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Sci-Fi Movies Television Entertainment

Does Syfy Really Love Sci-Fi? 742

Posted by Soulskill from the but-they-had-this-awesome-movie-about-a-ferret-monster dept.
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?"
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Does Syfy Really Love Sci-Fi? More

Does Syfy Really Love Sci-Fi?

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  • Fantasy is now king (Score:4, Insightful)

    by commodore6502 ( 1981532 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:22PM (#35313600)

    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.

    • Sci Fi rewrote its name to appeal to Non-Sci-Fi & Fantasy Geeks. So it only makes sense that they change their programming to cast a bigger net into the demographic pool.
      • I thought they changed it because they couldn't copyright/trademark "Sci-Fi".

      • Sci Fi rewrote its name to appeal to Non-Sci-Fi & Fantasy Geeks. So it only makes sense that they change their programming to cast a bigger net into the demographic pool.

        Really? I always thought SyFy was a reference to 'the syph'... i.e. syphilis.

    • I dont read loads of sci fi...but i always liked reading it more than watching it, due to what is often meh acting and special effects (i understand this is due to budget and such, but i dont care for it)

      also, id rather play a fun scifi video game. mass effect 2 was pretty good, imo. /not a sci fi snob, just like what i like //beer snob, however.

    • Re:Fantasy is now king (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:46PM (#35313998) Homepage

      Fantasy Books are now king while interest in science-based fiction is almost null.

      Yes. Our local Barnes and Noble has four shelf sections of "Paranormal Teen Romance", plus one of "New Paranormal Teen Romance". Half of the SF section is now vampire-related. So is a big fraction of the romance section, plus some of the main fiction section. All the vampire books combined into one section would be impressive. One of the goths who works there says that vampire book sales are down, but zombie books are picking up.

      At retail, SF is either space opera, paranormal, or reprints.

      • Re:Fantasy is now king (Score:5, Funny)

        by BJ_Covert_Action ( 1499847 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @02:04PM (#35314302) Homepage Journal
        I used to work at my local B&N. When the 4th Twilight book came out (New Moon I think?) we had a huge release party packed full of preteen/young teen girls. One of the girls got so excited to actually purchase the book that, when I waved her up to my cash register from the line, she ran as fast as she could to get to me. She slipped on the tile floor in front of the register, sprawled head first into the counter, and knocked herself clean out. Maybe the reason zombie sales are picking up is due to the brain damage inflicted on the young populations from the Twilight series. They're just studying the current masters' methods of replenishing their brain supplies....

    • 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.

    • Re:Fantasy is now king (Score:4, Insightful)

      by morari ( 1080535 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @03:47PM (#35315868) Journal

      It must be an American thing. It's make sense though, as a "Christian nation" it must be easier to except fantasy than it is science fiction.

  • What you say? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:24PM (#35313630)
    "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!

  • Wrestling now (Score:5, Informative)

    by guspasho ( 941623 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:26PM (#35313656)

    They killed SGU so they could put wrestling in its place. What more evidence do you need?

    • ECW had a zombie... and a vampire. That counts as Sci-Fi right?
    • To be fair, I think wrestling has more interesting physics in it than SGU did.

    • They probably killed SGU because it wasn't giving them the ratings they wanted. Viacom wanted to squeeze wrestling into a potentially profitable space; they saw that lots of 18-29 aged folk watch Syfy and figured they could just patch the hole left by Stargate. Clearly one block of 18-29'ers is not representative of the whole thing since the experiment flopped, and now they're aggressively backpedaling.

      That doesn't really excuse the reruns of Law & Order: SVU on the station though, does it?

    • Re:Wrestling now (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RyuuzakiTetsuya ( 195424 ) <taiki.cox@net> on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:49PM (#35314054)

      SGU was terrible.

      I really wish they ran a live version of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe in place of it.

      SG:Atlantis and SG1 were great shows. SGU just lacked any of the wit and fun those shows brought us. I watched SG:A and SG1 because they were fun, last thing I really needed was a giant bummer.

      • Re:Wrestling now (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Abstrackt ( 609015 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @03:02PM (#35315248)

        SGU was terrible.

        I really wish they ran a live version of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe in place of it.

        SG:Atlantis and SG1 were great shows. SGU just lacked any of the wit and fun those shows brought us. I watched SG:A and SG1 because they were fun, last thing I really needed was a giant bummer.

        It was the lack of wit and "let's see what part of the ship breaks down this week!" that killed SGU for me. I think SGU had a lot of potential but it was basically Twilight in space.

