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Does Syfy Really Love Sci-Fi?
brumgrunt writes "Has Syfy fallen out with science fiction altogether? A look at its latest scheduling shows that it's further away from its roots than ever. 'There's still a lot of the older sci-fi content on the airwaves, but it's slowly being phased out, and forget about original programming. After all, this is the programming crew who ruined Caprica by stuffing it into the Friday night death slot and splitting the season into two parts. These are the geniuses who killed off Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. These are the people who wrecked Farscape, one of the most inventive and fun sci-fi shows to ever be on television. They also ended Mystery Science Theater 3000, only the greatest show ever invented by robots in space.' Is this now as good as it gets?"
From a lot of recent articles I've been reading, Fantasy Books are now king while interest in science-based fiction is almost null.
So if the same for books is also true for television, then it makes sense for Sci-Fi Channel to rename itself, and then move towards more fantasy shows. Fantasy is more profitable.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
"and forget about original programming."
You could not be further from the truth! I'm very much looking forward to Mega BearLion vs Giant Robo-Piranha 2: The Revenge!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
They killed SGU so they could put wrestling in its place. What more evidence do you need?
From what I can tell, SyFy doesn't hate Sci-Fi so much as it hates shows that require money to produce. That's why it's chock full of Ghost Retards type shows and horrible Canadian subsidized horror movies.
That said, the costuming reality show (Face Off) has been fairly interesting, even if the producers are hitting the "reality show drama" notes quite a bit too hard. There is some skill and technique on display, and I would be ecstatic if they added little segments about the different techniques they're using "this material takes a couple of hours to set and require different kinds of paint, but allow for more realistic mobility..." instead of the "But Person X is hitting on Person Y, and that's making Person Z jealous" manufactured bullshit.
I read the internet for the articles.
Syfy has become to science fiction like MTV is to music television. Or TechTV (now "G4") is to technology.
It's a shame. I used to love their original programming. Now... wrestling? Really?
SyFy didn't ruin Caprica. Ronald D. Moore did. The show sucked Baltar's Balls. The presense of Eric Stoltz was not enough to fix horrible story telling.
this is a question whose answer reveals less about reality and more about the psychology of whomever answers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They love money. If SciFi programming isn't bringing in the viewers they will show what does.
The programming has become so bad that when deciding on a cable tv package the only significant difference (for us) between the tier I ordered and the one above was the Syfy, Bravo and an extra c-span.
I ordered the lesser priced service specifically because I was no longer interested in that channel. So Syfy sucking has saved me $20+/month
It looks like I'll get my science fiction in print and from any number of the streaming services.
"After all, this is the programming crew who ruined Caprica by stuffing it into the Friday night death slot and splitting the season into two parts. These are the geniuses who killed off Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. These are the people who wrecked Farscape, one of the most inventive and fun sci-fi shows to ever be on television. They also ended Mystery Science Theater 3000"
How DARE they cancel that show that nobody liked, and those two shows that had bad ratings. And that other show that had bad ratings. And that nine-year-old show that had a good run for years on their network.
I sometimes get the feeling that Sci-Fi fans are so desperate for more content that they religiously and desperately cling to whatever they get, and in the process make shows into far more than they actually are. It's understandable, and even sympathetic. Then again, so is the network trying to pay the bills.
I love science shows!
"We're gonna need another Timmy!"
Let's see, come up with interesting shows... then kill them, or ruin them. Then, you've got a specific niche market that you're targeted at, why not "rebrand" yourself, and try to appeal to an overfull market, while treating the folks who made you viable as ignorant , and chasing them away as hard as you can?
*Great* business plan.
But then, most of them a) don't read SF, b) don't understand it, and c) flunked 5th grade science, and know so much about how the world works that they'd electricute themselves cleaning a toaster (you have to clean them? Really? How? Why?)
And on the sf side, as a lifelong sf fan, it *used* to be that there were 10 year or so cycles, where you'd get more fantasy for 10 years, then more sf; the last 15 or so, it's overwhelmingly fantasy. My take is that with the dumbing down of the educational system, and especially the unravelling of the Space Program, kids don't see a chance for them, so they go off into fantasy worlds where *something* can happen, and maybe they'll win the lottery, too.
mark
It boils down to this:
Science fiction and fantasy programming, no matter how high-quality or compelling, do not draw a sufficiently advertising-targetable, high-spending audience to justify a seperate channel.
