So am I a Syfy fan now?

The UK Sci-fI channel has followed its US companion and re-branded to SyFy. This is despite most people thinking the re-branding was stupid and pointless. Presumably it is in aid of something like "Brand Cohesion" or "Reflexive corporate image synergy" or some other meaningless marketing rubbish, probably dreamed up by the same person who said "Why are we just selling to geeks, if we call it the Syfy channel instead of Sci-Fi we'll remove that stigma that has stopped people watching it for ages. It even has a tagline "Imagine greater" and why when I am World dictator marketing people will have a hard time of things. I can't believe anyone looks at Syfy and thinks "hmm" then sees "Imagine greater" and says "I'm sold"

No, marketing dude, that was probably the period, which Sc-Fi is only just coming out of, where the channel seemed to be trying to show as little Sci-Fi as possible.

I remember the old days of the sci-fi channel, it was unashamedly geeky, Bionic Wednesdays, where a whole afternoon was filled with repeats of the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, MST3K, Quantum Leap. Sure, it lacked anything you hadn't seen before, even its films were usually old, and not the blockbusters either. But damn it I watched it, because sometimes I want to see old SF series. The channel evolved a little in the early 2000's, taking a slightly "Weird" approach it almost looked like the guy who is an enormous geek but tries to claim he's more "Alternative" Still, it hadn't lost too much of its geeky content, and even netted some of the better leftovers from Sky and BBC clearing the US Schedules. Without Sci-Fi then I wouldn't have seen Now and Again. They also introduced themed slots, like saturday morning carrying a couple of hours about Anime, with reports on japanese culture and usually a couple of Anime series (To my memory it was the excellent Neon Genesis Evangelion and the odd but fun Martian Successor Nadesco) along with themed horror nights on friday nights. These two periods represent in my opinion some of the best programming on the sci-fi channel.

It went a bit downhill from there, the channel seemed ashamed to keep showing its old repeats and similarly didn't buy anything particularly expensive, what resulted was a mass of duff "Direct to DVD" movies, usually involving Dean Cain fighting some giant reptile. It got worse, as they expanded (And I firmly believe the SyFy name change was part of this) into showing documentaries on dangerous wildlife and extreme weather. Now you may show Killer Shark vs Giant octopus IV, and I'd even allow some sort of super storm/volcano/asteroid drama as a kind of "What if Disaster movie" but the documentaries were pushing it. Similarly sometimes they'd show duff action films, no objection in principle but let bravo sho the non SF ones. I refuse to believe there is a shortage of duff SF themed action films.

Recently things have been improving. Sci-Fi got some fairly high profile series like Knight Rider, Warehouse 13, Sanctuary and Dollhouse. In fact the name changing away from Sci-Fi has preceded an increase in actual Sci-Fi on the channel, as if the marketing bod was distracted by his re-branding excercise and the geeks got to pick the programming.

My advice, Capitalise on this success, try and get some more original series, but remember, you need schedule padding, people will watch repeats of Quantum Leap and I know will definitely jump at anime series and MST3K if you can get those. New programming isn't the be all and end all. I have no objection to the crappy B Movies, I watched Warbirds (WWII female pilots and US soldiers vs dragons) and it was poor, but enjoyably so. Things like this need a home and Sci-Fi or even Syfy could be a place for them. Avoid turning into Bravo 3 and there could be a future in the old nerd yet.