Ask Slashdot: Is It Time For SyFy To Go Premium?

Cutriss writes "Now that Caprica is gone and SG:U has concluded, I see new shows coming in their place such as Alphas and the Red Faction series, and I find myself asking if the fate of Atlantis and SG:U might have gone differently if SyFy had been a paid cable network. I know the Slashdot audience would probably trade a few dollars a month if it meant replacing wrestling and ghost-chasing shows with relicensed classics and more appropriate treatment of original content. Plus, with a paying audience, the ad space would become much more lucrative and SyFy could lose some of the seedier ads it has been saddled with lately, and better fund new original content."

Comments

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Time for it to go away.

Re:Nope

[delinear]

What we need is TNG where we get to vote who gets kicked out of the airlock every week. Adios, Wesley...

Re:The content is out there

[i kan reed]

Here's a hint: everything has a license fee, even stuff they produced themselves because they have to pay the actors per credit. They moved away from science fiction for pro-wrestling because intellectuals are too diverse and critical an audience to reduce to a simple demographic to advertise to. If there were a premium package from my cable company that focused on real documentaries, non-action oriented science fiction, and absolutely no ads that belittle my intelligence, I'd pay 3-5 times as much as people pay for their sports packages. I get miffed because absolutely every single television channel assumes I'm a blubbering moron or blubbering moron compatible.

The following were good, but are now blubbering moron bait:
Discovery Channel(trucks driving on ice? REALLY?)
History Channel(we're 100% certain that this piece of rock was portal to alien jesus, here's an "expert")
Sci Fi(Covered in depth here, but REALLY bad. Hasn't touched the ideas of real speculative fiction in a decade)
Animal Planet(Nature documentaries? Screw that, pet reality shows!!!)
TLC(babies are all anyone ever wants to see!!!! We're SURE!!!)

The following still make some attempt an any real depth
BBC America
PBS

I don't inherently loathe television as a medium, I loath spoonfed bullshit supportded by psychologically manipulative bullshit.

Re:Seriously?

[ImprovOmega]

They jumped the shark when their named change to "SyFy" it was the final confirmation that they'd abandoned anything to do with real science fiction.

Are there any fans of Syfy left anywhere?

[spun]

Seriously, I thought they had driven off all their more intelligent fans when they started catering to the developmentally challenged. I found this turn of events very disappointing until I realized, the Syfy channel isn't just for the learning disabled, it is run by the learning disabled as well. I mean look at them, they sent a marketing bot to slashdot to do some market research and try to find out why real geeks don't watch Syfy anymore.

Wll, Mr. Retarded Marketing Bot, please take this back to your superiors: premium channels require premium content first, not last. You don't get to create literally the dumbest channel on television anywhere in the world and then complain that you could make it better if only you had some more money. You don't have money because you are doing it all wrong. You won't get more money until you start doing it right. You don't get to skip over the "getting it right" part. We are not a captive audience. We have other choices.

Until I realized that Syfy is actually a retard employment program, the idea of having to explain any of this to grown adults would have blown my mind.