Sci Fi Channel Aims to Shed Geeky Image With New Name
‘Syfy’ Will Announce Name Change, Other Plans at Upfront
I would say that television executives are stupid, but ya know… They’re not. Thing is, they tend to be very, very good at generating money in an incredibly competitive business. We call them stupid because we say we want quality entertainment. But when we don’t get it, we’re still often in front of that damned box, watching the ads and thinking we’re immune from buying the products. I’m not going to give myself airs here. There is television I’ve followed, even though I tend to watch TV through Netflix DVDs these days. I did get sucked into the new Doctor Who pretty quick and really enjoyed Firefly. I’ve seen every episode of the Sopranos up to Season Six and every season of the X-Files through Season Three. I followed Dark Angel and South Park pretty religiously when I had broadcast TV. When we had TV as long as the History channel wasn’t running Yet Another WWII Documentary, chances were good I’d be watching it. I think the only thing I ever watched on the SciFi channel was Andromeda. That was on the SciFi channel, wasn’t it? Except for Andromeda, which I really did watch to oggle Keith Hamilton Cobb as Tyr, the rest of the shows had good writing in common (Well, Season II of Dark Angel was pretty bad). I don’t think network executives take good writing into account for their market research. Why should they? The public hardly demands it!
But the point is, even I, who am not a huge fan of television in general, do watch shows produced for TV — albeit a few years late. So, yeah, I’m a consumer, too, even if I’m to cheap to pay for cable. The point is, none of us have stopped consuming and our consumption patterns are such that the network executives might be making a smart call for the population at large — never mind we minority who eyeroll the change and don’t find the geek image a negative. Many of us will still consume the product.
However, they did miss a rather salient point about science fiction when trying to remove themselves from the “geek” image. Liking SF is almost the defining characteristic of a geek!
Thanks to 
patgund for pointing this article out.