10 Reasons the SyFy Channel Sucks

[tmc_6882]

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10 Reasons the SyFy Channel SucksJanuary 20th, 2013 at 10:27 am by Jeremy Conrad

When the SciFi Channel launched on September 24, 1992 geeks around the world rejoiced. Finally there was a cable channel totally dedicated to science fiction. On that first day, the very first thing SciFi ever ran was Star Wars. Sure, the early years were dominated by re-runs of old series, but the channel was a great one-stop-shop series people hadn’t seen in years.

Over its history the SciFi Channel has had a poisonous relationship with fans as they tend to cancel good shows and replace them with cheap to make reality shows that have nothing to do with science fiction. Simply put, the SyFy Channel now sucks and there are ten reasons why.

Check out our sequel to this list, 5 Cable Channels That Are More “SciFi” Than SyFy!

Wrestling

Before wrestling fans break their keyboards in anger over this, I’m a huge WWE fan and watch both Raw and Smackdown every week. But neither one has any place on the SyFy Channel. The Friday Smackdown block could be better used for original programming, but instead they show wrestling on a channel the originally showed things like Star Wars, Quantum Leap, and Lost in Space.

Ghost Hunters

Ignoring the fact that the Ghost Hunters have been proven to be big fakers who stage their night vision haunting videos for the show, this franchise also has nothing to do with the SyFy Channel. If it was on Chill, or some other channel targeted more toward horror, I think it would fit better. But all of these Ghost Hunter shows fit SyFy as much as Smackdown does.

Stupid Reality Shows

Viral Video Showdown? Are your fracking kidding me? The SyFy Channel actually pays an intern to troll through YouTube, sort by “most views”, and they turn that into a show? And that’s just one of the stupid reality shows they have on the channel. And don’t even get me started on Scare Tactics.

SyFy Original Movies

SyFy’s original movies are a joke and nothing more than a ploy to get ratings out of sheer audience curiosity at how terrible they are as opposed to actually being “good” bad movies. If SyFy wants to air some scifi “B” movies on Saturday nights, there’s a very large library available without having to produce shit movies that everyone rolls their eyes at. If SyFy would show movies like Battle Beyond the Stars or Cannibal the Musical (with the drunken Trey Parker and Matt Stone commentary track) on Saturday nights, I know I’d watch.

SyFy

The whole reason they changed their name from the “SciFi Channel” to “SyFy” was money. “SciFi” was a general term that they couldn’t trademark, and thus control, so they changed the name to something stupid. As a result they seemed to decide that their programming could go beyond just scifi and into crap and stuff that has no business being on a science fiction channel.

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Farscape

Farscape was the beginning of the decline for the SciFi Channel. While it’s true the series was expensive to produce, with the amazing work being done by the Creature Shop on it, the show was one of the most amazing science fiction programs on television, and SciFi cancelled the show before they could end the story. That forced the creators to wrap everything up in a short mini-series on another network. Farscape deserved to live as long as fans wanted it around.

Caprica

Some shows need more than ten or thirteen episodes to find their footing, but SyFy cancelled the Battlestar Galactica prequel before it even completed its first full season. And what took Caprica‘s place one the channel? Another cheap reality series and Ghost Hunters spin-off.

Battlestar Galactica

Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica is now regarded as a modern science fiction masterpiece. Thanks to SyFy shuffling it around the schedule and delaying premieres long after it aired in the UK and Canada, the series struggled for ratings in the US. Add to that the cost of the series, which was actually co-financed by other international networks besides SyFy, the series was always in danger of cancellation. Finally, the producers came to an agreement with SyFy to end the series after four years. The result was a fourth season that many fans still argue about in regards to its quality.

Stargate Universe

Anyone who pays attention to SyFy knows that they like to cancel shows after four or five seasons. After they cancelled Stargate: Atlantis after five seasons, they launched Stargate Universe. The problem was that the Stargate shows were sort of the light-hearted family-friendly, but still intelligent and moral, replacements for weekly Star Trek episodes. With Stargate Universe they tried to make it a dark replacement for Battlestar Galactica, and people really didn’t tune in. So SyFy cancelled it after two seasons, leaving the story with a cliffhanger ending that likely won’t be resolved (since the TV/DVD movie was cancelled).

Stargate: SG1

Why is SG-1 on this list? Didn’t it last for ten years? Yes, but only five years on the SciFi Channel. The first five years were on Showtime, and then SciFi bought it. It nearly didn’t even get a 10th season. The only reason they allowed the show to go for a fifth season on the network was for the marketing bullet point of being the longest-running North American scifi series as they had it go one more year than X-Files before canceling it.

[dale coba]

Yes, they are utterly guilty of all those sins.

- Dale Coba

[WilloWisp]

10 Reasons...

Not nearly enough.

[freakofn99]

I wondered why SG-1 got dragged out so long...

[D.Olivaw]

True on every point and more.

I realized where Stargate SG1 (A show I loved) had gotten to in season 10 when Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks just started joking around with each other, going completely off-script, in a supposedly serious scene where Michael Shanks' character was manacled to a torture-table. Admittedly, that was pretty fun in and of itself, but it indicated that it was well past time to pack it in.

Wherefore art thou Syfy? Wherefore? Alas, whence a home for Scifi

[Rotwang]

One of the reasons it and other theme channels have become this uniform mush with vague hints of diversity is mostly due to the ratings system which places an inordinate amount of importance on "floating viewers" the chunk of people who spend most of their time clicking away with the remote trying to find something interesting to watch. This is why we get all these cheap reality shows and crazy stuff that draws the attention (Aliens ! Mummies ! Sharks !). Same thing for those documentaries that recap the story every five minutes with the promise of a "shock revelation" (Was Hitler a reptilian alien ? Did the Mayans invent windows 95 ?) at the end. A show may have millions of faithful viewers, but they count for squat if it doesn't have enough floating viewers it gets cancelled. As a result the system encourages channels to dumb down their programming from both sides because there is no pressure to deliver quality (just make a lot of noise with as many weird colourful people and outlandish concepts (Pawn truckers digging for Hitler's Egyptian alien mummies in Alaska when sharks attack !)) or even remain on topic because they all try to broaden their appeal to as many people as possible.

[King Snarf]

That list is missing MST3K. "Hey, could you guys do season-long story arcs?" Now, granted, we still got some killer bits out of that (every single host segment in Prince of Space, for instance), but really, MST3K is one of the shows that is LEAST suited for meta-plots.

[DukeNukem 2417]

I have an Eleventh reason: Doctor Who. Or more specifically, how these ASSHATS at "SyFy" screwed over one of the most beloved Brtitish science-fiction shows of all time. The Tenth Doctor's seasons were RUINED (the "Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" two-parter especially), and they never even showed the specials---seriously, I'm glad BBC America got the license, because otherwise I'd have no idea if the show went on after "Journey's End".

[tmc_6882]

I have an Eleventh reason: Doctor Who. Or more specifically, how these ASSHATS at "SyFy" screwed over one of the most beloved Brtitish science-fiction shows of all time. The Tenth Doctor's seasons were RUINED (the "Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" two-parter especially), and they never even showed the specials---seriously, I'm glad BBC America got the license, because otherwise I'd have no idea if the show went on after "Journey's End".

10 Actual Mistakes that Syfy Has Made Over the Years