Monday, March 16, 2009

I've never been one to argue genre names, but "Syfy"?

The SciFi channel has announced that they are changing their name to "SyFy". The claim it's because they can't trademark "SciFi". I'm not a trademark lawyer but I'm pretty sure their planet with "SciFi" written in it logo is trademarked along with the name "SciFi Channel". Irregardless of the actual reason the announcement makes it pretty clear that they want to distance themselves from their original viewer base.

I didn't really care to draw distinctions between science fiction, scifi, or however you want to spell it (though I do tend to use SF as shorthand for speculative fiction). That on the other hand has to be the most worst shorthand for the genre anyone has ever devised. It's like spelling magic with extra consonants. It makes me think of pitiful attempts to be distinctive by not actually changing anything. There has never been a time in human history where swapping an "i" for a "y" in a word has been a good idea. Now it's more of a reason to point and laugh and the people who think it's clever.

Oh well, I guess they could have just changed their name to The Wrestling Channel.