In lieu of this, Syfy has chosen the fallback position, which is to appeal to a much broader but reliable audience, young men. Programmers know what shows appeal to this demographic, and advertisers know which products to pitch to them during the breaks.
Thus: Wrestling, ghost hunting, lurid monster movies.
Science fiction is not the only genre or category to suffer. A&E and Bravo were concieved as outlets for artsy movies. MTV used to show music videos and be about, well, music. What kind of programs do these channels show now?
Under the current rules of broadcast and cablecast TV, the situation will never get better. Non-premium channels will get more and more generic and lowbrow. Cheap "reality" shows and infomercials will fill more and more programming slots.
If you really want high-quality SF&F content, you're going to have to be willing to PAY for it. Either on a premium channel, or by some kind of net subscription.
Look at other "specialty networks": The Learning Channel (TLC), MTV, VH1, etc have all bailed on their original programming and having nothing to do with the name of their network. Hell, even the History Channel has bought into the reality TV bullshit. For the most part all of the networks are showing the same crap now.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I can just DVR that channel when something interesting shows up on the schedule, if I even reference it. I know from sites like this one and other more in tune sites when something interesting might show up on that channel, the thing is, I use those sites to find it across any channel. After they changed their name to SyFy I was honestly relieved, its is perfect for who they are, some fruity feel good channel trying to cash in on whatever they can but most definitely not bout science fiction.
They have had some good original productions, The OZ and Dune come to mind. Series wise, Stargate and SGA were good to watch, though I admit I much rather watch SG compared to the other two. BSG was good till it started split seasons, then it became annoying. Some of the older shows simply ran their course. They were cult status by the time SciFi mangled them. They have had some original shows, Eureka was definitely out there at times.
Caprica - get real, name one episode that was worth watching - talk about no connection to the series your supposed to be related too - they could have added vampires and werewolves to it and not missed the marker farther than they did.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
No, SyFy does not live Sci Fi. I thought they made that apparent with the name change.
Also, SGU was not science fiction, it was Twilight in space with fewer vampires and more tears.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
So do I. It's too bad they never decided to make any new series after Stargate: Atlantis.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
That's not going to get us new episodes though... the show ended early was the point.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
After what they did in 2010. I'm all for ESPN taking over. Same thing for the NHL.
They stopped loving Sci-Fi the second they put wrestling on. Just like MTV stopped loving music the second they switched to reality programing in stead of music.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Cable channels used to be about narrowcasting to targeted demographics. About eight years or so back, the channel owners started to rethink that strategy. So The Nashville Network (country-targeted) went to TNN and then became Spike, aiming its programming against a broader male demographic and de-emphasizing and abandoning an explicit connection to the music genre. Unless a cable channel has a lock-hold on a very loyal demographic with a great profile for advertisers, it will go to diversifying its programming and slug it out with general interest programming with a more subtle skew.
What is the point in having niche channels, when you abandon your niche? As someone else mentioned, a lot of channels on cable (The Learning Channel, History, Discovery, etc) are just reality TV and conspiracy theory BS. Why even create niche channels, if they don't want to serve that niche? Even the Science channel is bad these days. There are thousands of good science based documentaries that have been produced, but yet every time I try to watch something on the Science Channel it's just that silly "How Things are Made" crap. Seeing how the Cheetos got from a bag of orange shit, to my face, isn't exactly science!
If you can't do your wonderful public service without money from a government, your plan is not sustainable in the first place.
Likewise if your government job is actually *important*, you won't stop doing it just because Congress stopped funding your agency.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Thou hast blasphemed
They should bring some SG-1 and Atlantis characters together for a new series that continues that vein.
I have said the same thing! Why is there a Sci-Fi Channel? because there are Fans of Sci-Fi who will watch. So why then the name change to SyFy? who knows but the Dink that's running the show clearly is not a sci-fi fan, nor do they have any clue how to run a business. You do not take over a company and change its target customers.
Imagine if the guy running SyFy desided to go to the Food network.
Lets call it the Fûd network. (so i can change a few things that aren't food and it wont seem so bad).
lets add the Survivor series and Jersey boys, because they are getting a lot of attention on other networks. (you know networks dedicated to that type of thing).
it angers me, and there is nothing we can do about it...except hope that an alien comes down and probes the bastards.
