Geeks Aren’t Friendly to Humans
By Lisa Fary
“We’ll get the heritage and the track record of success, and we’ll build off of that to build a broader, more open and accessible and relatable and human-friendly brand.”
This is the explanation of the change from the SciFi Channel to the SyFy Channel, offered by current president, Dave Howe, who is sick of having geeks watch his channel.
“The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,”
Says Tim Brooks, TV historian.
OK. Dude. Don’t make chicks the culprit here. Are women who are not currently viewers really reporting that they’d watch the channel if it wasn’t called “SciFi”?
While we’re talking about the new branding, let’s talk about the new tagline: Imagine Greater. Imagine greater what? It’s not a call to action, as Howe says. It’s a sentence fragment. You at least want a statement, right?
By the way, whatever happened to Beyond? What’s the matter, NBC Universal? Couldn’t afford to buy out Beyond.com, the way you could with SyFy Portal?
It’s not the name change that irritates the hell out of me. It’s the attitude these execs have toward the very people who made their channel relevant. Note that Howe says We’ll get the heritage and track record of success. That means the execs assume the very antisocial geeks they don’t want to be associated with are going to continue to be supportive lemmings.
Guess what? After this Friday, Howe won’t have to worry about geeks watching the SciFi Channel or the SyFy Channel.
Once Battlestar Galactica is gone, no one is going to give a damn about your cable channel, Howe. Especially not the Grey’s Anatomy set, who is going to look at “SyFy” and say “Siffy”.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
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I think this is frickin' hilarious. I feel like I'm back in high school, where we used to spell 'cool' like 'kewl'.
ONO SYFY THINKS I'M DYSFUNCTIONAL. Oh wait, I'm not a guy, so therefore I can't be a 'dysfunctional antisocial geek'. I'm a girl, so to SyFy Channel I'm some sort of mythical being that they can never lure to watch their channel.
Or, we're not "real" girls.
As I said on Twitter, this is the most asinine name change since Prince changed his name to a symbol.
Thank God for the BBC, that's all I can say. At least over there they understand that just because it's newer, doesn't mean it's better. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and yeah, what the heck will they do once BSG is over? In spite of the name change, they won't have viewers if they can't come up with the goods. Or maybe they don't care what I think, since I'm not a geeky boy.
Most people I know both male and female gave up on the SciFi channel when SG Atlantis was canceled.
Lisa you and John have to write a SHOW!
Somehow, I don't think it's the name that keeps women from watching. A term like 'scifi' isn't a barrier to many people. Sure, it has a certain connotation to it, but, at the same time…if you air quality shows, people will watch.
Personally, I would imagine that ECW wrestling and the quality of their movies would be a bigger barrier, but what do I know…
From what I've heard, it's largely because they can trademark "Syfy", but not "SciFi", because sci-fi is a generic term. The whole "expanding our focus" spiel is just a red herring. They've been doing that for years anyway.
Also, I'd like to show the network executives some convention photos. A large portion of the audience — often the majority for the Stargate franchise — is female. There are a lot of perfectly "normal" people. There are a lot of families, a far cry from "dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements". David Howe and his team clearly still haven't gotten the message (After ten years? Really?!) that sci-fi entertainment is becoming mainstream. The stigma that they're so desperate to escape is disappearing from our culture. And they're not going to avoid it at all if the new name sounds exactly the same as the old name.
Prince did that to get out of his contract. So long as he wasn't "Prince," he didn't have to whatever label it was claiming ownership of his music. At least, that's what the interwebs told me. Prince had a REASON. Sci-Fi has lame, insulting excuses.
When I heard this news, the first thing I thought was, "oh, Lisa is so gonna write an article skewering this asinine move. I can't wait!" Thanks for delivering!
Happy to oblige!
Truly is ridiculous.. reminds me back a few years ago where everything had to be " Xtreme"
and apparently the myth if the female geek is still strolling around.
Brilliant as always Lisa!
Very nice Lisa!
Wow, its nice to know that no market research about your core audience ever took place in 10 years + that I've been watching. That if you're Howe that you can always fall back on stereotypes (cause those are always true!) to justify your actions. If they want to change the name for copyright/trademark reasons then fine change, it but don't blame women or the "dysfunctional" or "antisocial boys" for it.
