Culture Shock 05.01.14: Syfy looks to shake up its 'Sharknado' image

In television, as in any business, branding matters. You can have the greatest product on Earth, and it won't matter a bit if your brand sends customers fleeing.

TNT knows drama. USA is where characters are welcome. AMC is all about advertising executives and zombies, which has a kind of synergy if you think about it.

And Syfy is the "Sharknado" channel, although that may be about to change.

There are worse fates. Never mind the lack of music, MTV is more like VTM nowadays, as in "Vacuous Teenage Moms." "Sharknado," on the other hand, was the surprise hit of 2013 on social media and gained viewers with repeat airings. The third broadcast attracted 2.1 million viewers, a record for a Syfy original movie repeat, according to Entertainment Weekly.

There's a lot to be said for cheesy movies. If I had my way, there would be a channel that aired nothing but reruns of "USA Up All Night." I'll take USA Network's early 1990s late-night schedule of "Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama," "Chopping Mall" and "Hell Comes to Frogtown" over yet another "NCIS" marathon any day.

Come to think about it, 2014 Syfy is a lot like 1990s USA. Back them, USA Network was known for cheesy movies, WWF wrestling and originals such as "Silk Stalkings" and "La Femme Nikita" (a Canadian co-production). Today, Syfy is known for cheesy movies, WWE wrestling and originals such as "Warehouse 13" and "Continuum" (a Canadian co-production). All entertaining, but apart from the rare "Sharknado" fluke, nothing that gets viewers talking the next morning.

Syfy used to air a show that did have its audience talking: "Battlestar Galactica." Then, for reasons that make sense only to television executives, Syfy declared a moratorium on shows set in space. An odd decision for a channel originally called The Sci-Fi Channel, I know.

But Syfy is also the channel that didn't know what to do with "Doctor Who," and Syfy's loss is  BBC America's highest-rated program and a reliable buzz generator. Meanwhile, Syfy has "Sharknado," "Ghost Shark," "Sharktopus," "Dinoshark" and the TV movie that kickstarted Syfy's love affair with monster-hybrid insanity, "Mansquito," which is oddly shark-free.

You have to figure Syfy's execs are just a little jealous of the science fiction and fantasy programming generating buzz for their competition, whether it's "Doctor Who" or "The Walking Dead"  on AMC or "Game of Thrones" on HBO. Syfy is an also-ran in the genre it used to own.

So, it's big news that Syfy is showing interest in its reason for being. The channel is heading back into space, embracing tech-heavy science fiction and, like all those other channels, looking to adapt best-selling novels.

One project already has a 10-episode order, and it will likely be the most ambitious series Syfy has aired to date, to say nothing of having the hardest science of any Syfy series. Maybe the success of "Gravity" has changed the mindset around the Syfy offices.

If Syfy is looking for its own "Game of Thrones," it may have found it in "The Expanse," based on "Leviathan Wakes" and its sequels by James S.A. Corey (the pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). And wouldn't you know it, the cover of "Leviathan Wakes" has a nice blurb from "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin.

"Leviathan Wakes" has warring factions, pitched battles and lots of unexpected death. So it is a bit like "Game of Thrones," only in space and without all the sex. So maybe it's not like "Game of Thrones" at all. Never mind. But it can air on basic cable without upsetting the usual suspects.

But even if "The Expanse" is good, will anyone tune in? Syfy has an established brand, one it spent years cultivating. And that brand doesn't scream intelligent, sophisticated, science-literate entertainment.

It's a brand that screams we're gonna need a bigger boat — and probably a bigger flyswatter, too.

Sci-Fi Channel finally does away with the ‘Sci-Fi’

What is in a name? Quite possibly more than even Shakespeare ever dreamt.

The Sci-Fi Channel, which has gone by just “Sci Fi” for most of the decade, announced Monday that it will have a new name as of July 7.

Say goodbye to Sci Fi, and say hello to SyFy — different spelling, same pronunciation. And unlike the generic term “sci-fi,” which was coined by the late Forrest J Ackerman, SyFy has the advantage of being something the network can trademark, said Bonnie Hammer, former Sci-Fi Channel president and current head of parent company NBC Universal Cable Entertainment.

Unfortunately, SyFy has the disadvantage of being lame, if not downright insulting to sci-fi fans. Yet it took marketing geniuses years to come up with it — if they actually did. The name originally belonged to a Web site called SyFy Portal, which sold the SyFy name and reopened as Airlock Alpha.

Sci Fi executives have been looking for a new name and a new image for a long time. In fact, they seem embarrassed by the idea of being associated with science fiction.

TV Week cites television historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch the Sci-Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network, Sci Fi’s sister channel.

“The name Sci Fi 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,” Brooks said.

So, in case you were wondering what Sci Fi’s executives think of their core audience — the geeks and “dysfunctional” fanboys who have watched the channel religiously since it started up in 1992 — now you know.

Current Sci Fi President Dave Howe was a little more diplomatic.