Let's also not forget the tragedy of Babylon 5. They said they were canceling at season 4, so the creators had to rush the show's plot, then they decided afterward to renew a 5th season, so they had to make up new crap completely outside the realm of the original planned plot line.
Babylon 5 ran on PTEN for four seasons. When they didn't renew it for season 5, it moved to TNT for the final season. One canceled it, and another picked it up. Not only did the networks not do what you described, SciFi had nothing to do with it.
It wouldn't make a difference.
You are entirely correct in your assessment of SF versus F in the literary world.
But to a TV programmer, the audience for these genres is A) hardly distinguishable, and B) hardly worth targetting programming at.
Why? There aren't a lot of products they can specifically target to SF&F fans. At least, products from industries that make enough money to make television advertisements and pay for airtime.
It's just s show. You should really just relax.
While "SyFy" is on cable and therefore sees a bit of revenue off your cable bill, a big percentage of their revenue comes from advertising. Unfortunately their target market (geeky males) generally don't watch ads. They torrent SyFy shows or PVR them and skip through the ads - So it's likely harder for SyFy to recoup their costs for expensive shows with lots of FX if ad revenues are down. Yeah, yeah, I know 'content wants to be free' blah blah blah, but anyone who has watched fan-produced Star Trek or Star Wars webisodes knows that producing quality Science Fiction television programming is complex and expensive.
>over-used, oft-repeated plots.
Please come up with a plot that isn't based on one of these basic conflicts:
man vs. nature
man vs. man
man vs. the environment
man vs. machines/technology
man vs. the supernatural
man vs. self
man vs. god/religion
I like to point out that "Dude, Where's My Car" has subplots from among all of these categories:
Quest, Adventure, Pursuit, Rescue, Escape, Revenge, Riddle, Rivalry, Underdog, Temptation, Metamorphosis, Transformation, Maturation, Love, Forbidden Love, Sacrifice, Discovery, Wretched Excess, Ascension, and Decision.
Does that make it better than your usual "underdog goes through a transformation and falls in love while on a quest", e.g. "Rocky" or maybe even "Coming to America"?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
After the way BSG ended, Ca-prick-a didn't stand, or deserve a chance.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Good SciFi doesn't have to be expensive to produce. Good SciFi just needs good writers with an excellent imagination.
Do you remember the old Dr. Who shows? Not the new stuff. The old shows made 20-some years ago. That was GREAT SciFi and their budget was very small. Consequently the special effects were awful, the acting terrible, the camera work questionable, etc., etc., but the STORIES were fantastic. That is what made that show great. That is what makes SciFi great in general.
Love sees no species.
Note how many true Sci Fi authors have gravitated to to name "Speculative fiction" cf. they don't want their lofty ideas to be constrained
by the weights of "Science".
This can be a decent thing. Novels like 1984 and Brave New World could be considered "speculative fiction". I don't find it a terrible sin against the genre to switch between exploring technology (hard sci-fi) and exploring concepts (speculative). My two favorite Sci-fi authors (Stanislaw Lem and Clifford Simak) are both light on hard science, and heavy on philosophical exploration.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that science fiction shouldn't just be about technology and physics (I've seen the over-explanation of both of these kill more novels than help), it should be about exploring the "what if?". "What if" can be both extrapolation of sceintific and technological trends, and the extrapolation of social, cultural, and other trends. Take Philip Dick, no one will deny his importance to the genre, but he had very little high techology, and practically no ad nauseum descriptions of how gadgets worked, his fiction was still highly engaging on an intellectual level.
I really don't get the "hardcore science" or it isn't sci-fi crowd, they always come off as boring snobs who completely ignore 90% of the genre, and nearly all of the early works and history. There are very few hard science fiction novels that I find enjoyable, I'd rather just read a non-fiction book on the concepts, since all the jargon and explanations often get in the way of the most important thing, an enjoyable story. Sometimes dragging out the Star-Trek-eque particle of the week is perfectly acceptable if it keeps things from becoming nothing more than a pedantic slog.
Contrast to the BS of "Transformers" or any superhero movie. Why do I care?
Transformers wasn't really sci-fi. You could replace the robots with giant space dinosaurs and the movie (cartoon) would be exactly the same. It was an action flick (or cartoon) using loose science fiction trappings. Contrast it with Blade Runner, which also lacks the "hard" bits of science, but manages to explore interesting concepts and consequences. I would happily call Blade Runner a sci-fi story, but Transformers is just action.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
It's just a TV show, you should really just relax.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Why not chase the ratings and the money?