      • SGU (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sarbonn ( 1796548 )
        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

    • Re:Wrestling now (Score:5, Funny)

      by discord5 ( 798235 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:51PM (#35314096)

      They killed SGU so they could put wrestling in its place

      On the bright side, wrestling has a more credible plot and more likeable characters.

  • Until it's cheaper, yes (Score:5, Informative)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:27PM (#35313670) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Syfy is to science fiction... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:27PM (#35313684) Homepage Journal

    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?

  • Caprica? Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kagato ( 116051 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:28PM (#35313694)

    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

  • They are a business (Score:3)

    by papasui ( 567265 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:29PM (#35313712) Homepage
    They love money. If SciFi programming isn't bringing in the viewers they will show what does.

  • SyFy Channel Saved Me Money! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by footNipple ( 541325 ) <footnipple&indiatimes,com> on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:31PM (#35313758)
    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.

  • Bills to Pay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rydia ( 556444 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:32PM (#35313768)

    "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.

    • Re:Bills to Pay (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:37PM (#35313844)

      So, why run a sci-fi channel if you don't believe (correctly, or otherwise) that sci-fi shows are going to pay the bills?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Surt ( 22457 )

        Hence the name change.

      • A cable TV channel is a huge initial investment, and requires millions of dollars just to keep running. Nobody wants to declare failure - thousands of jobs, stock value, and reputation are at stake - so appealing to a long-term, well-entrenched market of potential viewers has to be done. If that involves synergistic clusterfuckery with content that doesn't belong on the channel according to its initial vision, there's not much to prevent people from blurring the lines in the name of saving the network. U

    • Re:Bills to Pay (Score:4, Insightful)

      by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:57PM (#35314212) Homepage Journal

      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.

      ...Says you. The thing is, when people talk about "bad" ratings, they never put it in context. "Bad" ratings to a network executive does not mean what normal people would consider it to mean, which is that people aren't watching the show. I watched it. Many of my friends watched and enjoyed it. To a network executive, though, "bad" means, "I'll bet another show can get better in its place." And so they replace it with a different show, but that show does miserably, it gets "bad" ratings too, so they replace it again. And again. And again. Unless you have a Friends, Lost, or something else performing on that order of magnitude, every show has "bad" ratings.

      It used to be, network executives understood that sometimes it takes a couple of seasons for a show to really get its legs, for people to get interested in it and for its audience to build. Now, they evaluate everything on a week-by-week basis. Some shows last only two or three episodes. Very, very few last more than a season or two.

      The end result of this is that I usually don't even bother watching a series now until it's at least three or four seasons into it. If it's lasted that long, then I'll start watching it. I'm just so tired of getting invested in shows just to see them pulled because they're getting "bad" ratings. This season, for example, I started watching No Ordinary Family, and I think it's one of the best shows on television. Most ratings sites say it's going to be canceled. I also started watching The Cape. Not the best show, but still, a fun throwback to the old-style action superhero genre. Likewise, probably going to be canceled. Network executives are likely thinking, "If we cancel it, maybe we'll get something in its place that is an American Idol-like ratings killer!" In reality, they're going to replace it with something even more dreadful, and thus the cycle goes on.

      In theory, one of the big draws of a channel like Syfy is that it appeals to a niche audience, people who, because they are looking for that specific genre, will get a consistent audience regardless of "bad" ratings. As it gets more and more away from its roots, though, it will lose that audience and its shows, when competing against the big networks for a more general mass audience, will get killed.

      Personally, I think the answer to this is hopefully the Internet. We're starting to see the birth of shows like Felicia Day's The Guild. That show doesn't need approval of network executives to keep going. As long as it's pulling in some money, she can still make it. Shoot, even if it's not pulling in money (which is not the case, I believe), she can finance it if she wants and keep it going. Yes, I know, compared to content produced by big studios, it looks a bit, um, "budget-oriented." Still, I compare it to what television was like in the very early days. Once people realize the potential and the vastness of the audience, we'll start to see more and bigger-budget content producers line up to go directly to the consumers instead of through a middle-man network executive to be the gatekeeper of what we can and can't watch.

    • Schedulers alienated by SciFi? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AliasMarlowe ( 1042386 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @02:41PM (#35314888) Journal

      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.

  • Nope (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whitroth ( 9367 ) <whitroth@5-cen t . us> on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:34PM (#35313806) Homepage

    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

  • Advertising demographics trumps genre (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:35PM (#35313814) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • 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.

      And let's be honest here, as a lifelong science fiction fan, I have to say most science fiction TV fans vastly overrate the quality of their cult favorites. No, Stargate is not great science fiction.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blair1q ( 305137 )

      At some point there will be so many "generic" channels spreading out dull-witted viewers that it will be more profitable to specialize.