“If you ask people their default perceptions of Sci Fi, they list space, aliens and the future,” he said in a New York Times story. “That didn’t capture the full landscape of fantasy entertainment: the paranormal, the supernatural, action and adventure, superheroes.”

Well, we certainly can’t have a TV channel devoted to space, aliens and the future, now can we? In fact, during her tenure as president, Hammer pretty much let everyone know of her contempt for real science fiction. She canceled “Farscape,” a popular series set in space and loaded with extraterrestrials, and packed the schedule with “reality” and paranormal programs like “Crossing Over with John Edward.”

From the beginning, Sci Fi aired a lot of horror and fantasy programming, and most sci-fi fans accepted that. In the publishing world, science fiction, fantasy and horror have always been linked. But then Sci Fi aired “Braveheart,” a movie that isn’t sci-fi, fantasy or horror. It’s just bad history. After that, nothing was off limits. Not even professional wrestling.

With the new name, SyFy, Hammer finally has what she always wanted: something that sounds like sci-fi and looks a little like sci-fi, but isn’t sci-fi.

Sure, SyFy will still air science fiction, with “Caprica” — a prequel series to “Battlestar Galactica” — and a new “Stargate” series yet to come. But I would expect more wrestling and action movies if I were you. Toss in some “C.S.I.” reruns, and SyFy would probably look a lot like Spike TV.

Along with the new name, the channel is also getting a new slogan, “Imagine Greater,” and you have to wonder how long it took the marketing guys to come up with that.

What does it even mean? Greater than what? Maybe they mean “Imagine More” or “Imagine Better.” Is there a language on Earth in which “Imagine Greater” even makes sense? Maybe it sounds better in the original Klingon, or would if SyFy didn’t hate aliens.

Hey, SyFy executive folks, how about trying to “Imagine Grammar” instead?

The best show on TV returns for a final season

If nothing else, “Battlestar Galactica” vindicates one of my long-held beliefs: If you’re going to remake a movie or TV show, you should remake one that wasn’t all that good to begin with. That way, there’s little chance of screwing up.

The 1970s “Galactica” was, at best, a fair to middling children’s show, which is not what you really want in a series that depicts the near annihilation of the human race and its aftermath. Somehow — and maybe it’s just me — a holocaust doesn’t seem like appropriate subject matter for Sunday night’s family hour.

So, when I first read that the Sci-Fi Channel was launching a new, darker version of “Battlestar Galactica,” my first thought was that it could only improve on the original.
That, as it turned out, was an understatement.

It’s almost a cliché at this point to say “Battlestar Galactica” isn’t just the best science fiction show on television, it’s one of the best things on TV, period.

Now, after seemingly endless, agonizing months on hiatus, “Battlestar Galactica” returns Friday night for the start of its fourth and final season. And given the revelations of last season’s finale, I’d say the show’s return comes not a moment too soon.

“Battlestar Galactica” isn’t the type of show I’d recommend coming to late. It’s definitely best to watch all three previous seasons on DVD before jumping into the new season. But if you don’t have time for that, the Sci-Fi Channel has posted a handy eight-minute recap video of the story so far, along with the last five, jaw-dropping episodes of the third season, on its Web site, www.scifi.com.

Like the best American SF programs that came before it — “The Twilight Zone,” the original “Outer Limits,” “Firefly” and most of “Star Trek” up until “Star Trek: Voyager” — “Battlestar Galactica” demonstrates the ability of science fiction to tackle big subjects, whether they are political, religious or philosophical.

“Galactica” executive producer Ronald D. Moore and his writing team have cleverly turned what once was “Wagon Train” in space into a show that goes beyond its outer-space setting to address issues facing the United States and the world today. The battle between the surviving humans and the Cylons has so many parallels to America’s “war on terror” that it’s hard to keep track of them all.

Whether it’s the consequences of military occupation, such as when the Cylons invade the human settlement on New Caprica, the ethics of torture, or when and if suicide bombing is ever justified, “Galactica” hasn’t shied away from thorny questions. And it has done so in a way, I think, that is far more compelling than watching Jack Bauer save the world in a day or President Bartlet and his “West Wing” staff talking in circles.

You can’t just say the humans of “Galactica” are “us” and the Cylons are “them.” The humans are a polytheistic but officially secular, democratic society, while the Cylons are religious extremists bent on spreading the love of their one, true God — at gunpoint, if necessary. But it’s the humans who resort to terrorism and suicide bombings when the Cylons overrun their New Caprica encampment at the end of the second season. When you can’t fit either camp into the neatly tailored roles of contemporary politics, it forces you to see each side’s point of view.

If anything, the Cylons are more interesting than the humans. They’re torn between wanting to eradicate their former masters and wanting to bring them to God. They hate the humans who created them but have evolved to look like them and to have human emotions. The Cylons have a genocidal Oedipus complex.

Yes, the new “Battlestar Galactica” is just a little deeper than your average TV show. And I’m glad it’s back.