Sci Fi Channel Becoming Less Geek-Centric "SyFy" 798
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."
Goodbye Galactica, hello crappy reality shows! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Y, for one, welcome... (Score:3, Informative)
Not to rain on your parade, but back in the days of old English, y was pronounced differently from i/ee. The vowel sound of "y" was lost during the great vowel shift, and in English, it can now only be found in some Scottish dialects.
The closest sound to the "y" of yonder is the middle sound of "ui", but not as a diphthong, but as a separate persistent sound.
And the highest Rated show on SyFy (Score:2, Informative)
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!
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.
Re:Ahem... it's SF (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Real science fiction fans are probably the only people who know what 'speculative fiction' is, and they know that if they use the abbreviation SF, that almost everybody who sees it will understand it as science fiction. They also know the boundary between speculative fiction and science fiction is pretty blurry and don't get their panties in a knot over it.
Your average parasmut novel is SF, but it isn't sci-fi.
Now I'm curious what a parasmut novel is.
Sci-Fi got written off years ago. (Score:3, Informative)
Sci-Fi to fans: "No, it's SyFy!"
Fans to Sci-Fi: "EetADik. You never should have canceled Farscape."
Re:Ahem... it's SF (Score:2, Informative)
Name a large city where people in the nearby area don't refer to it as "the city".
We live in Tucson and refer to Phoenix as "The Big Blob".
Re:My IQ (Score:3, Informative)
Any 34 year old man that would text the word "syfy" needs his ass kicked.
Re:Ahem... it's SF (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think that's parasmut. I think parasmut is female werewolves feeling horny etc. etc. There's a lot of that sort of stuff about at the moment.
Re:Goodbye Galactica, hello crappy reality shows! (Score:0, Informative)
Re:My IQ (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent -1, missed Idiocracy reference.
Re:My IQ (Score:5, Informative)
You're quite spot on, especially for people who know some slavic language :> (precise translations below are from polish, but such words are somewhat universal usually (though I'd have to check, and too lazy atm))
"syfy" would be plural form of "syf"; which can mean: crap, shit, junk, syphilis.
Re:Fonzi'd (Score:3, Informative)
To think that "SyFy" is how you'd text "SciFi" is clearly ridiculous. Either the exec is making it up, which is not unlikely, or the whole focus group conspired to pull some lolz on the suit.
I can see them all sitting in a room, using their iphones etc, to text each other about what's the most ridiculous thing they can get the suit to believe. That they'd actually use SyFy to mean the SciFi channel would be right up at the top of the list.
For one thing, it wouldn't be capitalized. For another, it would be "sf", as everyone else has pointed out. Finally, no one gives a good goddam about the channel "branding" or "identity". I watch the shows that I like, and change the channel when I'm done. With a TiVo, not only do I not know what time a show is really on, I have very little idea what channel it comes from too. And I'm not about to continue to watch a channel simply because I just watched a show on it--I'm going to watch something else that I recorded from wherever else it was.
Really, the only way to improve declining ratings is to STOP MAKING CRAP. Channel suits need to stop worrying about their channel image, and should think more about making TV that's watchable.