Has SyFy gone the way of History Channel, TLC and the rest in terms of science fiction?

[Rhythmdvl]

I don’t trust the impression from their web site, and I long ago gave up directly watching TV (i.e. all Netflix or other streaming). I remember a long time ago they started airing wrestling and Jonathan Edwards. Was that the beginning of a slow shift away from science fiction and towards reality body painting (thread on that show inspired the question), culminating in a change in their name? Or are there a few oddball programmes on an otherwise science fictiony channel?

[Justin_Bailey]

The name change was never to mask some drift away from science fiction. You can trademark “SyFy” and you can’t trademark “Sci-Fi.” It’s as simple as that.

[Rhythmdvl]

Cool. So they’re still predominantly a science fiction channel. I have no idea why that makes me happy.

[dracoi]

@Rhythmdvl

Cool. So they’re still predominantly a science fiction channel. I have no idea why that makes me happy.

Well hold on here…

Just because the SyFy name change was not inspired by a departure from Science Fiction doesn’t mean that the departure hasn’t occured.

The wrestling thing is apparently an odd issue with the conglomerates that own all of these stations rather than a big choice by SyFy itself (or so I’ve read) but SyFy’s current line-up is a lot of reality TV, a lot of horror and a lot of fake paranormal investigator crap. Any movie with a monster in it is within the scope for SyFy, even if the monster is a shark or a piranha in the current day.

I haven’t done an extensive analysis on this, but I’d say their viewing hours are perhaps:
40% horror/paranormal
30% sci-fi/fantasy*,
15% kinda-sci-fi fandom reality shows (FaceOff, the cosplay and nerdgasm shows)
15% WTF?! (wrestling, body painting and the filmed-in-the-dark game show)

*And this only if you include “genetic mutant eats people” as science fiction. If you think that’s horror, move another 5% to the horror category.

[TBG]

Wrestling is also their highest rated show, so it probably pays for some of the little of what remains of actual scifi.

[Little_Nemo]

They sort of drifted into body painting. It started with SF conventions and then cosplay and then SF costumes and then body painting. There’s still a tenuous connection - they’re painting models to look like aliens or zombies.

[kenobi_65]

@Justin_Bailey

The name change was never to mask some drift away from science fiction. You can trademark “SyFy” and you can’t trademark “Sci-Fi.” It’s as simple as that.

At the time of the name change, the head of the channel also indicated that it let them expand beyond traditional science fiction, into a broader scope of “fantasy entertainment”:

@New York Times

Ms. Hammer and her successor as Sci Fi president, Dave Howe, said they had sat through many meetings over the years at which a name change was debated.

The principal reason the idea kept coming up, Mr. Howe said, was a belief “the Sci Fi name is limiting.”

“If you ask people their default perceptions of Sci Fi, they list space, aliens and the future,” he added. “That didn’t capture the full landscape of fantasy entertainment: the paranormal, the supernatural, action and adventure, superheroes.”

That became more important as Sci Fi expanded its program offerings into those realms, Mr. Howe said, with series like “Destination Truth” and “Ghost Hunters.”

Source: Sci Fi Channel Has a New Name: Now, It’s Syfy - The New York Times

Beyond that, I agree with the earlier posters – the channel started drifting away from traditional sci-fi for most of their programming a long time ago.

[Justin_Bailey]

@kenobi_65

At the time of the name change, the head of the channel also indicated that it let them expand beyond traditional science fiction, into a broader scope of “fantasy entertainment”

Meh, I think I just have a wider view of sci-fi than most. Everything that Hammer mentions as “drift” happily fits under the “speculative fiction” banner.