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."
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]
Re:SyFy? Sounds like a disease (Score:1, Interesting)
In Polish syfy means syphilis so you are right it is disease
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.
Look on the bryght syde... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe this will finally reverse that stupid shift that took place in the early 1980s where every girl's name that ends with an -ee sound was changed to -i. (E.g., Debbie --> Debbi, Cindy --> Cindi, Tammy --> Tammi, etc.)
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.
epitaph (Score:3, Interesting)
SyFy: Though market studies clearly showed room for a mainstream channel catering to action/tech/paranormal fare, the stigma of having been the "Sci Fi" channel doomed NBC Universal's efforts to woo mainstreamers from the start.
SciFi: The channel formerly known as SciFi abandoned its core audience in 2010 an attempt to lure mainstreamers away from Fox. Immediately, a trio of new channels emerged in the unpopulated geek fringes. The strongest of these was soon purchased by News Corp., allowing it starve the former SciFi channel of geeks as well as mainstreamers.
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.
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)..
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}...
Let's make our own damn channel! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not just use Amazon Honor System to give money directly to Joss Whedon and/or Ron Moore, and distribute the show weekly with a private Bittorrent tracker? Heck, why not just make a season a shareware app? What's a reasonable price for a season? $20? All you need is 100,000+ viewers a season, and this thing would work economically. (Heck, I'd even live with B5 level special effects if we could have a new series with intelligent writing and Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, Nathan Fillion, Tricia Helfer...)