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After BSG ends, I’ll probably tune into SF/Whatever for the next “season” of Doctor Who. If they actually show it.
I wonder what 4E would have thought.
I dunno, I’ve always liked it (though it’s been years since I’ve been a regular viewer). It can be hit or miss, but at least I could count on it to have something remotely interesting.
As for female viewers, fuck that. I always feel patronized when a company feels the need to go after the female market segment. If it’s good, we’ll watch it. If not, so what? Besides, even we feel the need for some big explosions and CGI eye-candy from time to time.
Ah-ha. Finally, we find the real reason for the name change. From the Airlock Alpha site above:
So it’s a trademark issue. Figures.
I wonder if they made them an offer they couldn’t refuse?
I hope the first movie they show on their new channel is based on Sturgeon’s “It Wasn’t Syzygy.”
It seems to me that scifi described what they show quite well, with all respect to 4sj who couldn’t control the meaning his coinage took on. I’m just glad they didn’t choose SF. SyFy from texting. That’s pretty damn lame.
I say, this sounds a bit fey.
It may have made you feel much cooler, but it actually made you much less cool, you scruffy-headed nerf-herder.
Hijack - Just wondering, I have recently been working my way through MST3k ‘archives’, and have almost finished all the Mike episodes (which include the last Comedy Central series 5.5, 6, & the abbreviated 7, and of course the SciFi series 8, 9, & 10 - what interference was there by SciFi - I mean obviously Trace was gone and the Mad role fell to Mary Jo, but otherwise what such SciFi channel undertones did I miss?
You don’t even need to read the quote, the fact that Bonnie Hammer said it is enough to prove it’s something idiotic. The channel was never fantastic, but it when down hill considerably once she began making decisions.
Wow, The Onion surpassed itself this time! That’s hilarious, if a little far-fetched.
Sorry, what’s that you say? … It isn’t a … AAARGH!
The network forced them to have a continuing plotline which they hated. When the network flunky responsible for this was let go, they went back to an episodic, interchangeble-order format.
And they’ve said that from the beginning, the episodes were aired out of order, so the plot never made any sense.
This is the first thing that occurred to me when I saw the thread title. It makes perfect sense. “Sci-Fi” is a generic term. They should have a brand that they can claim rights in.
That was only for the host segments, and they still wound up fairly interchangeable - unless you’re really worried about what happened to Pearl & Prof. Bobo when they were seized by Romans in an end-of-episode cliffhanger. The bigger change was that all the movies had to be SciFi related in some way - no more movies like “Kitten with a Whip”, “Girls Town”, “Daddy-O” or “Mitchell” !
They’re doing it becayse “SYFY” is more trademark-able than “Sci-Fi.” From a press release quoted on [url=]AICN:
I guess they can’t own “sci-fi” as a unique trademark, so that’s why they’re going to the stylized spelling. The stuff about reaching beyond geeks is just so much PR noise. It’s being able to own the trademark that they care about.
I like their atrocious Saturday Night movies. Fills me with glee and hope for my own scripts. I agree that the change is pointless and stupid. Because people care about that nowadays.
In their defense, “Sci-Fi” is a somewhat mockable term with the (ahem) SF industry. Within the (ahem) SF industry, the term “sci-fi” is associated with people who are attempting to sound knowledgable, but are failing.
One might say that “SF” or “SF/Fantasy” is the preferred nomenclature, dude.
Its a minor hair, but I felt like splitting it.
***APRIL FOO… *** oh, wait. Really? Really?
But the Sci-Fi Channel never went after that market. They were attempting to make science fiction mainstream, not go after a geeky subgroup that is small even by geeky subgroup standards.