We Can't Own 'Sci Fi', So Let's Change Our Name To Something Stupid
from the is-this-one-taken? dept
The name of the Sci Fi cable channel is pretty self-explanatory: the channel shows science fiction programs. But it's going to soon have a new name: "Syfy". It's apparently pronounced the same as Sci Fi, regardless of how it reads, and was chosen because NBC Universal can "own" it, as opposed to the generic Sci Fi name, which the company couldn't trademark. Perhaps we can take some solace in the fact that the company isn't trying to take ownership of the term sci fi, but is the ability to trademark the channel's name so important to its business that the company would go to the expense of rebranding, while potentially reducing the effectiveness of the brand name? It's been obvious that the lawyers were in charge at NBC Universal for a while now, but letting them run the branding might not be such a great idea.
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Filed Under: ownership, sci-fi, syfy, trademark
Companies: nbc universal
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Horrible
And as one commenter on another board said..."syfy" sounds like an adorable pet name for syphilis.
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Re: Horrible
Damn straight. Exactly how is watering down a niche channel with a devoted following supposed to be better served by turning it into yet another Spike, USA, or FX?!
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Re: Horrible
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Re: Horrible
And as one commenter on another board said..."syfy" sounds like an adorable pet name for syphilis.
And it is, according to Urban Dictionary. (At least since last night.)
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Re: Re: Horrible
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Re: Horrible
As the saying goes, you shouldn’t assume malevolence where stupidity will answer.
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Re: Horrible
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you mean they failed
Shouldn't that say they failed to take ownership, not that they didn't try.
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SciFi isn't worth much anyway
in general) to watch. It's a stupid name and
will get lots of laughs and comparisons to syphillis, but
in larger terms, that network is a lost cause.
You could compare it's downward tilt away from its core
programming to many of the channels in the Discovery network, many of which have become very pale shadows of
their original forms (Discovery, TLC, History, FoodTV, er FoodNetwork, Animal Planet).
Maybe it's time to rethink this idea of 1000 channels of
narrow casting? It obviously doens't work because so
many narrowcasters are trying to broaden their appeal
away from their core demographics.
So, ultimately, we'll have 1000 channels broadcasting all
the same lowest-common-denominator pablum to the masses.
I don't recall who said this, but it's certainly apropos:
TV is called a medium because
it's neither rare nor well done.
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Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
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Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
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Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
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Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
> greed.
The problem isn't at question here, the result is.
And, the result is that lots of narrowcasting
efforts eventually broaden their horizons and ruin
the concept.
So, I'm still going to say that narrowcasting doesn't work.
It's time the broadcasters face it: there is only
so much you can say about 'golf', or 'food'
or 'fine living'.
After a while, you're going to broadcast nothing
but reruns. When this happens, subscribers will
drop out.
And, it's time consumers face it: stop paying for
narrowcasting premium channels. They aren't worth
the money and they will quickly become boring.
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Re: Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
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Re: Re: Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
You're. Sorry, must be pedantic.
> Narrowcasting works. It is the broadening of those
> narrowcast channels that does not.
I do get it, but I disagree and believe that you're constraining the problem to fit your desired result. In other words, you are choosing to look at years 0 through 5 of a new narrow casting venture.
After some period of time, one of two things happen:
1. Customers turn elsewhere because the content is
old, or doesn't suit their level.
(Even with narrow casting, you are going to have
continuum of skill levels, and you can't cater
to everyone)
2. Revenues aren't growing. They may be flat,
but they won't grow because your narrow
casting audience is saturated.
At most, you can get 100% of the narrow casted
market, and then your growth potential becomes
the growth potential of the narrow casted market.
For example, if you narrow cast to beekeepers,
your growth after capturing 100% of the current
market will be very small.
The growth for the same scenario for snowboarders
is potentially higher, but you'll have more
advanced people, or longer-term viewers dropping
out to their own skill advancement or boredom
with unchanging content.
The result of these two scenarios for most business types is to figure out how to expand their growth -- and that ultimately means ditching the narrowcasting.
