Current mood:

geeky

File under: How fucking stupid is THAT?
"During its fourth-quarter earnings call, parent General Electric said Sci Fi racked up a double-digit increase in operating earnings despite the beginnings of the recession.

Nevertheless, there was always a sneaking suspicion that the name was holding the network back.

“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,” said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network."

http://www.tvweek.com/news/2009/03/sci_fi_channel_aims_to_shed_ge.php

That's right, Hey! It made money! Let's screw with it! Double digit increases while the rest of the company is falling apart (due to corporate mismanagement-through-greed, but that's a rant for another time)? Can't have that! That can't POSSIBLY mean we're doing something right already!

And then people wonder why the economy is tanking.

And I'm not even going to go off on the rant about the idea that we women are "in particular" turned away from the name "Sci Fi". Because we poor little delicate flowers couldn't possibly have the brains to understand or be interested in something imaginative or thought-provoking! But boy, you take out the c and change those i's to y's and golly! We'll never be able to tell that it's really a channel about science fiction! Being considered too stupid to tell the difference, yeah, THAT's the way to draw in those women! (Or maybe it's shades of "womyn" or "wymyn" or however they're spelling it now).

Not to mention, the best way to grow your station is OBVIOUSLY to insult your primary demographic, a cross-generation, tech-savvy, word-of-mouth-driven demographic, who are the ones most likely to create great big websites and blog posts (like this one) to tell the world how stupid you really are. Yeah. That's brilliant marketing right there.