I couldn’t help myself. I just could not keep my philanges off this one. I caught wind while perusing Mike’s musings earlier this week – apparently we have a heaping helping of biting the hand that feeds you on our… hands. The Sci-Fi network has announced it will become *drum roll*… the SyFy network.
*pregnant pause*
…
Yep. Go ahead… ponder that some more.
…
Some questions come to mind. Isn’t that the same name? I mean, if I were going about pronouncing those two nomers I’m willing to wager I would arrive at approximately the same phonetic locale. Another quandary… what was the problem you envision solving with this bold stroke, o newly christened SyFy? Well, according to the network’s president, Dave Howe, the problem is this…
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…
*chortling*
This is delightful! Now, I’m certain this Mr. Howe is a very well educated man. However, I would submit to him that it may not behoove him to lampoon the group of folks that probably compose the lion’s share of his viewership as “dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements….” Just saying!
Well, if he feels the need to shallywack his peeps in this manner, there must be a reason. Perhaps some really ground-breaking research has indicated this new SyFy thing would be a prudent course of action. Clearly this must be part 1 of a multi-pronged strategy to liberate the network from its ancestral bonds of geekery! Right, Mr. Howe? Or not:
It gives us a unique word and it gives us the opportunities to imbue it with the values and the perception that we want it to have
You’re going to what?! This is potentially the funniest thing I have heard all week. Here we have a corporate creature calling the heart of his fanbase the stuff of dark basements and no lives. Then he proceeds to explain how the network will be liberated from geeky mass perceptions by somehow ‘imbuing’ itself in a manner that will be apealing to females.
It will be interesting to see if the network name change will be accompanied by new programming appealing less to traditional geeks and more to women. Maybe… alien cooking shows? The bachelor… on the Battlestar?! Oprah and Spock – Deep Space Self Improvement?!
Wow – and to think I’ve been reading and/or watching sci-fi for as long as I can remember and I never knew it was only for boys. Am I now relegated to romance novels? Bleh
Suzanne, you don’t mean to say that you liked Sci-Fi before it was imbued with new perceptions?! That’s impossible! The president of the network said so
.
According to the president of the network, I, too, am an unaccounted-for female. I must be one of those weird females that has varied interests; I like romance novels and sci-fi (or rather SyFy, lol) Just the other day I watched one of the Sci-fi channel’s newest movies. I have to laugh though, cuz it was in our basement, and one of my brothers was playing video games at the same time…..
Now what you really need to understand is that I’m on the other side of 50 years old and have distinct memories of reading a truly futuristic novel, ’2001: A Space Odyssey’, in junior high just for fun. That would also have been about the time ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ really captivated me as well. When I say I’ve been into sci-fi for as long as I can remember it means it’s been 40+ years.
A Wrinkle in Time….I have to read that again.
Is Siffy (or whatever it’s called) the channel that airs professional wrestling and cancelled MST3k?
I’m willing to place a substantial sum of money as to the fact that this president fellow has never read this ‘Wrinkle’ of which you speak…
And Breann, I enjoyed that comment! ‘I guess it WAS in the basement… I guess there WERE video games’
Suzanne~ Okay, so I don’t have 40+ years of sci-fi interest, since I’m about half that. BUT I did read “A Wrinkle in Time” in jr. high also. It was on the Accelerated Reader list, and had it not been there, I probably would not have read it. I remember that although I thought it was a little strange, I enjoyed it. It opened another genre to my bookworm list of good reading.
Ryan~ Glad I could make you smile. But oddly enough, it was true, lol.