I have not actually watched anything on the scifi channel in over two years. The reason is the lack of Science Fiction. They seem to have mostly monster and horror content, but hardly any real science fiction. Any SF content is shown in the wee small hours. The Crotchety Old Fan keeps an index of the actual SF purity content on SciFi and it always under 20%, dipping much less at times.
When the scifi channel started out they were purported to have paid a cool million dollars for the scifi.com domain. Now, they are rebranding themselves as SYFY.com, which is totally stupid. The reason is their inability to trademark SciFi. SciFi was used by too many writers, editors and fans over the years. Gernsback used it in the 1930s so it would be difficult to say it is not in the public domain. SyFy.com can be trademarked, but since it is really just a different spelling for SciFi, it is not really different. SciFi, by the way, is properly pronounced Skiffy, so the SyFy moniker is going to confuse everyone.
A year ago I almost registered Sc1F1.com, which uses the number 1 instead of the letter i. I did not do it because sciencefictional keywords make no money at all in online ad revenue. Maybe the SyFy channel will register it now.
One Comment
Our version of the Scifi channel here in Canada is called “Space.”
I know what you mean about the lack of SF content in these channels is dismal at best. But to coin someone that uses spec fic “speculative fiction” includes horror, fantasy, anything that is fiction by its very nature is speculative.
I never did like the term spec fic. Seems kind of vauge to me.
But your right the sci-fi channel has decayed its programming a lot over the years. Here in Canada Space still has all the trek stuff but they leave the monster and horror crap for late night.