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Sci Fi Channel Becoming Less Geek-Centric "SyFy"
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Mar 16, 2009 03:51 PM
from the or-you-could-quit-cancelling-good-programs dept.
from the or-you-could-quit-cancelling-good-programs dept.
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."
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My IQ (Score:5, Funny)
My IQ just dropped 20 points reading that.
What the hell.
Re:My IQ (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:My IQ (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded. What I'd do, is just like... like... you know, like, you know what I mean, like...
Parent
Re:My IQ (Score:5, Funny)
"SyFy" sounds like a pet name for a syphillis infection:
Chick: "Hey, want to go see a movie?"
Dude: "Naw, my syfy is actin' up. I'm gonna be gettin' my Michael Jackson's Thriller on..."
Tum tum...*hand clap* *head twitch*
tum tum...*hand clap* *head twitch*
tum tum...
Parent
Re:My IQ (Score:5, Interesting)
TNN alienated their core audience and changed their name to something stupid. I don't have the numbers, but I bet Spike is making more money than TNN did.
Comcast buying TechTv was similar, they wanted the distribution contracts to use to put crappy programming in front of 20 something tards (the key being many more 20 something tards than were watching TechTv)..
Parent
Re:My IQ (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Congratulations! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Funny)
Er, which "cheek" do you mean?
Parent
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Interesting)
...with geek cred, too: It may start OFF as "Dueling Banjos", but if my deafness isn't betraying me, the duet is from the old Atari 2600 game Vanguard {during the "diagonal" boards}...
Parent
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Yes! Finally, I will learn to enjoy Star Trek: Nemesis!
Parent
Re:My IQ (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
FIRST??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SF! ... But they had to EpicFail (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
I think they should skip this name... (Score:5, Funny)
...and go straight to "The channel with Battlestar Galactica reruns, and nothing else really worth watching."
That's more than four letters, though.
Re:I think they should skip this name... (Score:5, Insightful)
...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
Parent
Re:I think they should skip this name... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, the name Battlestar Galactica has also been deprecated. It will now be called: Caprica Hills 40210 (then 40195, then 40183,...)
Parent
Re:I think they should skip this name... (Score:5, Funny)
I think you pronounce it "Booger." But you draw out the R a little, like "Boog-ARRR!" Plus side is they could show pirate movies, too.
The only downside I see is they need to wait until Saturday to do this.
Parent
syfy.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:syfy.com (Score:5, Interesting)
They apparently didn't have trouble threatening syfyportal.com over the word SyFy though. They recently moved to airlockalpha.com and have a peculiar message when trying to reach them from Google.
http://www.airlockalpha.com/?cmp=OTC-SyFyNotice [airlockalpha.com]
Parent
Re:syfy.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the problem is that no one could sue *anyone* over the name "Sci-Fi."
Network president Dave Howe explains the name change as a necessity to attract a broader audience. "We love being sci fi⦠But we're more than just space and aliens and the future â" the three things most people think of when they think of 'sci fi.' What this does is hopefully gives us the best of both worlds. You keep the heritage, but also open up to a broader range of content."
The Sci Fi Channel also ran into problems with trademarking the Sci Fi brand!
"We're going to have upwards of 50 Sci Fi Channels in various territories and yet you cannot trademark 'Sci Fi' anywhere in the world," explained Howe. "A new logo design would not solve that particular challenge. We needed a brand name that was own-able, portable and extendable."
Given the choice between bastardizing their existing name to be "the same" and yet trademarkable or having to rebrand the output of a 50+ network of stations, I'll say they made the right call.
Parent
Y, for one, welcome... (Score:5, Funny)
A plan for the improvement of spelling in the Eng (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re: A plan for the improvement of spelling in the (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: A plan for the improvement of spelling in the (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Goodbye Galactica, hello crappy reality shows! (Score:5, Informative)
Considering Galatica ends this weekend (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Parent
Re:Considering Galatica ends this weekend (Score:5, Funny)
What the heck this new meme of out verbs?
Parent
Re:Goodbye Galactica, hello crappy reality shows! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Goodbye Galactica, hello crappy reality shows! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Parent
Re:Goodbye Galactica, hello crappy reality shows! (Score:5, Informative)
The SciFi Channel used to do some pretty good movies back when they were owned by USA. After their acquisition by NBC, all their movies turned into some of the WORST monster-of-the-week crap I have ever seen. I mean, these movies are completely unwatchable.
I wish they did more movies like the one with the house AI gone mad, or the lady who stowed away on a cargo lander headed to a mining colony, or the excellent Dune movies. Not all of the movies were great, but they were all more interesting than the garbage they show these days.
Parent
not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:not surprised (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:not surprised (Score:5, Funny)
Wrestling is sort of science fiction, in that everything you see is a lie, performed by men (and occasionally women) who are the product of various chemical sciences.
Parent
SyFy? Sounds like a disease (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:SyFy? Sounds like a disease (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, Polish colloquialism for "syphilis" is singular "syf". "Syfy" (plural) means "zits", which is strangely fitting here. :O
Still, my nomination for the dumbest name ever.
Parent
Fonzi'd (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
I'm sure it's all the name's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
It can't be the professional wrestling or Mansquito. It's obviously the name that's the problem! Quick! Change the name!
*sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
"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?
Humm, Why am I a bad demographic? (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Submoronic asshattery abounds (Score:5, Insightful)
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
The History Channel. (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Parent
Cool name: Syfy = filth [in polish] (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wiktionary.org]. 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.
In other news: (Score:5, Funny)
Bill NySyGy
If it walks like a duck ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ahem... it's SF (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Ahem... it's SF (Score:5, Funny)
1. Nobody calls it "Frisco."
2. Everyone I know who has done "a little too much LDS" has lived in Utah.
Parent
Re:SyFy (Score:5, Funny)
Parent