http://www.syfy.com
SyFy Channel circa 2015 is a disastrous reminder of what can happen to a former, perfectly good Science Fiction channel when the wrong people own it and manage it.
This..."Thing"...(SyFy)....circa 2015....broadcasting over the cable airwaves right now is a generic...undesignated....general interest....nothing in particular....badly managed...cable channel about nothing...with no discernible on-air identity to speak of. Occasionally dipping its toes in the waters of attempted Science Fiction and sucking at it...SyFy Channel does everything wrong 100% of the time, all of the time...moving from one programming disaster to the next. With wrestling being its base anchor of what is unquestionably trash television...this channel with no discernible on-air identity then proceeds to ricochet all over the map (from wrestling) to an unpalatable, generic smorgasbord of bad programming ideas executed badly.
How did this once great Science Fiction channel from the mid, late 1990s get into such a sorry state of existing barely by the skin of its teeth 15 some years later? Let's review the facts and review the deterioration and devastation....
1. From day one, corporate owners (Seagram Universal, Vivendi-Universal, and NBC-Universal) never had any great love for Science Fiction in the first place. So, why did they purchase a Science Fiction channel in the first place?
2. This corporation began whittling away at this once great Science Fiction channel bit by bit. Cancelling and replacing all of the great Science Fiction shows on this channel with garbage, generic substitutes. "Crossing Over With John Edward"..."Dream Team"...."Scare Tactics"....."Into The Crapper With Wil Wheaton"...."Marcel's Quantum Kitchen"...."Ghost Hunters"...."Haunted Highway"....and "Sciography" (cancelled after two episodes.)
3. Never has a corporation (Universal Studios) expressed more hatred towards what it owns regardless of its corporate parent (Seagram, Vivendi, NBC)...than the hatred Universal Studios has expressed towards "Battlestar Galactica." Primarily during the decade of the 2000s, this corporation unleashed its full fury of hatred on this show with Ronald D. Moore's hostile and venom filled...."GINO" - (Galactica in Name Only) series which (by the eventual admission of Ronald D. Moore and Edward James Olmos) really wasn't "Battlestar Galactica" at all. (What curious viewers always knew from day one and eventually abandoned the show en masse because of it.) Moore and Olmos collectively and eventually revealed that "GINO" was instead..."A darker and grittier version of "Star Trek: Voyager"...and an attempt to do...."Blade Runner"....for television. This "GINO" series (those involved with it) also verbally attacking the..."1978 Battlestar Galactica"... series and its fans during its advertising campaign primarily on the old http://www.scifi.com/galactica board during the 2000s.
4. The vast majority of intelligent television viewers (intelligent television viewers this corporation has never acknowledged) knew the former Sci-Fi Channel was truly finished when this corporation began...
a. Insulting Science fiction fans in general by calling them...."Nerds living in their parents basements."
b. Showing Non-Science Fiction movies and tv shows appearing on the schedule. The "Cape Fear" movie, "Crossing Over With John Edward", "Wrestling" , cooking shows, "Scare Tactics", "Dream Team", etc. Even now, "C.S.I." reruns have been shown on this channel.
5. It is now very apparent that all of this venom directed at Science Fiction fans by this corporation was masking something truly appalling and sinister. It's own inability to express any imagination and inspired
thinking in managing what is supposed to be a Science Fiction channel. The blunt reviews of Ronald D. Moore's "GINO" - (Galactica in Name Only) series (those reviews not stealth marketing authored) revealed the common complaint against the series: Aside from not being "Battlestar Galactica"....it's staggering lack of imagination and curiosity in not wanting to explore a colorful universe historically populated with extraterrestrial bad guys, exotic and alien worlds, imaginative costumes and makeup, and imaginative art direction / production design. Worlds and universes you have never seen before. These are all symptoms of a corporation, (Seagram, Vivendi, NBC) suffering from a total lack of imagination and inspired thinking. Instead, "GINO" was strictly Earth centered, soap opera melodrama with contemporary settings and wardrobe. (Business suits, eyeglasses, 1940s automobiles.)
"GINO" was a very strange series. Like the SyFy Channel's lack of a discernible on-air identity, "GINO" was a tv series also without a discernible identity. Fragments of "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Blade Runner" thrown in, with some spaceship fleet off somewhere used only as scant reference. While the primary focus was actors in business suits under sunny skies here on Earth talking about meaningless nonsense of a soap opera kind that did nothing to advance the identity of this dysfunctional and never properly conceived series.
6. The rare attempts when the SyFy Channel does attempt a Science Fiction television series, the results aren't interesting in the slightest. "Boredom" can easily and always be mentioned in the same sentence with..."12 Monkeys"...."Helix"....and...."GINO" - (Galactica in Name Only.) These shows are never produced and written very well. They never get good ratings, and are inexplicably renewed for a second season or more.
7. This corporation (Universal) usually likes to make television series out of what they already own. Unfortunately, the results are always underwhelming to say the least...."12 Monkeys"..... "GINO"....because the concepts weren't the slightest bit interesting in the first place. That's why the ratings always suck on these shows. And usually what Universal owns is and was boring as shit to begin with. And what Universal usually chooses to make a SyFy television series out of from what they own is boring as shit and makes a boring as shit television series. Doesn't Universal own..."The Questor Tapes?"....Now that would be an interesting concept to make a tv series out of...the tv movie from 1974 starring Mike Farrell and Robert Foxworth. A refreshing change from the two massively overused concepts Universal usually loves to beat to death and bring back to life on the SyFy Channel...."Time travel and a virus."
8. This corporation (Universal) hasn't run what is supposed to be a Science Fiction channel in the manner in should be run. But rather, runs the channel (SyFy) in a way which is the easiest for them to run it. No imagination....no inspired thinking...running SyFy as a generic.....no on-air identity cable channel making it open to moment by moment scheduling decisions of the crappiest kind....Wrestling...a cooking show...."GINO"...."Into The Crapper With Wil Wheaton"..."C.S.I." reruns...the..."Cape Fear"....movie.
Generic, corporate blandness, imagination deficient, inspired thinking deficient, always taking the easy way out in managing....typical status quo claptrap....nonsense in mismanaging a cable channel.
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Read the books Universal Studios has tried and failed to censor on Amazon.com...
http://languatron.freeforums.org/viewforum.php?f=60
And read these books at another location where Universal Studios executives and its stealth marketers won't be able to post negative, misleading (stealth marketed) reviews of the books via them purchasing candy and Rogaine Foam on Amazon.com (allowing them access to the Amazon book review section) and not actually buying and reading the books. I'll leave the other 150 global locations under wraps for now.
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