Sometimes ratings don't always equate to money. Since Farscape was mentioned I'll use it as an example. The show was a success in every sense of the word EXCEPT where profit was concerned. The production costs were so expensive that the ad revenue couldn't sustain it.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
In some cases, the opposite almost seems to be happening with BBC America. Less British stuff, and strangely more Sci Fi. You've got Doctor Who, Torchwood and Primeval, but then strangely you also have ST:TNG and the X-Files.
Of course SGU was Sci-fi. The fact that you, or I for that matter, don't like it doesn't mean it's not sci-fi.
And it's trivial to make a sci-fi show thats about vampires.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When there are new cable channels, they almost always have an over-specific focus and branch out because they don't have enough content or they just think they'll do better with general focused programming. MTV barely even shows a music video. BBC America is always showing Americans shows like Star Trek. The History Channel shows "Ice Road Truckers." American Movie Classics shows Mad Men and movies that are nowhere near classic status. ESPN shows poker games and eating contests. It is not at all surprising to see Syfy just showing whatever they think can get ratings at this point. Maybe they can come out with Syfy 2, for the true sci-fi, and then slowly transition it just showing music videos.
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It's called BBCAmerica.
Dr Who
Torchwood
Being Human
Etc.
more original and better programming than "Sci-FI" ever had.
(BTW, Stargate SG1 started on Showtime, not Sci-Fi)
How DARE they cancel that show that nobody liked
No doubt there were some shows that got canned deservedly. In other cases, however, the mis-handling of the show by SciFi channel was a major factor in causing audience dislike. The extent of mis-handling suggests that the scheduling decision-makers lacked any understanding of SciFi, and were likely completely alienated by it. Why else would they do things which were almost certain to decrease audiences?
One example is Lexx, a pretty good series if you get it on DVD. In its "wisdom", the SciFi channel decided not to show the first season at all [*]. This guaranteed that the audience would be a bit mystified, as the first season provided the context for subsequent seasons, and was excellent in itself. The SciFi channel then aired the second season shows out of their intended sequence. Audience confusion was complete, and the series bombed in North America, largely due to the actions of the SciFi channel morons.
[*] Maybe they were scared of the jiggling tits shown in one of the episodes. I doubt this, however, as they could easily have cut a minute from the episode and stuffed another ad in the gap.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
...all of the Stargates deserved to be axed. Terrible. terrible television.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
I wonder if this says something about the type of people who watch Sci-Fi / SyFy?
They can't get dates on Friday night?
Apologies if this offends you, but I find 'suspension of disbelief' to be an excuse of a terrible author. It's basically saying 'stop thinking and focus on the explosions'. While a little less intolerable in movies, I just don't see any reason we should tolerate it in written works, at all. Reactionless drives? FTL? Sound magically carrying through vacuum? Blatant disregard for thermodynamics and conservation laws? Either explain it away in a way that doesn't poke a thousand other holes in your idea of 'science', or stick to less 'speculative' (read: bullshit) fiction.
For example, take the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds. A perfectly reasonable hard sci-fi story that is nonetheless very interesting, and not boring at all - which, if the general public is to be believed, is impossible. All sci-fi should be written by actual physicists and engineers, and reviewed by committee before being released in non-written form. There should be an internationally accepted rating body like the ESRB to rate works of science fiction, with ratings ranging from "reverse the tachyon deflector polarity" to "relativistic kill-vehicles doppler-shifted into the x-ray band".
FUCK soft sci-fi.
There was a 200th episode show of Stargate SG1 that had a mock-up of its own show where they pretended to recreate Stargate SG1 with a more hip, young crowd (the punch line where one of the characters reveals she's pregnant). When Stargate Universe aired, all I could think was they took the joke of that one episode and made it real. They even did the joke from the show where they pretended to shorten the intro of the show to just showing the title, a one note of theme music and then go to commerical, which they did with SG1. Turns out, that's exactly what they did with Stargate Universe as well. It's almost as if they made a joke and then someone saw it and realized, hey that might just work. And of course, it didn't.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
Reactionless drives? FTL? Sound magically carrying through vacuum? Blatant disregard for thermodynamics and conservation laws? Either explain it away in a way that doesn't poke a thousand other holes in your idea of 'science', or stick to less 'speculative' (read: bullshit) fiction.
