82 replies to this topic

[SavageMind]

Hey all,
I was raised on Sci-Fi and am a die hard fan of the channel. However I have seen so much ***** on the channel it makes me not want to watch it. B movie marathons eating up the weekends. Giant Crocs, Spiders, Mosquitos and Killer Yeti are not doing it for me anymore. I remember when you could see a Star Trek title on Sci-Fi. Did the channel get in a tiff with paramount? How about Space 1999, Babylon 5, the original Battlestar Galactica, and some classic movies like Laserblast, The Day the Earth stood still, and Battle beyond the stars. C'mon let's bring it back to the way it started. Thanks

[SylvreWolfe]

Hey all,
I was raised on Sci-Fi and am a die hard fan of the channel. However I have seen so much ***** on the channel it makes me not want to watch it. B movie marathons eating up the weekends. Giant Crocs, Spiders, Mosquitos and Killer Yeti are not doing it for me anymore. I remember when you could see a Star Trek title on Sci-Fi. Did the channel get in a tiff with paramount? How about Space 1999, Babylon 5, the original Battlestar Galactica, and some classic movies like Laserblast, The Day the Earth stood still, and Battle beyond the stars. C'mon let's bring it back to the way it started. Thanks

Alas, it appears as though the days of yore are gone for good.

[zzombie8]

Hey all,
I was raised on Sci-Fi and am a die hard fan of the channel. However I have seen so much ***** on the channel it makes me not want to watch it. B movie marathons eating up the weekends. Giant Crocs, Spiders, Mosquitos and Killer Yeti are not doing it for me anymore. I remember when you could see a Star Trek title on Sci-Fi. Did the channel get in a tiff with paramount? How about Space 1999, Babylon 5, the original Battlestar Galactica, and some classic movies like Laserblast, The Day the Earth stood still, and Battle beyond the stars. C'mon let's bring it back to the way it started. Thanks

I miss the old days when I could tune into Space 1999 daily on a young SciFi channel.
Those were fun times.

[soundping]

yeah The sci-fi channel is setting it's self up for a buy out. That's what I see here.

[joxerfan]

Hey all,
I was raised on Sci-Fi and am a die hard fan of the channel. However I have seen so much ***** on the channel it makes me not want to watch it. B movie marathons eating up the weekends. Giant Crocs, Spiders, Mosquitos and Killer Yeti are not doing it for me anymore. I remember when you could see a Star Trek title on Sci-Fi. Did the channel get in a tiff with paramount? How about Space 1999, Babylon 5, the original Battlestar Galactica, and some classic movies like Laserblast, The Day the Earth stood still, and Battle beyond the stars. C'mon let's bring it back to the way it started. Thanks

Dont look now, but Star Trek is still on the channel, both the most recent tv series (tonight and every Monday nioght for over a year now) plus the movies turn up frequently too. You may need to do a little research next time.


The reason they don't show old reruns of shows that got cancelled because not enough people watched them is because when tney did....not enough people watched them. You could have watched The Day the Earth Stood Still just yesterday on AMC - there's even a thread about it. But there's a very limited market for things like that, and Sci-Fi can attract literally 500-1000% more viewers by showing things that other people like. They don't want to bring it back to the way it started - they please more people now, and do a better job at entertaining them.

All those things are available on vhs and dvd though at your local rental store, so if you really do want for an audience of one to be entertained, you can simply rent them and watchy them as often as you like.

BTW - making these suggestions to primarily teenaged viewers of the network online is not the way to make suggestions to the network; check out the "feedback" feature, the FAQ and the terms of service above.

And tune in to Sci-Fi for more Giant Crocs, Spiders, Mosquitos and Killer Yeti!

[Nannyjo]

C'mon let's bring it back to the way it started. Thanks

Yeah, I could do with a few less "SciFi Channel Original Movies" if they would put the money they saved into getting some of those great older shows

[joxerfan]

Welll, no, they're not saving money - it costs very little to air a 50 year old movie or a 30 year old tv show... whereas it cost Sci-Fi upwards of a million $$ as their share of the production costs of an original movie.

But when they air a movie that only a few people want to see, they break even at best, whereas if they air a movie that millions of people want to see, they make millions of dollars in profits. And do a better job at pleasing their audience. (The millions, not the dozens.)

[DrBaltar94539]

There use to be a time when I wanted SFC as part of my cable subscription package. Now I don't even care anymore if I don't get it. OTOH, they have a nice message board.

[Tibbetts2008]

lol... The Sci-Fi Channel is suppose to be the niche for those sci-fi fans. Other channels and stations are suppose to fill the niche for other genres.

Sci-Fi Channel needs to be the Sci-Fi Channel again, and let other channels fill their niches.


-Tibbetts

[joxerfan]

It is filling that niche. Millions of people watch it specifically for that niche. 5 people simply don't like that, and want it to be the "Sci-Fi that only I want to see" Channel. And instead of contacting the network, repeatedly tell it to the other viewers over and over again.

And we see the results!

[SylvreWolfe]

LOL, yeah, two million people watch that *niche* channel, but 298 million don't watch that niche. What do those numbers say to you? Oh yeah, more people don't watch than do. Or even better yet, 2 million watch the channel *which hasn't really increased over the year of so called improvement* and 40 million don't watch it. I wanted to make the numbers more equivalent to how many people watch other *niches.*
Doesn't seem to me that it is filling much of a niche, other than the delusions of grandeur of the execs.

