The Sci-Fi Channel

[DarrenTR1970]

We had a combination of great original shows and miniseries (Farscape, Battlerstar Galactica, Eureka, Tin Man, The Invisible Man, The Dresden Files)

Wow, Tin Man...been a long time since anyone mentioned that.

I remember loving Tin Man at the time but I wonder if it'll hold up well upon rewatch. It does have a killer cast (Zooey Deschanel, Alan Cumming, Neal McDonough, Callum Keith Ritchie, among others) and I remember it being wonderfully zany, which is honestly the best way to handle Oz anyways.

CometTV occasionally runs 'Tin Man' on the weekends as part of a Fantasy/Sci-Fi mini-series marathon. From what I've watched, it has some strong performances from the cast and nice visuals. Since I'm not watching it all in one sitting, and it's more on in the background, the story feels a little confusing at times.

 

[Anwar]

CometTV occasionally runs 'Tin Man' on the weekends as part of a Fantasy/Sci-Fi mini-series marathon. From what I've watched, it has some strong performances from the cast and nice visuals. Since I'm not watching it all in one sitting, and it's more on in the background, the story feels a little confusing at times.

The whole thing is on YouTube and Tubi for free, actually. For some reason the Sci-Fi/Syfy channel doesn't seem to care about their older miniseries being free to watch anymore.

It's the same with the 2000 Dune Miniseries, Children of Dune, Alice, Neverland, Taken...

 

[The Nightmare Doctor]

The whole thing is on YouTube and Tubi for free, actually. For some reason the Sci-Fi/Syfy channel doesn't seem to care about their older miniseries being free to watch anymore.

It's the same with the 2000 Dune Miniseries, Children of Dune, Alive, Neverland, Taken...

Damn, I had no idea all of those were available on YouTube for free. I'll have to look up Tin Man and watch it again when I can.

 

[marillion]

With all due respect to The Nth Doctor, I was in my 20s (I'm REALLY old) when I first discovered the Sci-Fi Channel. My wife and I had saved up for a weekend trip to a cabin in the mountains down in Ruidoso, NM. The cabin had cable (we couldn't afford it at the time) that included the channel. They were showing old Dr. Who and a Godzilla movie at the time. It was my first experience with cable shows rotating the same programming on the same evening, which is a staple for all cable channels now.

I do still enjoy some of it's programming now, but my wife isn't into science fiction, so we really don't watch it now. I do miss the old days (much like with MTV), however.

 

[Christopher]

It was my first experience with cable shows rotating the same programming on the same evening, which is a staple for all cable channels now.

Oh, yeah. I think that was to accommodate different time zones. Instead of having two different feeds for Eastern/Central and Mountain/Pacific, like broadcast networks, they just showed the whole prime-time lineup twice in a row.

 

[Anwar]

I'm Canadian, my first glimpse of it was on a trip to the US in the mid 90s. We had it here via a Satellite TV set up but around the early 2000s the Canadian company had removed it from their lineup. But we'd had the Space Channel for years by then so it didn't bother me.

I will admit, last Halloween when I was in the US for a trip I was hoping I'd get it there and...it wasn't included.

 

[Owain Taggart]

When I'm visiting the U.S and sometimes staying in a hotel, I've always found it weird that the Weather Channel shows movies. In Canada that's not allowed via channel mandates, and it's for similar reasons why the Space Channel (CTV Sci-Fi now) adhered so strictly to showing sci-fi and fantasy instead of diverging into Wrestling and reality TV. It made for a better more focused channel for those who like Sci-fi.

 

[Anwar]

When I'm visiting the U.S and sometimes staying in a hotel, I've always found it weird that the Weather Channel shows movies. In Canada that's not allowed via channel mandates, and it's for similar reasons why the Space Channel (CTV Sci-Fi now) adhered so strictly to showing sci-fi and fantasy instead of diverging into Wrestling and reality TV.

And I'm deeply grateful it did, especially once I heard about how skewed the Sci-Fi Channels' programming had become circa 2010 or do.

Only things I wish we got were the re-runs of the Twilight Zone and Tales from the Darkside and stuff.

 

[Christopher]

When I'm visiting the U.S and sometimes staying in a hotel, I've always found it weird that the Weather Channel shows movies. In Canada that's not allowed via channel mandates, and it's for similar reasons why the Space Channel (CTV Sci-Fi now) adhered so strictly to showing sci-fi and fantasy instead of diverging into Wrestling and reality TV. It made for a better more focused channel for those who like Sci-fi.

