Sometimes our industry suffers from too much of its own damn self. Oh, we spin the bottle of that perky first kiss so many times that all of the objects of the spin have lost their allure. So we spin it faster and faster and again and again until we land on… SYFY??
Not only does so much spinning produce nausea-inducing results but we obviously lose a good rationale for explaining what happened.
SYFY? There must be those of you in the free world who do not know what MST3k is, or what spinning up the FTL means or maybe you just don’t know any other frakking thing about science fiction.
So for you Sci-Fi is short for science fiction, as in the cable network that hailed any passing viewer to stop by and watch some excellent campy crap. Sure, that come hither message got me more times that I would readily admit. But when I saw “Sci-Fi” I knew what it meant!
SYFY? Don’t they sell goram yogurt or something?
Our lovely thinkers at NBC/Universal (expect to see this spoofed on 30 Rock) needed to push the medium of laser zapper toting soap operas even further than the limited four letter sobriquet “Sci-Fi” would allow.
Dirty little four letter name. Sci-Fi! Ugh! Give us something sophystycated! Oh, let them eat SYFY!
In an article in Ad Age the reason for the shift from Sci-Fi to SYFY (it sounds so dumb when you say it like that) was “to tweak its brand perception among TV viewers who associate the name Sci-Fi with aliens and Trekkies.”
What??
Later on in the article, let’s see, blah blah blah, oh here: “The name tweak was long in the making for Sci-Fi, which has been under the leadership of former president and current NBC Universal Cable Entertainment president Bonnie Hammer since 1998, when it was the proud home of “Star Trek” reruns and “Mystery Science Theater 3000”
So since 1998, let’s call it ten years, Sci-Fi has brought in the bucks. Why the switch to SYFY, then? Hmm?Why move from a logical winner attached to the long standing norm of Sci-Fi to something that looks like it is pronounced: Sih-fee?
Sci-Fi President Dave Howe is quoted in the article as saying his goal “is to see Syfy become associated with the word “imagination” the way Coke goes with soda or ESPN is tagged to sports.” Like Manson is to murder and Paris is to DVDs?