Posted on by Dunc

The Sci Fi Channel is changing their name

Oh yeah, the fans will just *love* this one!…To SyFy. No, seriously! It’s in The New York Times and everything!

One big advantage of the name change, the executives say, is that Sci Fi is vague — so generic, in fact, that it could not be trademarked. Syfy, with its unusual spelling, can be, which is also why diapers are called Luvs, an online video Web site is called Joost and a toothpaste is called Gleem.

“We couldn’t own Sci Fi; it’s a genre,” said Bonnie Hammer, the former president of Sci Fi who became the president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions. “But we can own Syfy.”

Another benefit of the new name is that it is not “throwing the baby away with the bath water,” she added, because it is similar enough to the Sci Fi brand to convey continuity to “the fan-boys and -girls who love the genre.”

Oh honey: No. Just no. This is not the rebooting of Battlestar Galactica: This is taking what’s already perceived as a dumbed-down term for the genre (if only among the kind of people who tend to think that Star Wars Destroyed Science Fiction With Fun) and making it even more stupid. Which, I suppose, is more or less what we’ve come to expect from the people who have found crap like Seabeast and Mansquito viable programming choices.

13 Replies to “The Sci Fi Channel is changing their name”

  3. Well that’s definitely the final nail in the coffen for me no longer wanting to watch anything on SCIFI channel. Honestly that channel had nothing to do with true science fiction for years – it was more about the crap monster of the week elements and the newer reality shows than anything resembling Science Fiction (with a few exceptions).

    And it’s crap like that that makes non-scifi fans think that science fiction is a joke.

  5. It doesn’t matter. The “Sci-Fi Channel” has been losing its sci-fi status for a while now, so why not change it to something not entirely pertaining to sci-fi? I remember a while back rumors of a name change for this station.

    After the Battlestar Galactica finale this weekend, I can’t imagine I’ll be watching this channel much anymore. Maybe just to record “Caprica” and “The Plan” or something.

  6. Ack. Very stupid.

    I’ll watch Eureka, Sanctuary (assuming they both continue) and the new Stargate, but beyond that the Scifi channel has nothing for me anymore.

  7. “56 comments about the name change…all of them negative. Think they’ll take a hint?”

    I think the number 56 trumps the negative; takeaway from that is no one cares.

  9. you know, i’m glad for the name change. since only a percentage of their programming is sci-fi related, why call themselves sci-fi. with a name that perhaps indicates that they aren’t limited to “space-future-aliens” type stuff, they can create their own label that somehow encompasses the wrestling and ghost hunters.

  10. In a world where “Frak Pack” was actively marketed for a week, I get the feeling network exec offices are filled with comatose brain trauma patients…or flounders.

  11. This is hilariously ridiculous, but you can understand why the execs would want to change the name. Sci-fi doesn’t attract more than 10 million viewers, they think it’ll have more mass market appeal if they change the name.
    Unfortunately they didn’t quite change the name, just the spelling. I can’t imagine that the name would get anything more than an eye-roll and a groan from a casual TV watcher.
    – izi

  12. They’re up to 570 comments now. 560 of which are negative (varying from thoughful to rude to hysterical…the fans at least haven’t lost their creative touch). About 9 are just poking fun with no obvious opinion, and I found one positive comment which ended with:

    “I like it. It is brighter with fewer letters.”

    …I think this needs to be someone’s catch phrase. Someone in the Whedon universe maybe…

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