This should have been posted a while ago, but my usual sloth, combined with a savage and unprovoked squirrel attack on my telephone cables, has delayed me in getting it online. Imagine you’re reading this three weeks ago and it’ll probably be more interesting.
As most people know by now, the Sci Fi Channel has now changed its name to the “SyFy Channel.” There’s really nothing unkind I can say about the name “SyFy” itself that would be more damning than just reproducing it accurately. It’s not unknown for a TV station to radically change its identity while trying to keep some vestige of the name, as when TNN changed from the country music-focused “The Nashville Network” to the action/testosterone-themed “The National Network.” (Which then became Spike, which is both less generic and more appropriately phallic and bellicose-sounding.) Thus, I’m not surprised that they went with a name that maintains a tie to the old one, though you’d think with the amount of money TV networks spend on consulting firms and focus groups they could have come up with something that didn’t sound like a government agency from a David Weber novel.
I don’t even know what their new slogan, “Imagine Greater,” is supposed to mean. It sounds like something that Babelfish has translated from English to Japanese and back again two or three times.
I often get annoyed at this sort of attempt to hide from the Nerd Cooties stigma, but this seems entirely appropriate to me, given how much of the channel seems to be devoted to monster movies, schlock horror, pro wrestling, and reality shows with washed up quasi-celebrities who didn’t quite have the Q factor to hang out with Corey Feldman and Chyna on The Surreal Life. Really, ditching the “Sci Fi” is just a simple acknowledgment of reality. (In that same spirit of accuracy, perhaps “SciFi Channel Original Movie” could be changed to “Not Even Good Enough for Direct-to-Video Theatre.") So, no big loss.
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