Yeah, I hear you man. "Positronic brain"? High-level abstract rules that yet are so inherent to the underlying mechanics of the brain itself that they can't possibly be broken? It's just some magical woo with a "positron" science buzzword thrown on top of it. That Asimov idiot should have gotten an education before writing "sci-fi"!
My point being: "suspension of disbelief" doesn't just apply to things for which you personally find it hard to suspend disbelief.
The enemies of Democracy are
Hey, I don't know if anybody's mentioned this yet, but you should repeat to yourself "it's just a show, I should really just relax."
You know, if you were wondering about how he eats or breathes, or other science facts.
Bow-ties are cool.
It's called Wipeout.
And yeah, it's passable for a half hour.
What was science fiction, is now not just reality, but obsolete.
I mean take a look at Dick Tracy's watch - not even as good as our cellphones. The stuff they did in Star Trek? We don't need a starship to do the same. Look at World of Warcraft. It's not a video game - it's a simulator for how human beings will behave in the future when we have the power to transfer our consciousness into bodies other than our own for entertainment.
Syfy is failing not because of a lack of sci fi material to work with, but because it's no longer more amazing than reality.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
There's several different kinds of sci-fi, with different purposes. Blade Runner, for instance, sets itself in a future world not too far in the future, to philosophically explore the ramifications of cloning, genetic engineering, and slavery (i.e., genetically-engineered human clones were created to be used as slaves). It didn't go into the science much, just that the Replicants were genetically engineered to be super-people for use in dangerous environments, and had a limited lifetime, and explored the problems with this. Much similar sci-fi is about exploring the social issues caused by technology.
Star Trek has always been about a farther-ahead future with pretty fantastic technologies used as plot devices, but the real purpose has been to explore philosophical and social issues, many that modern society has been grappling for decades or longer. Racism (remember the TOS episode about the two mortal enemies, one who was half black, half white, and the other who was half-white, half-black?), clan warfare (the TNG episode about rival clans, one who died out but created an extra-long-lived survivor to seek out the rival clan members and kill them all by touch with a GE virus), trade issues (the Ferengi), imperialism and oppression (the Cardassians and Bajorans), proxy wars (the TOS episode about the primitive clans, one backed by the Klingons and given rifle technology, the other backed by the Federation) etc.
The problem with hard sci-fi is that no one really knows which way technology is going to develop, or what's going to come next. We can only guess based on current trends. You can see what a disaster this is in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke and Kubrick looked at what was going on in the mid-60s with space tech, and extrapolated, reasoning (quite correctly) that at that rate of progress, humans would have advanced space stations (with artificial gravity by rotation) in orbit by 2001 with regular passenger flights, and a moon base. We all know how wrong that was: space exploration pretty much came to a dead stop with the premature end of the Apollo program (which was cut short by budget cuts), what was left went on a useless tangent with the overpriced and wasteful Space Shuttle, and we haven't been back to the Moon since then, and wouldn't be able to send humans there if our lives depended on it. It's most probable that the next humans to land on another celestial body (Moon, Mars, or asteroid) will be some nationality besides American, probably Chinese. This isn't due to technological problems, it's due to social and governmental problems; the USA would rather spend trillions of dollars on wasteful proxy wars than on developing advanced technology, and now its economy is slowly going down the drain. There's probably no way Kubrick and Clarke could have foreseen this. In addition, most sci-fi from the 80s or before doesn't foresee the internet at all, which has been a giant technological change worldwide. Nowadays, we can't imagine how we'd live without it because so much is dependent on it for communications (business, commerce, recreation, etc.), but 20 years ago most people didn't even know what it was, much less see a use for it in their daily lives.
Because of all this, hard sci-fi gets dated very quickly, and only interesting to read/watch to see what people of the past thought the future would be like. "Soft" sci-fi doesn't age nearly as badly, because it's so far ahead that it doesn't date itself. "2001" is obviously way off base since the year 2001 has come and gone a decade ago. But ST:TNG still looks like a plausible view of the future, because it sets itself far ahead of things like the exact timescale of human space development, the internet, etc. (Except of course for episodes talking about the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s; but the internet thing is handily avoided since even in the far future, they don't show interplanetary communications to be simple, real-time, or cheap; they have subspace which seems to be near real-time, but that only happens for extremely urgent messages from Starfleet Command, and even then it doesn't seem to be realtime at all if they're in deep space.)