Aw, how man years has Heather Havrilesky been watching TV? Eureka is Northern Exposure with science. Quirky, endearing, with likeable and irascible characters. The difference, in its third (or is it the fourth or fifth?) season, Eureka still manages plots, whereas NE had, by its second season, wandered off in a Native American trance of some sort.

So the SciFi channel is around 17-18 years old now. It's about time it hit it's art school pretentious stage. It's changing its name so the kids at college won't point and laugh... so they'll give it credence. Respectability. They'll be awed by it's new found savvy and edgy sophistication with just a hint of post-adolescent hipster irony. Sorry SciFi. Been there, done that. The truth is NBC, ABC, and Fox are just the frat boys giving the same old wedgies. Sure, you might get a nod from the History channel, but then they'll trying to convert you to the humanities. And don't get fooled by those Sundance Channel guys! They'll fawn and swoon over your new shinny, "adult" look, but in reality that's just a cheap ploy to get at your viewers. Face it SciFi... you can change your name all you like, but you're probably going to be in the dorm back with Discovery and TLC pretty soon. And you're going to marry either the Weather Channel or NASA TV. But look on the bright side... they know how to treat science right!

Everyone knows that the dangerous mystical objects of the world are kept in a secret section of the Metropolitan Library, where they are watched over by Noah Wylie.

i don't know what syfy is, but presumably it includes wrestling, people who talk to the dead for audience members, ghost hunter reality shows, reality shows where they scare people, and (last week) james bond movies, along with a lot of bad science fiction and fantasy, some medium to good sf, and battlestar galactica.

i knew it wouldn't end well from the beginning when they named it scifi. anybody into sf knew that anyone who called it scifi wasn't to be put in charge of programming movies for the convention.

In its original conception it was a channel which would run, and honor, all varieties of science fiction. It once had a weekly news show that even allowed Harlan Ellison, the most brilliant, cynical and upsetting mind in literature, to do editorials and commentaries. At the same time it would run old monster, space and weird series from the early Doctor Who episodes to the ancient American Men Into Space.

But it wasn't making enough money, or getting the demographics they wanted, so they threw out most of the legitimate old stuff (cheap as it was) and brought in wrestling, reality TV and infomercials. Their "original movies" were summed up by a friend as Bug Monster Of The Week. In announcing the name change to SyFy, a spokesman said something amounting to "Star Wars was a good movie watched by millions of people who weren't geeks living in their parents' basement and crippled with incurable social defects." Which they evidently assumed was the core audience for SciFi.

The name change is appropriate, I guess; they call that fast food place "KFC" because its food isn't from Kentucky, and it isn't really chicken. The SciFi Channel isn't science fiction, and it doesn't really channel anything but unimpressive programming, so calling it SyFy is truth in advertising. Perhaps their program schedule can be called SyFyList.

Anyway, thanks, Ms. Havrilesky, for mentioning Eureka, a show that deserves to be on a better network.

but so was the old name. God bless Forry Ackerman, but his coinage was awkward (it's not pronounce FYEC-shun), and bonded to the venue he first popularized it: Famous Monsters magazine. Most of the field has bowed to decades of common useage, but it still feels to some of us like a label for cheap rubber-monster flicks rather than, oh, the recent Battlestar Galactica.

Sounds like someone got inspired from the '80s show Friday the 13th: The Series.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092357/

Nojopar: There's only one thing worse than someone who can't tell its from it is: it's someone who appears aware that there is a difference between its and it's, but gets it wrong.

Is there anything more outdated than the warehouse, in this age of digital bartering?

Where exactly does she think the things we buy online are stored? Does she not know how Amazon works? Does she not know the reason .com companies failed the first time around was because beyond their cyber transactions no real exchange of goods was taking place? Does she really think things are so digitally organizied that a world beyond 0s and 1s online have ceased to exist or have relevence?

I mean, this is pretty basic. A warehouse is no more outdated in a digital age than a house or an apartment or actually storing food in the 'fridge.

Of course she knows this. She's just so carried away with her own rhetoric that she doesn't consider whether her readers are as willing to throw aside common sense as she is. I'm not sure we need the hard-sell to get interested in the shows she likes, anyway. Can't she ditch the rhetoric and just write a decent analysis? Why does she so often feel the need to hardsell us the shows she likes?

Dear Heather, please keep "Heather Havrilesky" as your moniker so I'll know what to read when I get up too early on Sunday mornings. Confusing me at this vulnerable time would not be sporting. Besides, you can't rebrand yourself as an asshole. That brand is already taken by Camille Paglia (assigned to her by the sadly missed Molly Ivins).

The term "sci-fi" is too generic to be trademarked for certain commercial purposes. There was also confusion over how to properly capitalize and hyphenate the name of the channel. The name "Syfy" solves both of these problems and thus the rebranding.

The original shows on Syfy are pretty decent. The original movies are an entirely different beast however. If you're into modern-day B-movies (like, legit, bad, not-ironic b-movies) or if you're really stoned and ready to laugh, they're the best. Otherwise, its about the exact opposite of what I'd imagine the average Salonista looks for in their TV viewing, lol.