I've been watching SciFi for a long time and its not like the craptasitc movies of the week were ever a big draw for me. Most of the time those elicit an eye roll from me.
What was a great draw for me were the great shows like Farscape, Firefly, Stargate, Forever Knight that pulled me in. But what the hell was the justification of bring the ECW on? Really? It still has me scratching my head as to how the hell that fits into their line up.
I'm not a BSG fan (yet, my friends keep telling me), but I am a Stargate fan and when they canceled SGA they lost some of my viewer ship. In defense of them canceling SGA, maybe if you could get some great writers we'd all be watching SciFi/Syfy for the great original programing. The only thing on SciFi/SyFy that I'm even remotely interested in still watching is Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International.
By the way a few words of advice to Howe, most "women" are not fans of wrestling (If you are a woman and a fan then yay for you! Its just not my cup of tea.). You might want to, I don't know, pull in shows like Charmed, Moonlight, Blood Ties, Highlander Raven, or True Blood. Bring back some classics like STNG, Voyager, Xena & Herc. Start pulling from your parent network and run stuff like Heroes, or Psych from sister network USA. Here's a though find strong female lead characters and run with it!
I know that this is SciFi/Syfy but also you might want to increase your Anime programming. There are lots of SciFi fans who love Anime! Not to mention most of Anime's sub-genres are all about the principles of SciFi. Your two hour block once a week during late night on a Monday(?) paired along the merger Anime offerings of Cartoon Network's [adult swim] also in the wee hours of the early a.m. aren't enough! Its such shame that Anime Network went under you could have helped them out greatly.
Sorry for the length of this.
This has been coming for a long time, though I'd hoped when Mz. Hammer left the network things would have gone back to being a bit more geek-friendly. Sadly, no, I guess not. (And why in the holy hell are they running TNG repeats anyway? What? Like there haven't been any SF shows in the last 20 years that haven't been as played out? I'd rather see repeats of "Space Precinct" – a terrible show – than watch crappy, boring TNG again!)
I'd call for a boycot for the network, but of course that's not neccisary since they're boycotting their own fans.
Though I'm still interested in "Stargate: Universe"
Once BSG is done, there won't be a reason for me to tune in. ECW, Ghost Hunters, and asinine game shows just don't do it for me.
It makes me wonder who is doing their market research. Perhaps those people should be fired.
I know! It's like they don't realize that it doesn't matter what their branding looks like, it they don't produce good material, no one is going to watch.
What is SyFy anyway?!
And what everyone else said. They're trying to bring in more audiences, but getting rid of teh old ones won't really help at all.
How is ECW friendly to female viewers exactly? Or, for that matter, how is it remotely related to scifi exactly? Somebody needs to tell the people over at the "syfy" channel that the way to get female viewers isn't to rebrand it. And it certainly isn't to give us Dallas in Space a la Caprica. I'm a chick, and i'm not afraid of a space battle, why the f%&#k should the scifi channel be afraid?
Maybe because the network isn't run by chicks? They're second guessing. You know when you get a Major Kira character who's written by duded and she's supposed to be all empowered, but she comes off alternately like a man in a dress or a shrill harpie? That's because the guys writing her have no idea what empowered women are actually like in real life, and can't really be bothered to find out. This is the flip side of that: guys who have no idea what female viewers *Want* and can't be bothered to find out, so they're just going with the conventional wisdom that all they want is talk of relationships and meaningful glances.
This from a network that can't be bothered to do the basic research required to find out that "Syfy" is street slang for a venerial disease, and textspeak for "Screw you, F**k you"
"Maybe because the network isn't run by chicks?"
But it was, not so long ago. Bonnie Hammer used to be the president of SciFi. Of course, she didn't seem to connect with or admit to the existence of female sci-fi fans, so maybe that's not the best example.
Given how many of them I know, I find it very strange that women who like science fiction for the science part continue to fly under the radar. I'm not looking for a romance novel in space. I want cool concepts and technology, dangit. (As well as good characters, solid plots, and witty dialogue. But I expect that from any series I watch, regardless of genre.)