Sci Fi Channel Has a New Name: Now, It’s Syfy

New York Times, March 16, 2009 — FOR years, television viewers, journalists who write about TV and services that compile listings have wondered how to refer to a certain cable network: Sci Fi Channel? Sci-Fi Channel? SciFi Channel? SCI FI Channel?

Soon, to paraphrase Rod Serling — whose vintage series, “The Twilight Zone,” is a mainstay of the Sci Fi Channel — executives will submit for public approval another name, not only of sight and sound but of mind, meant to signal a channel whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead — your next stop, Syfy.

Sci-Fi Channel to Rename Itself Syfy†

NBC Universal Wanted 'Brand It Could Own'

Advertising Age, March 16, 2009 — Sci-Fi Channel, the home of "Battlestar Galactica," "Eureka" and "Ghost Hunters," is offering advertisers more than new programming this year. It's offering up a whole new name.

Sci Fi Channel is game to join the virtual world

The channel is teaming with a gaming company to create a TV series that also plays out on the Web. Fans would help shape the story arc.

Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2008 — Can two alien cultures coexist in one writers room? Sci Fi is entering a brave new world by teaming television writers with video-game designers to create a franchise that is both a television series and a massive multiplayer game on the Internet — more than that, the fans who play the game will actually help shape the show's story arc with their virtual exploits.

"This is the Holy Grail for us, without a doubt," said Dave Howe, president of the Sci Fi Channel, which has teamed with Trion World Network, an on-the-rise gaming company based in Redwood City, Calif. "This is groundbreaking, and I don't say that lightly."

At Sci Fi Channel, the Universe Is Expanding and the Future Is Now

New York Times, May 19, 2008 — The letters still keep coming to the Rockefeller Center offices of the Sci Fi Channel. Please, they all say, pick up “Jericho,” the science fiction show with a small but passionate following that was canceled in March by CBS, for a third season.

But those letters are falling on deaf ears. The Sci Fi Channel, still viewed by many as a niche network, is no longer a repository for failed fantasy shows cast aside by the broadcast networks. Instead, through a mix of original shows, movies and syndicated reruns (including old “Jericho” episodes but no new ones), the network has expanded its audience, especially among women, chiefly by stretching the definition of science fiction.

Sci-Fi Invites Bloggers to Meet Cast and Crew†

First Web 2.0 Press Tour Opens Dialogue With Fervent Fans

Advertising Age, June 29, 2007 — The Sci-Fi Channel this week indulged in a new spin on an old PR move by hosting a junket, for bloggers. The NBC Universal science fiction cable network's first "digital press tour" rounded up a couple dozen of its most important and influential online enthusiasts and reviewers and whisked them off to Vancouver for an almost week long Sci-Fi shindig.

Why Sci-Fi Grabs More Than Geeks†

Human-Focused Content, Novel Marketing Pushes Channel Into Mainstream

Advertising Age, April 23, 2007 — You can't just stick Spock ears on Patrick Dempsey and make a Vulcan McDreamy. But that's just what Sci-Fi Channel has struggled with for years. How do you make the channel's extraterrestrial fare palatable to the mass market — and to mass marketers? What its come up with is a combination of content changes, innovative marketing ideas that go beyond 30-second spots and closer ties to parent network NBC to help widen the channel's appeal.