The problem with commercial television is that it's hard for niche programming to survive, because it doesn't attract as many advertising dollars as more generic programming with wider appeal. I've seen so many specialty cable networks transform into generic networks. A&E used to stand for Arts & Entertainment and carry classy programming like PBS. Discovery used to be a science channel, now it's "reality" garbage. The "reality" channel TruTV used to be CourtTV, showing round-the-clock trial coverage. The Nashville Network, devoted to country music, became the more generic TNN and then Spike TV. Of course, MTV stopped being Music Television ages ago. As long as programming is dependent on advertiser buys and ratings to stay on the air, generic crowd-pleasing stuff will win out over specialized content.

Which is why government-funded public television is so important -- though even PBS has become more like a commercial network over time.

 

[Owain Taggart]

And I'm deeply grateful it did, especially once I heard about how skewed the Sci-Fi Channels' programming had become circa 2010 or do.

Agreed. I think American channels tend to erode their own viewerbase erode by letting their channels diverge. You want a strong marketable channel, stick to your guns.

The problem with commercial television is that it's hard for niche programming to survive, because it doesn't attract as many advertising dollars as more generic programming with wider appeal.

Oh, I know. But if you change your channel, your niche will find it even harder to survive. In Canada, if a channel tries to do that, it can get fined for going off-mandate. What they have to do, if they want to change, is first apply to the CRTC (the regulatory body), but it doesn't always get accepted.

 

[Christopher]

Agreed. I think American channels tend to erode their own viewerbase erode by letting their channels diverge. You want a strong marketable channel, stick to your guns.

That's just it, though. Channels that appeal to niche interests, like a science channel or a country-music channel or a trial-coverage channel, aren't "marketable" to as large an audience as a channel with more generic, lowest-common-denominator programming like "reality" TV or police procedurals or movie reruns. So niche channels struggling to make a profit often rebrand with more conventional programming that draws a larger audience.

Oh, I know. But if you change your channel, your niche will find it even harder to survive.

That doesn't matter to the advertisers. They're only willing to buy ad time on a show if they think it will attract a large enough audience of customers to be worth the investment. The advertisers couldn't care less if a niche survives, since their target is the largest possible audience. And commercial networks can only survive if they have advertiser support. That's why so many niche networks have been forced to abandon their niches and embrace generic programming, since if they didn't, they wouldn't have been able to stay in business at all. You can talk all you want about how they should stick with their niche audience, but if they can't earn enough money to stay in business, they can't serve that audience anyway, since they won't exist anymore.

The only way a niche channel can really endure is either with government funding like PBS, or through direct subscription like HBO or C-SPAN. Those are the only ways to be free from advertiser pressure to cater to the lowest common denominator.

I'm not sure why it would be different in Canada, but maybe it has something to do with Canada's population being about 12% of the US's. Maybe that means that a niche fanbase is a larger percentage of the overall population, though I'm not sure why it wouldn't be proportional. But I'm thinking by analogy with how smaller species populations are often amenable to more evolutionary leaps than large populations because a novel mutation is less likely to be swamped and outcompeted.

 

[Owain Taggart]

^ Ahh, but see, we see it through the lens of different cultural ideologies. Our channels don't try to market themselves to wider audiences, and therefore we have no cause to appeal to them, in the first place. And the advertisers in turn know what they're getting into with these certain channels, and their demo remains stable. And in terms of sci-fi, there will always be sci-fi, so it's seen as a safe bet. And those watching the channel know exactly what to expect. And that's just one example.

What ends up happening instead are rebrands, but it happens very rarely, and in most cases entire new channels are created to follow the trends in content.

The downside though is that we tend to have a lot of channel graveyards, ie former popular channels that end up only airing repeats and no new content. Rather than closing them, they're kept as part of the packages, and that's how advertisers generate revenue.

 

[Christopher]

And in terms of sci-fi, there will always be sci-fi, so it's seen as a safe bet.

That still sounds weird to me as someone who grew up in a time when sci-fi/fantasy was seen as a disreputable or kiddie niche and genre shows struggled to survive. Nobody prior to the late '80s or '90s, at least, would've seen genre as a safe bet.

Still, Syfy is one of the few cable channels that's managed to retain a semblance of its original niche focus, even if it's mostly just movie reruns these days. But it still wasn't immune from advertising pressures. Its heyday of smart original programming in the 2000s-10s was largely funded by the big bucks it made from showing prime-time wrestling.

 

[JD]

The Nashville Network, devoted to country music, became the more generic TNN and then Spike TV.