Yes, narrow casting works... if you consider a short time frame.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
SciFi Channel has been huge for a lot more than 5 years. There was no reason to broaden their scope other than greed. They weren't running out of content. Their best show ever, Battlestar Galactica, didn't start until after what many would consider to be the start of their decline in quality. They could always offer up new scifi content, and it would have worked to hold their audience. They chose to broaden because they couldn't be satisfied with that. SciFi Channel is the perfect example of narrowcasting working. It rode a small, niche audience to the #3 cable channel spot. Now, they are casting off that audience, thinking they will expand mainstream viewership. THAT is their point of failure, not choosing to limit themselves to SciFi in the first place.
Are there limits to some things? Perhaps. But golfers obsess over golf, and there are always new games to cover. Home and garden fanatics keep those channels tuned 24 hours looking for the next great idea that they'll never actually implement. The channels' audiences are loyal as long as they are narrowcasting. It is the moment they genericize that their fans turn against them. The point of failure is when the channel stops serving its primary audience to look for nonexistant greener pastures.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
Why grow? Just out of greed ? Why not stay like this and satisfy your customers? What's wrong with being consistent in what they are and what they do? Do they really need to please more dumb shmucks ?
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Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
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Re: Re: Re: SciFi isn't worth much anyway
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What about the logo?
So, why does it matter? What possible reason could there be to give up that brand recognition for the sake of trademark?
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Re: What about the logo?
(Sigh...Fi)
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Sigh Figh
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Re: Sigh Figh
By turning their name into a corruption of their former name, all they are doing is inviting people to do the same. They are going to be flooded/inundated with people ripping on them with all sorts of "not necessarily positive" corruptions of sci-fi now.
Of course, they might consider people making fun of their name to be good advertising.. but I doubt this is what their lawyers had in mind when they came up with this scheme.
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Brilliant yet another
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PsyPhi
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Re: PsyPhi
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Re: PsyPhi
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A name change does nothing for the station itself.
Having to endure 30+ minutes of ads for a "2 hour" show is a miserable, miserable experience.
And to think I'm also being charged for this damn station (and others like it) makes me ill.
Screw them all. Let them change their name. It doesn't erase the fact their station still blows.
If it wasn't for the DVR, I wouldn't have even watched Battlestar Galactica.
When the hell is the TV station going to die already? Enough of this bull.
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Re: A name change does nothing for the station itself.
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Re: Re: A name change does nothing for the station itself.
I did eventually get the digital package for Sci-Fi and Discovery HD but found out that Sci-Fi turned into the horror channel and Discovery HD just seemed to play the same thing over and over again (Never did see the Mythbusters in HD). Between that, Tech TV turning into G4 (and then the Ninja warrior/cops channel), and The un-named channel for men (After TNN) turned into Spike-Television for Men (If the channel was run by a women), I turned off cable and never turned it back on.
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Re: Re: A name change does nothing for the station itself.
http://indiana.mybrighthouse.com/products_and_pricing/digital_cable/programming/channel_lineups /carmel.aspx
The instant it became a more expensive tier is the moment I am paying for it.
If it were a simple broadcast station, shouldn't it fall in the line of basic cable?
Just a thought.
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Re: Re: A name change does nothing for the station itself.
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For many channels, it is a question of distribution and advertising. When you reach a certain level of availability, you are more likely to garner national advertising accounts. You know, the McDonalds, Coke, Beer, airlines, etc. Those are major buyers that purchase huge swaths of ads, automatically every month. It allows stations to raise all their rates, and all of their income as a result. You can tell that SciFi wasn't there because of the number of "self-promotions" they run in every commercial block. The magic number, if I remember correctly, is distribution on cable / sat with potential for 100 million homes (could be wrong, it's been a while)
So what happens? They stand on their little piece of viewership, masters of all that surrounds them, and they see an adjacent piece of viewership they aren't getting. Perhaps if they added X or Y, they could expand. Get close to the magic number so they can make much money. Over time, they continue to dilute the product and such up to the middle ground, over and over, until they can reach that numbers.
See the history of "The Nashville Network" which became "TNN", and then became "SpikeTV" in it's question to get a large enough market to justify itself - and apparently it worked.
