The recent announcement that 16 year-old cable network The Sci Fi Channel is re-branding itself into The SyFy Channel appears to have given sci fi fans a chance to openly criticize the network for its lack of quality science fiction in favor of more reality shows and wrestling.
Part of the reason, claims Sci Fi Channel President Dave Howe was how to copyright the channel. Sci Fi is short for science fiction, and a generic word that cannot be copyrighted. SyFy, on the other hand, can and it’s Howe’s impression that from re-branding the network as The SyFy Channel, they can get over (what their marketing people claim to be) an issue about reaching a broader audience.
“The challenge,” Howe explained on networks forums, “ for our brand is that many non-SCI FI Channel viewers think "sci-fi" is only about space, aliens and the future. (Those are the actual words many people use in focus groups.) They still only expect to see reruns of Star Trek on something called the SCI FI Channel. So we believe that by evolving our branding, we'll be able to encourage more viewers to check us out and watch the broad range of shows on our air. And that includes our hit reality shows—such as Ghost Hunters and Destination Truth—which are rooted in the supernatural: ghosts, myths and legends. And because our new brand is less literal than the letters "sci-fi," it's actually catching up with our current range of programming and makes more sense to new viewers. And by expanding our audience, this will help us grow as a business.”
What many viewers have complained about is not that Sci Fi airs supernatural shows, but that its getting farther and farther away from what many thought (including me) the network was conceived to be: a network designed to highlight the genre being ignored on the broadcast networks for decades.
But while I always assumed the network would air reruns of old science fiction shows, movies and what not, I also thought they would eventually broaden into original fare.
Of course, they have. And like any network, its been a mixed bag. Still, while The Invisible Man, The Dresden Files and Pain Killer Jane where worthy shows, their production values (i.e. no budget) and questionable writing made them vanish really quick. And while picking up Sliders from FOX was a good idea, once on Sci Fi, the show became what-classic-monster/science- fiction-movie will we rip off this week. And even picking up Stargate from Showtime was a pretty thoughtful move, only as the series aged its histrionics became more convoluted than Star Trek’s.
Still, over the last 10 years, the network has produced two wonderful series, Farscape and the re-imaged Battlestar Galactica. Both shows raised the bar in story telling and production values. Yet, according to Sci Fi, despite critical praise from both fans and mainstream press, both series were faced with problems due to their high budgets (and please, let’s not be surprised that science fiction shows are cheap to produce, everyone knows the genre is inherently expensive) Thus, from many points of view, ended earlier than they should have.
And recently, they’ve picked up the new version of the BBC’s Doctor Who and spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, which showed they really understood that seeing them on Youtube and a bittorrent was possibly letting money go down the drain. But (somewhat surprisingly) they did not pick up the other spin-off, Torchwood, and I’ve often wondered why.
Is this possibility that Torchwood is lead by an openly, very unapologetic gay actor scare them? It was okay, they might think in the marketing department, that Captain Jack was safe when he was a companion on Doctor Who, but leading a series that has him flirting with male cast members might shock some science fiction fan in Arkansas?
But I digress. Howe (and former FOX network head Bonnie Hammer) also note that the new SyFy Channel is trying to appeal to women. Apparently, women do not like science fiction, which I think is a misnomer. I know plenty of women who like this genre, and enjoy the same quality shows that I do. And I’m sure there are more than a few women who would insulted by the idea that reality shows are the way to get them to watch. But as Howe said “overall, our channel and the sci-fi genre in general tend to skew more male than female, and we want to ensure we remain gender-balanced and continue to bring in new female viewers, who often say they don't like traditional sci-fi.”
Because right now, reality shows outweigh any original science fiction shows on the network. We’ve got Estate of Panic, Wrestling, Ghosthunters, Ghosthunters International, Ghosthunters college edition (really?), The Cha$e, Scare Tactics and Destination Truth.
With Battlestar Galactica gone, and what appears to be Star Trek: Voyager inspired version of the Stargate franchise called Universe sometime off in the future, along with BG prequel movie Caprica what is left that can be called an original series. Sure there’s Eureka, which no where near the quality of either version of Knight Rider. But while the show attempts to be quirky (and should this show really be on the sister NBC/U network USA?), it none the less proves that dumbing a show down to appeal to 12 year-olds is no way to find an audience.
If the network truly believes that science fiction can co-habituate with fantasy shows (which I think it can) it should really start looking at producing better programs. There is plenty of great science fiction out there, such as the works of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert (there is enough of the Dune books to turn it to a weekly series, and not just miniseiries), the works of Eric Flint, Harry Turtledove, Neil Gaiman and even the homophobic author Orson Scott Card not to mention many, many more. Then there’s the fantasy works of such novelist as Piers Anthony, David Eddings, and Scott Sanderson.
But I forget, buying other people’s properties cost money. So instead of that, we get more reality programs and really dumb monster of the week Saturday night movies (which is fine, as long as your producing better shows that let us go, okay, college dudes like this stuff, so let them watch while the rest of us watch real science fiction).
Finally, what’s with all the James Bondish issues with the name SyFy anyways. Howe never seems to answer where the name came from, despite the fact Michael Hineman, who operates his own science fiction based web site, owned the name SyFy (Portal) for 10 years. Hineman has gone on the defense recently, explaining to the people who traffic his site (which has changed its name), that until the deal was nearly finished, he did not know that it was Universal/NBC who wanted the name (but they began to suspect that it was, because the lawyer they were dealing with works on intellectual properties for NBC/U, and was offering him a crap load of money for the name). Howe should note that SyFy was no way original to them, and stop (in a roundabout sort of way) they came up with it.
In the end, though, the marketing people took a small percentage of people who had no issue with the name change or the content change on the network and is trying to ram it down the throats of the people who once thought the Sci Fi Channel would do justice to science fiction that none of the major networks want to do anymore. They’ve just gone one on the same idea that reality programming and the further dumbing down of scripted programming is the way to go.
And the more the true science fiction fans complain, the more Dave Howe and Barbara Hammer will ignore them. After all, marketing people (along with the people who ran AIG) never manipulate numbers to show the world the opposite of truth.
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