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Sci Fi Channel To Change Name To Syfy

Sci Fi

Jamie Bamber as Lee "Apollo" Adama, Edward James Olmos as Admiral William Adama, Katee Sackhoff as Kara "Starbuck" Thrace appear in Sci Fi Channel's most popular series, " Battlestar Galactica." The series finale airs Friday at 9 p.m.

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By WALT BELCHER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 16, 2009

What's in a name? If Sci Fi becomes Syfy will viewers be able to find it?

A name change is in the works for the Sci Fi Channel. NBC Universal, which owns the science fiction and fantasy network, is set to announce today Sci Fi and its companion Web site (scifi.com) to morph into Syfy — pronounced the same as "Sci Fi" — on July 7.

The new name will be accompanied by the slogan "Imagine Greater," which replaces a logo featuring a stylized version of Saturn.

Network executives say that the current name "Sci Fi," which has been the network's name since 1992, is too limiting for all that the network offers.

The Sci Fi Channel has about as much fantasy as it science fiction and there's some reality programming too with series like "Ghost Hunters."

Many science fiction fans are familiar with the Web site SyFy Portal, run by Michael Hinman, a Tampa sci-fi buff and writer for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

Hinman says he sold the name to an undisclosed party last month for an undisclosed "but substantial" sum.

His SyFy Portal has been renamed Airlock Alpha, found at www.airlockalpha.com.

He says that he is certain the purchase, made through a New York attorney, was for NBC Universal. "We owned the rights to 'SyFy' and this offer to buy it came out of the blue," he said in a telephone interview this morning.

"The amount paid indicates the buyer was serious about getting the rights," he said. "And this is great because we have always been big supporters of the network."

Officials at Sci Fi say the name change is part of a rebranding campaign that seeks to distinguish the channel and its programming from cable competitors.

The new campaign will be introduced today to advertisers and agencies at an "upfront presentation" (when networks try to win commitments by advertisers to blocks of commercial time before the start of the next TV season). Cable channels will spend this month and next making upfront presentations; the broadcast networks will follow in April and May.

One problem in marketing the Sci Fi logo was that the term is so generic that it could not be trademarked, company officials said.

Syfy, with its unusual spelling, can be. "This is why I used "SyFy Portal" in the first place so I could trademark it," says Hinman.

"We couldn't own Sci Fi; it's a genre," says Bonnie Hammer, the former president of Sci Fi who became the president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions. "But we can own Syfy."

The current Sci Fi president, Dave Howe, says that the Sci Fi name "is limiting."

"If you ask people their default perceptions of Sci Fi, they list space, aliens and the future," he says. "That doesn't capture the full landscape of fantasy entertainment: the paranormal, the supernatural, action and adventure, superheroes."

Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at (813) 259-7654.

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