That was an old Fred Allen joke about Hollywood, sincerity, and producers.
pronounced “sciffy” - my favorite mock term of the genre
And we would know that because, why? We are all Sci Fi / Geeks and Gamers? The exact people Syfy was made for?
The rebranded Disney raccoon will now ‘shup’.
Okay, that’s enough speculation. I’m gonna tell you what really happened.*
One of the new interns at the Sci-Fi Channel had a CD by String Cheese Incident on his desk and his boss came by and saw it. When he noticed the logo he called legal to get the ball rolling on a lawsuit. The lawyer told him it, unfortunately, wasn’t actionable, because of the generic nature of the network name which caused said executive to have a coniption fit. “We must do something!! Now!! Change the name to something I can sue people over!!!” And thus, SyFy was born.
You see, String Cheese Incident (sometimes referred to as SCI) has a production company called… SCI Fidelity (sometimes referred to as SCI-Fi).
*Yeah, I made this story up. But the band really did call their publishing company SCI-Fidelity Recording.
There was once a flap between Forrest J. Ackerman and Harlan Ellison – Ackerman liked and popularized the term “Sci-Fi,” and Ellison derided that as “the sound of crickets making love.” So I got a message-button made up special: “I 
COPULATING CRICKETS.” Ackerman saw me wearing it at a con and later, when I visited his famous SF library in L.A., said he “got a lot of smileage” out of it. 
All things considered, I’d rather stand with Forry than Harlan.