New York Times: SciFi Channel to become - Syfy?

[prion]

Hey...why stop there? Why not just go all the way and spell it......

CyPhy?



rimshot

Cuz....
urban slang means ", excitable or anything cool but with a little or a big hint of Gangsta with it"

or Cybertaxonomy and Phylogenetics, which I doubt anybody at Skyffy could pronounce

or *cough* "Having a variable rainbow of sexually transmitted diseases"

They're doomed!

[prion]

April 24, 2009

@craigatscifi’s interview re “What’s in a name?” [SyFy] up at http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/0...in-a-name.html

EXCERPT:
I can't speak for all fans, of course, but as for me, my main reason for caring about the name of the channel is that it is also the name of my favorite genre. If it hadn't been for BSG and Eureka, I doubt I would have turned on the channel at all in the past four years. They've got some promising things coming up, including Caprica and Stargate: Universe, and Warehouse 13 has enough good people involved that it could live up to its fun premise. But until the folks at Sci Fi start making watchable TV movies and find something other than professional wrestling to fill airtime, they're not going to have too many loyal fans among science fiction geeks no matter what they call themselves.

REST AT LINK ABOVE

[Ishay]

scifi will do anything to fail

[Malp1]

As mostly everyone should know, The Sci-Fi Channel is changing it's name to SyFy in July. Though silly, it seems harmless enough, doesn't it? It does until you read an article in the April #579 issue of Locus Magazine. For those who are not familiar with it, Locus is a very reputable Science Fiction and Fantasy Prozine that has been around for many years and has many contacts in the science fiction field. On page 11 of this issue, Locus has some very interesting quotes from the President of the Science Fiction Channel, Dave Howe. Locus quotes Dave Howe as saying, "The name SciFi 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. When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-34 techo-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually how you'd text it. It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise." Is this what the president of the Sci-Fi Channel thinks of the many fans who helped make his station what it is today? How obnoxious! The article goes on to say that the reaction from fans to this name change has been negative. Gee, that's surprising, I guess we're not cool enough. It is also mentioned in the article that "syfy" is a Polish word that refers to veneral diseases, junk, filth or pimples. I guess when used in that context it would be pronounced "sifie" or "sif-e". It's beyond comprehension that a president of a tv channel would so belittle his audience but not surprising when you look at the programming. Aside from a few shows on Sci-Fi, most of the programming is not the type of programming that true science fiction fans enjoy and this tells us exactly what they think of us: we don't matter. At 63, I do not fall into their 18-34 target audience but I have been a Sci-Fi fan since I was able to read and have enjoyed many years of great Sci-Fi TV, movies and books. I find it appaling that a president of a network would speak this way of his audience. Is that a letter writing campaign I hear in the distance?