On sunday NBC Networks issued a press release that the SciFi channel would be changing its name to SyFy. I found out about it via a
New York Times article that Kat found yesterday. Not surprisingly, this has created
a lot of negative feedback. Not only does it make it very clear that the channel has abandoned everything it was founded on, but was Wil Wheaton
pointed out, the statements made by the network's leadership have been downright insulting to SciFi fans.
“We couldn’t own Sci Fi; it’s a genre, but we can own Syfy." Another benefit of the new name is that it is not "throwing the baby away with the bath water,” she added, because it is similar enough to the Sci Fi brand to convey continuity to “the fan-boys and -girls who love the genre.”
--Bonnie Hammer, President of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions, quoted from NYTimes article.
It gives us a unique word and it gives us the opportunities to imbue it with the values and the perception that we want it to have. -- Tim Brooks, SciFi Network Founder
“If you ask people their default perceptions of Sci Fi, they list space, aliens and the future. That didn’t capture the full landscape of fantasy entertainment: the paranormal, the supernatural, action and adventure, superheroes.” -- Dave Howe, President of SciFi Network
I guess they're counting wrestling as being fantasy entertainment. Howe continues to say that the new name got very positive feedback in their testing procedures.
“If I were texting, this is how I would spell it.”
Right, so I guess the only testing you did was with teenage non-geeks, the exact demographic this network DIDN'T get founded on.
These days I don't watch much television. Thanks to the wonders of BitTorrent every show I am interested in is available in 720p HD with no commercials and watchable on my own schedule. The little viewing I do these days is either while working in the kitchen, or directly before bed. This usually results in me watching Discovery Channel, History Channel, Comedy Central, or Cartoon Network. When I channel surf, I don't even bother going as high as SciFi network any more. Why? Because I know I wont find anything worth watching on that channel...
It didn't used to be this way. There was a time when I was a kid where SciFi would always be the first station I tuned to. No matter what time of day it was, I could be sure that there would be something on that network that I would enjoy. I would go to my grandmother's house and run downstairs to the basement to watch TV (since we didn't have a TV at my house), and the very first thing I would tune to was channel 40. Between old scifi shows like Buck Rogers or Space 1999, SciFi's own Creature Feature presentations, or even just reruns of MST3K, there was sure to be something interesting playing. Good luck finding any of that content on the network now.
I for one am glad for the name change, I've been expecting it for more then a year. This is no longer the channel I grew up with. It's a stranger wearing my old friend's clothes and a bad mask, talking with an odd accent, trying to get me to take some of his candy. The name change removes that disguise and brings the stranger out into the open so I can identify him as such and say to his face: You are not my friend, my friend is dead.
Here lies
Sci Fi Channel, born September 24th 1992, died March 13th 2009.
