The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

TV Week reports that the Sci-Fi Channel is changing its name to Syfy later this year (it doesn’t say, but I am assuming that means the UK SciFi channel too?). My first reaction was that this sounds like the mangled doggrel you get in text messages (and increasingly on the web too) and it seems that impression was correct: “When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually this is 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,” Dave Howe, president of the Sci-Fi Channel.

The change is an attempt to get around the way terms like science fiction and Sci-Fi are often perceived by those outside the genre fanbase and reflect the fact the channel is airing a diverse range of programmes. I can understand it to a certain extent, all too many people still glaze over at the mention of SF (even highly respected authors and film-makers) and remark’ “isn’t that all just robots and aliens for adolescent boys?” So I can understand the urge to try and avoid that pre-judging on the part of potential viewers and it probably makes sense from a demographic marketing point of view. But it still annoys me a little and I don’t care for the new name at all, although admittedly I am now at the Grumpy Old Man stage of life where I get increasingly annoyed with things changing their names all the time (seems every month some firm, sweet, chocolate bar or TV channel is changing their name) and they are presumably after hip 18-30 female viewers, so I doubt they care what I think. And I get annoyed at the implication that SF infers a kind of restricted arena of potential stories when I think its actually about the most diverse genre there is. But that’s my view from the inside as a fan and admittedly to those on the outside they probably do still think robots, aliens and spaceships is all there is to it, so, as I say, much as I dislike it I can see why they’d want to change. (via ICV2)