And Spike was meant to be a network geared towards young men, but it's since gone on to become the even more generic Paramount Network. And I still find it strange that we now have a Paramount Network, but it doesn't show and Star Trek, which is probably Paramount's best known franchise.

Does anybody here watch Reginald the Vampire or Astrid and Lily Save the World, the other Syfy Originals besides Resident Alien and SurReal Estate?
I watched the trailers for them the other day, and they look kinda OK.

 

[Owain Taggart]

That still sounds weird to me as someone who grew up in a time when sci-fi/fantasy was seen as a disreputable or kiddie niche and genre shows struggled to survive. Nobody prior to the late '80s or '90s, at least, would've seen genre as a safe bet.

Yeah, and I can see why, but like I said, it's a different cultural ideology at play. And in terms of that specific channel, the only real thing that's changed over the last several years is the name. Channels apply for specific mandates and they can't do something like add wrestling to a sci-fi channel. If they fail to serve that mandate, then their licenses can be revoked.

And then there are other channel types that have French & English versions, such as our Weather channels, and our MTV equivalent, MuchMusic. Though that last one has gone extinct due to changing trends.

 

[Christopher]

And Spike was meant to be a network geared towards young men, but it's since gone on to become the even more generic Paramount Network.

Oh yeah, that's right. That happened after I dropped cable.

I was always a bit offended on behalf of my gender by SpikeTV's definition of what constituted male-oriented programming. It's weird how male-dominated culture has such a low opinion of men's intelligence and maturity.

 

[Anwar]

And Spike was meant to be a network geared towards young men, but it's since gone on to become the even more generic Paramount Network. And I still find it strange that we now have a Paramount Network, but it doesn't show and Star Trek, which is probably Paramount's best known franchise.

Does anybody here watch Reginald the Vampire or Astrid and Lily Save the World, the other Syfy Originals besides Resident Alien and SurReal Estate?
I watched the trailers for them the other day, and they look kinda OK.

I watched Astrid and Lily, I'm looking forward to the SyFy channel doing "Revival" later this year. The one about dead people coming back to life with healing factors.

 

[Anson Mount Seleya]

In Canada, if a channel tries to do that, it can get fined for going off-mandate. What they have to do, if they want to change, is first apply to the CRTC (the regulatory body), but it doesn't always get accepted.

I dunno, there's a lot of off-mandate stuff on Canadian cable channels. In addition to the crime dramas that air on CTV Sci-Fi I mentioned earlier, they're also known to air a lot of non-sci-fi movies, some of which don't even have the flimsy genre connections they use with the aforementioned shows, like the Fast and Furious movies. The Canadian History Channel also has a thing for crime dramas which don't have any historical connections at all, like NCIS Los Angeles, FBI Most Wanted and SWAT. They used to run JAG, though that at least fit thematically with all the military related programming they had at the time (not all of which was historical). And that's before you get into the non-historical stuff they acquired from the American History Channel like Pawn Stars and other shows like it. Ironically, our channel devoted to crime dramas has sci-fi content like The Outer Limits. And then there's Vision, the religious programming channel which shows British sitcoms, many of which have nothing to do with religion.

If there's a penalty in Canada for cable channels going off-mandate, there must be one hell of a loophole for getting around it.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I dunno, there's a lot of off-mandate stuff on Canadian cable channels. In addition to the crime dramas that air on CTV Sci-Fi I mentioned earlier, they're also known to air a lot of non-sci-fi movies, some of which don't even have the flimsy genre connections they use with the aforementioned shows, like the Fast and Furious movies.

I haven't watched it in years, mind you, but yeah, crime doesn't really belong on there. I wonder if some of the rules have gotten looser in recent years.

If there's a penalty in Canada for cable channels going off-mandate, there must be one hell of a loophole for getting around it.

Yeah, dunno what's up with that, but I do know that in the past some have tried to skirt by and gotten penalized. But hey, it's Bell, and maybe they're too big for the CRTC to care.

 

[Mr. Spook]

I was glued too SFC for the old reruns. I had zero interest in their new content, I was all about building my video library of Lost in Space, Space:1999, The Incredible Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man, Land of the Giants, Planet of the Apes and others. I discovered The Immortal and Otherworld, and fell in love with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

They butchered these shows mercilessly and the SFC logo was BURNED into the corner of the screen, but this was all we had. I got obsessed with Voyage and they had the junkiest, most shopworn prints 20th could supply them. I found a Canadian fan who sent me a bunch of Space: The Imagination Station which were from the same prints but uncut, but those SFC days were a joy thanks to the thrill of discovery.

I didn't bother with their Star Trek runs because I had the entire series uncut by then on VHS.