Sadly, the end result of this sort of sliding towards the middle is that you end up with plenty of channels running Seinfeld reruns, Family Guy cartoons, and other non-related programming to attempt to catch the channel surfers and expose them. Over time, the actual root programming that made the channel special is gone, and thus the channel isn't relevant for the original audience. Worse yet, the channel has actually become more popular, because they are playing to bigger potential audience. So there is no going back.
Another great example is Speedvision, which became SpeedTV. Originally an auto racing and related channel only, once Fox took over they have made big changes. Their most recent change is to add in "Pimp My Ride" from MTV, game shows, and reality / fake drama shows. Now outside of racing on the weekends, the channel no longer actually shows racing. It has gotten them more viewership, but has diluted the customer base, and still hasn't gotten them the magic distribution levels required to get the good ads.
SyFy will do the same, likely becoming a more widely watched channel, but in the process losing their true fans.
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Re:
Seriously though, I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt and blame this on the lawyers rather than programming. Sci-Fi has an excellent track record of delivering outstanding new content that no one else would take the risk on. the campy tv movies are actually well made most of the time given their budget. The mini-series 'events' they get made are excellent, and give the source material they draw from a much better treatment than any 2-3 hour movie could ever hope to. I would be much more excited hearing that one of my favorite books were to be chosen for a Sci-Fi miniseries than a Hollywood movie project. I am just hoping that as they try to make more money, they continue to throw money at these projects.
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Anyway, anyone who's really into scifi is probably downloading their "programming" via bittorrent anyway.
Let the cable giants self-destruct. Everyone knows cable tv is just for stupid pseudo-news and hollering pundits anyway.
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lol. Mansquito
The points made about how clueless major network/corporate execs are about the whole rationale for narrowcasting are all valid. It's based on charging advertisers a higher rate for lower numbers of COMMITTED, ENTHUSIASTIC fans than for larger numbers of miscellaneous folks. This is "targeted programming". It works.
But at a certain level of "corporate" the only thing understood is growth, as opposed, I suppose, to any qualitative considerations. So they want to chase "House, MD" numbers, "American Idol" numbers, leaving Sci-Fi (or "specualtive fiction" or "fantasy") fans underserved, and, apparently, pissed.
And all the lawyers and marketroids are wearing clue screen CPF 45...
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ARRRRGHHHH!!! Stupid!
- ABC: All BS Channel
- NBC: Next BS Channel
- CBS: Canned BS Channel
Hell, smaller, more niche market (read SciFi) oriented studios or companies have the opportunity of the lifetime to do what Mark Masnick has been writing about for a long time: change their paradigm to content served up on the internet and go for sponsors (companies) to support them with their content. In fact, I am so sure that the company/studio that eventually figures that out and starts using Youtube's HD option to stream their content, served up with the commercial support of a sponsor company will be the one to watch.
We all know that everything has been converging on the Internet and I suspect that this will be the benchmark that pushes studios to the internet. I for one will be there waiting for one of them to do it. In fact, I will even become a valued consumer for the company that sponsors those studios. I wish there was a company like YCombinator that would sponsor studios to go down that route because they will become the darling of the media world and would most likely PWN the traditional studios in an endgame worth watching from the sideline because it will definitely come out of nowhere in a truly paradigm changing way. Anyway, I think I might put together a more indepth article about how this might be done and post it up to the TechDirt Insight Community because it can be done!
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I wish NBC Universal would curl up and die
The only thing left on SciFi I watch is Battlestar Galactica. And after tomorrow night, I won't be watching anything on there.
NBC and Fox seem to be in a contest on who can create the stupidest network.
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Are you ready?
Let them bury themselves-- shit, they can borrow my shovel if they want. I can't wait to see what Sy-Fy reality TV show they come up with. Pathetic.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
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@weird harold
What is overlooked is that there is a limited (though large) total number of 'viewer hours' to be split up among an ever-increasing number of channels (and internet content sources, online games, and (shocking, I know) RL activities).
This makes the "big score" approach problematic. The odds of achieving the "critical mass viewership" that will get the big score of national advertising account money are steadily decreasing. Is it really worth it, in every case, to abandon the "targeted, dedicated and enthusiastic" core viewership that you can offer smaller niche advertisers? I wouldn't think so, but I blame the "winner-take-all" attitude of American business, or more accurately, American business executives.
