or "Battlestar Galactica", they have almost nothing going for them anymore. I had hoped "Sanctuary" might redeem them a little bit, but I lost interest after the first few episodes. Once "Eureka" is done this summer, I'm probably going to get a cheaper satellite package, as I'm pretty sure Sci Fi is the only reason I have my current one.
"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.
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
Prepare to laugh at fart jokes
Hey! That has nothing to do with intelligence! A funny fart joke is a funny joke, no matter how smart you are. And it seems like most fart jokes on TV are toungue-in-cheek anyway.
...and go straight to "The channel with Battlestar Galactica reruns, and nothing else really worth watching."
Or they will pull a Fox and play time-slot roulette, and then dropping what the core audience wants. Then they will promise DVD sales, forget about it, finally get to it and then decide people actually wanted to watch it.
-sniff
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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....
This is the same group that thought pro wrestling was appropriate content for the sci fi motif...
www.joking.net
They're going to do exactly what G4 did
Which is what MTV did long before G4. Did you know they used to play music videos?
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.
It bears mentioning that a statement is not necessarily false simply because it was presented as the conclusion of faulty logic.
For example:
I like strawberry ice cream
Strawberry ice cream is tasty
Anime sucks
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.