In general, the response seems to be a big collective WTF????
But don't just take my word from it, here are some links that can give you an idea of how the nerds of the world are reacting.
io9's story.
Flick Filosopher put it up as her question of the day.
Real Life Comics had a nice commentary in their stip for today.
Then of course there is Airlock Alpha, where this is the primary news item on the billing at the moment. For those of you who don't know, until a few weeks ago, Airlock Alpha was actually SyFy Portal. The rebranding of their site seemed a little sudden, but Michael Hinman (the owner of the site and its sister sites Rabid Doll and the forthcoming Blip Network) has finally been able to explain that he was approached by a corporation wanting to buy the rights to "SyFy," and it was a good enough offer that he sold the name and changed his site up. Turns out that corporation was NBCU, because they wanted to rebrand their genre channel.
I was really going to go without commenting on this just because (as you can see by all of the links above), there are plenty of people already talking about this, and most of them can say it better than I can. But then I read Michael Hinman's piece reacting to the hugely negative public outcry about the change. As he says, he came up with the name "SyFy" ten years ago and while he has no regrets about the sale of rights on it, he has been a little hurt and surprised by two aspects of the fallout.
The first is that for some inconceivable (and yes, I am pretty sure that word means what I think it means) reason, NBCU is acting like they came up with the name "SyFy" all on their own and just bought the rights from Hinman because it turns out he independently came up with that name and had beat them to said rights and they wanted to clear up any legal issues. This is a huge WTF for everyone. As Hinman states, he personally has met the president of Sci Fi on more than one occasion and has worked with the people at Sci Fi Channel for years. It's not like they didn't know about SyFy Portal long before they started trying to come up with a new name. No one over there was unaware of SyFy Portal. Thankfully, no one outside of NBCU seems to be buying that story anyway. So really it's just more a question of why the conglomerate is playing stupid and trying to steal the credit of creation, rather than acknowledging that they felt that Hinman had hit on the term that they felt best expressed the new era they are trying to usher in for the channel with the change. Bleh. Stupid business people.
The second issue he brought up is a much more personal one for Hinman. As previously mentioned, a lot of the public reaction to the announcement of the rebranding has been negative. It seems that a lot of this negative attention has been to the name "SyFy" itself, saying it is a stupid name. Having come up with this name and having used it in one form or another for over ten years, Hinman is obviously a little baffled by this.
Well I can't speak for everyone out there, but I think that what most of us feel is stupid is not the actual word "SyFy" (hell, I've been a huge fan of SyFy Portal for years and have never once thought it was a stupid term), but the idea behind the rebranding. I am sorry but I don't in any way see how changing the spelling of the word Sci Fi to SyFy is going to "broaden" the scope of what they can show on the network--nor will it justify airing wrestling on the channel. Move the darn wrestling back to USA already, geez. Ghost Hunters, I can deal with, paranormal fits in the genre in my mind, but wrestling? Come on people. Sci Fi or SyFy, who thinks that wrestling falls under that category?
Okay, sorry, rant over. May be a bit touchy about that particular programming choice.
Clearly, however, NBCU feels it can air whatever it wants on the channel anyway, so I don't know why changing the spelling of their name (or the logo) is going to have any effect on that whatsoever. But that's just me I guess, or you know, most of the nerds and geeks worldwide.
I think what most of us feel is stupid is that NBCU has all but explicitly said they don't want to be limited to showing science fiction or fantasy related shows on their genre-specific channel. If that's the case, then save yourself a ton of money, dump the extraneous channel, and move your original programing over to your more "open" properties of NBC and USA. I am sorry but when it comes down to it, the channel doesn't have that much original programming anyway. USA did pretty well with The 4400, move Sanctuary and Stargate Universe over there. Eureka and Ghost Hunters could probably carry their own on NBC. All of those original B movies could easily fill weekend programming slots on either channel. Battlestar is wrapping up this week, so is there anything else out there really? I mean, gone would be the all day marathons of cancelled sci-fi shows but most of us have those on DVD already. We geeks, we tend to be collectors.
What's stupid is that NBCU has a great opportunity with a channel like Sci Fi or SyFy, but they don't know what to do with it or how to market it to the people who want a channel like that. I mean come on, there's a Golf channel, if that is sustainable, how in the heezy is a channel that is just sci-fi/fantasy not? Also, what is stupid is that in most of their press releases about the change have had many very thinly veiled insults to the people who do indeed want a channel that is exclusively genre-specific. Not cool NBCU, not cool.
So all that said, I don't think it is the name "SyFy" that people are pissed about--it's everything behind the name. Trust me Michael, we still love you.
And that's me done.
Happy St. Patty's Day folks.
P.S. Are you watching Castle? It's actually pretty awesome. Huzzah for Nathan Fillion. Gah, I'm an easy sale though, I love quirky murder mysteries.
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