I think we're going through a learning process, in which the homogenization of previously narrowcast content will be revealed as non-profitable. Will niche audiences* ever be properly served by national networks?
I'm not sure, but ref my "clue screen CPF 45" comment above.
*-history buffs, scientists, gamers, computer geeks and sci-fi fans, for example. All of whom have seen the content of decent narrowcast channels watered down by executive short-sightedness.
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that's pretty much what crossed my mind when i read the title, that and monster cable let them have there syfy.
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There could be another side to this.
I may hate the new name, and I do not watch the channel but for re-runs of Stargate and BSG. But I will still watch it for those.
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SciFi Ch...
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It looks ..
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Actually, that was a lie. I do like Sci-fi.
Sorry, I meant it was a lye.
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off topic, -1 (sci-fi original movies)
I think they are creating a treasure trove of "B" movies the likes of which hasn't been seen since the 40s and 50s (when an excess of studio capacity was used for "cheapies").
The whole 5models+2character actors+CGI+derivative script=B movie gold equation will someday be remembered fondly by those who are, say, 5-12 years old now.
I mean, that "Hunter vs. Alien" movie, where they even RIPPED OFF THE LOGO DESIGN of the "Alien vs. Predator" movies was plagariffic comedy gold!!
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Re: off topic, -1 (sci-fi original movies)
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Re: off topic, -1 (sci-fi original movies)
I suspect that showing all those, um, inexpensive-to-produce movies will do more than any silly renaming.
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As it is...
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@Kevin
(not really, but a mandatory /. ref. Sorry.)
Point is, those folks are consumers, and consumers of PARTICULAR PRODUCTS. As such, the producers of those products will pay to reach them.
But the corporate owners of once-narrowcast content channels can't be satisfied with that. Much of the discussion here is whether it is wise for them to abandon the niche audience to try to lure people who are now contentedly watching USA, Fox, Celebrity Gossip or Redneck channels.
Some of us are saying that yes, highly-paid, experienced, intelligent corporate executives CAN AND DO make gigantic fucktarded mistakes.
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Re: @Kevin
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Re: Re: @Kevin
Heh. You mean they were "dumping their successfully targeted niche audience for a more general audience"?
on topic, +1, eh?
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Rebranding, boo!
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Sci-Fi Channel
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For polish speakers "Syfy" means "pimples" or some dirty clothes.
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Re: A name change does nothing for the station itself.
It used to be one of the best channels when it first started but now i'll just occasionally flick thru the films they show
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BAD TRANSLATION INTO OTHER LANGUAGES
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Yawn.
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this may have been asked...
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It's suppose to be NICHE programming
When you lose your core, loyal audience, you only attract people popping in for a particular show. You lose the people who use to routinely tune into the Sci-Fi Channel for science fiction. People then turn to Tivo to program their own sci-fi channel, bouncing between the other channels to get their sf programming. You then become a channel like all the other channels.
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in my opinion
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After this friday, if I could, I'd delete the channel from my cable box so I don't have to bother skipping over it.
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UGH!
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People Will Adjust to the New Name
When people become familiar with Syfy they'll accept it too, and the channel will have something it can market all over the place. The term "SciFi Games" or "SciFi Books" are generic. But now they can market Syfy Games and Syfy Books and people will know it's a product related to the channel.
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As for me, after BSG ends this Friday the only reason to watch the channel will be Eureka.(I hope the suites don't screw it up more than they already have!)
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terrible idea
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You know, technically I don't "own" the remote with my cable box - but I can still use it to change the channel.
I may well just skip "SyFy" - I'm biased, I liked the name "Sci-Fi" if they change it, I'll not watch anymore... and that decision makes about as much sense as their decision on changing the name.
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Sciffy
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Not imaginative at all
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Sounds an awful lot like "Think Different".
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opinion of knew, syfy
this is just my opinion, i'm considering spending my money on dvd's. I Like what challenges me, run me off. I am just a viewer. i will find what i like.
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