Many moons ago on the radio during my drive to work I heard the rumor that the SciFi channel was changing its name to Syfy. I shuddered and cringed because it made no sense, especially since they wanted to dumb down the name to appeal to more of the mainstream audience.
Color me confused but since when does mainstream call Science Fiction syfy? How would that become appealing? Did they never see a genre categorization? “Sy”?!?!?!??!?!?!?!? “Fy”?!?!?!?!? WHY?
Do they really think that people will surf through the channels, see ’syfy’ and watch some scifi program and not realize it’s science fiction because of the name ’syfy’? Or perhaps they’ll find it cool because the name is… stupid.
I’m mentioning this because I was channel surfing and I saw the channel ‘Syfy’. I felt puzzled because I had completely forgotten about the pending change and wondered what the channel was about. When I saw the show that was on, “Scariest Places on Earth” it hit me; “They really went through with it.”
I imagine a panel of plastic surgery poster children in some L.A. office who inherited something having to do with the SciFi network (or perhaps just ONE person who inherited it and had heavy influence when the rest of the crew thinks the name is a bad bad bad thing) and some how they’re doing a brainstorm and the person was having a conversation with him/herself.
“Sciiiiiiiiii… Fiiiiiiiii…. nyeh… it sounds so…. ‘brainy’. You know like science stuff. I mean don’t you think that’s kind of nerdy?”
“Science… fiction. It makes no sense. We don’t show Bill Nye the Science guy stuff. Maybe that’s why our ratings are so low- they think we’re like a classroom.”
“How about we spell it the way it sounds? But instead of Sifi because that looks dumb, we do syfy? All in favor?”
I must research this!
Okay, as I’m researching this I laughed as I saw “Imagine Greater” WTF?!?
Upon reading the explanation it backs up my theory… you see… they feel that by changing the name it can now include fantasy stuff, supernatural and paranormal. I kind of lumped all those into the SciFi genre any way.
Was the audience really that confused? Should I categorize this under Idiocracy Manifestations?
Yes, unfortunately it now sounds more like the syphilis channel than the science fiction channel.
It does remind me of something long ago, at a science fiction convention far away. (Or so I heard. I wasn’t there personally.) After Close Encounters came out and was mega popular, it naturally made Spielberg mega popular with the science fiction community. So Spielberg went to some science fiction convention to give the keynote address … and was booed. The reason? For science fiction fans the correct way of abbreviating science fiction was “SF”, and the abbreviation “Sci Fi” was only for ignorant losers. Spielberg made the mistake of referring to the audience as Sci Fi fans, and therefore was obviously an ignorant loser.
So I guess by the standards of the 70’s, the SciFi channel just got tired of being an ignorant loser and decided to transform itself into a possibly disease-ridden double loser.
Two thumbs down!
At least I consider Speilberg a visionary. I personally like the term SciFi and I’m glad he flubbed up (I’m such an ignorant loser
) SF, because I’m on the West Coast and my family lives there- has always been San Francisco to me.
But yeah- I think you’re right. After they did the logo and had been around for enough years, they learned of the faux pas with the name and were tremendously embarrassed, so instead of redeeming themselves, they dug themselves a deeper hole of ignorance.
THREE THUMBS DOWN!! (I’m borrowing Jonathon’s thumb)