Sci Fi Channel Creator Says SyFy Name Change is Dumb

This is not science fiction TV news per se, but well, it is about TV, and it is sci-fi (well sort of), and it’s kind of fun. Anyways, as you may know, the Sci Fi Channel recently announced that it was changing its name from The Sci Fi Channel to The SyFy Channel for business purposes — mostly so it can brand and copyright the name, something it couldn’t do with its original name. One of the channel’s original founders Mitchell Rubenstein (who co-founded the channel in the early ’90s with Laurie Silvers) has spoken out, and he doesn’t sound too happy about the name change.

From Rubenstein at Hollywood.com (via):

Before the Sci Fi Channel launched, Isaac Asimov (a member of the Sci Fi Channel’s Board of Advisors along with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry), Laurie and I presented the concept of a 24-hour cable TV network dedicated to science fiction to a packed room of SF writers at the Science Fiction Writers of America meeting.

The writers were not happy — and that’s an understatement. They said they wouldn’t watch it. They would oppose it unless we called it the SF Channel because calling it “Sci Fi Channel” was a put-down to the SF genre, as “sci-fi” is slang for SF and science fiction — and a huge mistake. And I said if we called it the SF Channel, people would think it’s about the city of San Francisco.

I was booed.

Then Isaac started to speak and said that the name had to be Sci Fi Channel and not the SF Channel in order to draw a wide, diverse audience and be successful. To be in a financial position to acquire and produce the best programming. That’s really what counts, right? The writers came around and agreed. Heck, it was Isaac Asimov saying “Sci Fi Channel” was OK, and that was that.

What would Isaac have said if the name was instead SyFy Channel. He would have said (we believe): That’s just plain dumb.

SyFy, say it’s not so!

Eh, it’s just a name change, guys. They’ll still show all the usual sci-fi movies, plus the creature of the week movies starring Sasquatch or Bigfoot or whatever mutated beast they can come up with. No biggie.