      It's hard to imagine, with 1300+ active channels coming down from just one satellite network (I'm not making that number up; I can count them on my DirecTV receiver; they include the music channels, but they also include a bunch of 2-way interactive gaming channels and on-demand content channels, some of them 1080p and/or 3-D; there's a literally ungodly fuckload of bandwidt

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Synn ( 6288 )

      A very good answer. It's really the nature of broadband TV media. Having a channel on a cable box can't come cheap and you're pretty much at the mercy of ad agencies. You either sell out or die.

      I'm really looking forward to more private, smaller shows on the internet taking off. I don't see any reason why something like The Guild, couldn't be done in a lot of different settings, especially as the recording/editing technology keeps getting cheaper and cheaper and more homes switch onto using things like set

    • 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?

      You forgot about how 60% of the History Channel's programming seems to be about things like how Aliens gave us every technology discovered in the last 2000 years. Which is funny given how it'd be perfectly acceptable to me for that to be on the SyFy channel.. the H in 'History Channel' now no longer means Hitler.

  • I miss Stargate :(

  • Summarizer clearly forgets the years when there was no palpable science fiction on the channel and it was all horror shit.

  • Same as other networks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by acoustix ( 123925 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:39PM (#35313880)

    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.

    • Re:Same as other networks (Score:4, Insightful)

      by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @02:04PM (#35314294)

      It's mind-boggling how true this statement is actually. In fact, I'll be calling up my cable provider today and cancelling my "tier 3" package as all the channels on tier 3 no longer show the programming I purchased tier 3 to get!

      I'm in Canada so the stations are a little different but beyond sports many of the extra channel packages I've purchased just don't show what I want to see anymore...

  • The good news, of course, is that there is clearly an audience for actual sci-fi. Someone WILL decide that they'd like to take that audience and make money selling their eyeballs to advertisers. The audience tends to have a lot of disposable income, too, which makes them a prime target for certain sellers. So rest assured, this problem will fix itself.

  • Does it really matter? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:42PM (#35313914) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • When they started showing crap like wrestling, ghost hunters and changed their name to that insipid SyFy I knew they were gone for good.

    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.

    • 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.

  • No (Score:4, Funny)

    by BJ_Covert_Action ( 1499847 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:43PM (#35313932) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      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.

  • comcast / nbc seems to be doing a tech tv to syfy!

  • This is why NBC should not get the olympics (Score:3)

    by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:44PM (#35313974)

    After what they did in 2010. I'm all for ESPN taking over. Same thing for the NHL.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      No one should get the Olympics.

      The Olympics should have all the cameras and just license access to the feeds. This way ANY one can have access to any event.

      Broadcaster can get which ever feed they want, they can compete in which events to dhow, how many commercials, that sort of thing.
      It allows competition.

  • No, Syfy does not love Sci-Fi (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:45PM (#35313976) Homepage
    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.

  • From the article summary:

    They also ended Mystery Science Theater 3000, only the greatest show ever invented by robots in space.

    The Mystery Science Theater 3000 show is the greatest experiment ever invented by two mad scientists working for a scientific institute here on Earth. The robots in space were created by the subject of the experiments, who at the time was just another face in a red jumpsuit working for the mad scientists.

    Also, it hasn't happened yet. It will happen, though, in the not too distant

  • Cable (Score:3)

    by DannyO152 ( 544940 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:48PM (#35314036)

    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's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Beelzebud ( 1361137 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:48PM (#35314048)
    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!

    • I agree with most of what you are saying, but this is a little like asking why Australopithecus afarensis bothered filling its niche if it was just going to die out.

      The market existed but turned out to be an evolutionary dead end.

  • Science Fiction Fans don't Watch Ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @01:59PM (#35314234)
    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.

  • BBC-America for Sci Fi? (Score:3)

    by javakah ( 932230 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @02:13PM (#35314442)

    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.

  • These specialized channels always lose focus (Score:3)

    by bigsexyjoe ( 581721 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @02:25PM (#35314614)
    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.

  • There is already a replacement Sci-Fi channel (Score:5, Informative)

    by initdeep ( 1073290 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @02:30PM (#35314704)

    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)

    • Don't forget Outcasts! It's a brief run series (7 episodes, of which 5 are out), but I've found it quite watchable.

  • To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Fanta Menace ( 607612 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @02:43PM (#35314922) Homepage
    ...all of the Stargates deserved to be axed. Terrible. terrible television.

  • Isn't it obvious? (Score:3)

    by Kingrames ( 858416 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @03:51PM (#35315916)
    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.

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