[EPG]

LOL, yeah, two million people watch that *niche* channel, but 298 million don't watch that niche. What do those numbers say to you? Oh yeah, more people don't watch than do. Or even better yet, 2 million watch the channel *which hasn't really increased over the year of so called improvement* and 40 million don't watch it. I wanted to make the numbers more equivalent to how many people watch other *niches.*
Doesn't seem to me that it is filling much of a niche, other than the delusions of grandeur of the execs.

well let's not forget about another *niche* channel, remember that [SPIKE] used to be [ THE NASHVILE NETWORK], now you can catch more decent scifi on there now than you can on here, it is just a shame, maybe we can get them to pick up space 1999, a show that is supposed to show what the world is like 9 years ago.

[ShiningPathofLight]

I think that we (meaning the majority of us, not all of us) can agree on what scifi genre television series reruns we would like to see on the Scifi channel but showing reruns of fan favorites does not attract new viewers to the channel and I'm sure this gives them a headache. When they had an awesome opportunity to not only create a new series, draw new viewers to the channel and appeal to old school scifi fans as well they dropped the ball big time with Flash Gordon. They could have created the most awesome thing since Star Trek but instead they delivered one of the most widely hated and ridiculed series on television in recent memory. The series finally got to a point of being watchable in the last 5 or 6 episodes but by then I think it was probably too late to undo the damage.

[pkellmey]

SciFi has a history of not being able to do original programming very well because of budget restrictions. There have only been a handful of programs that have made the cut - SciFi fans have pretty discriminating tastes. However, they are pretty good at taking other channels programs and getting consistently good ratings with them. They seem to know what their target audience wants, but they have problems reaching it with their resources.

[boblordofevil]

Hey all,
I was raised on Sci-Fi and am a die hard fan of the channel. However I have seen so much ***** on the channel it makes me not want to watch it. B movie marathons eating up the weekends. Giant Crocs, Spiders, Mosquitos and Killer Yeti are not doing it for me anymore. I remember when you could see a Star Trek title on Sci-Fi. Did the channel get in a tiff with paramount? How about Space 1999, Babylon 5, the original Battlestar Galactica, and some classic movies like Laserblast, The Day the Earth stood still, and Battle beyond the stars. C'mon let's bring it back to the way it started. Thanks

You are SO right!

Seriously! How hard is it to find some old sci-fi TV shows and put them on the air or, god forbid, create some new actual SCI-FI shows?

Giant snakes? Ghost hunting? Friggin' WRESTLING??? How is ANY of that science fiction? Okay... maybe genetically-altered giant snakes has a sci-fi element, but c'mon guys, throw us a bone. I can find better science fiction on broadcast television or TNT or Spike.

Hell, I DO find better science fiction on Spike.

I hope they turn things around soon. Sci Fi channel was one of the reasons I got the cable package I have now. I'm considering downgrading to basic cable because it's not worth it as things stand today.

[SeanF]

I couldn't agree more. I have reached a certain level of frustration with the Sci-Fi channel. I remember when it first started they had these little 'news broadcasts' from the future during the commercial breaks. They were written by F. Paul Wilson, I believe, and were really compelling and interesting.

I forgive them making a bad movie every once in awhile. A creature feature here and there is fine by me, but just because somebody learned how to make snakes in a cgi program doesn't mean we need six giant snake movies. Or Raptor Island... Or, well, you get the point.

Wrestling... how in the world did we get wrestling? I'm okay with the Ghost Hunting stuff, but I think they've overdone it. It is so saturated that I get them all confused now. That isn't the way to build a brand.

They need to have hosted shows. Don't just show a movie, but bring in people to discuss the movie.

And I would gladly give up 75% of the Sci-Fi movies in order to have shows like Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, or Buck Rogers available once in awhile. Again, I understand from a marketing standpoint you can't dwell in the old and I do want them to push out and try to expand Sci-Fi... but how about turning to Science Fiction authors to write screenplays? How about taking lessons from movies like Gattaca or The Girl from Monday and go super low budget but focus on the story.

The Sci-Fi Channel has gotten confused and thinks an Action movie that has Science Fiction elements is a Sci-Fi movie.

Can it be saved? I don't think so. I think the new home for Science Fiction will be places like YouTube - like God, Inc. (which Scifi supposedly picked up).

This isn't an issue of My Sci-Fi versus Your Sci-Fi, it is an issue of whether or not we want more wrestling and ghost hunting.

[SeanF]

SciFi has a history of not being able to do original programming very well because of budget restrictions. There have only been a handful of programs that have made the cut - SciFi fans have pretty discriminating tastes. However, they are pretty good at taking other channels programs and getting consistently good ratings with them. They seem to know what their target audience wants, but they have problems reaching it with their resources.

I think they just misapply their resources. They focus on the action elements of science fiction, which is costly. Was Andromeda Strain an expensive movie?

Or when they have a great idea, like Flash Gordon, they fail to do a simple marketing survey to see what people want to see in a Flash Gordon show. I bet rocketships would have been in the top twenty. Hawkmen that were Hawkmen would have also been there. They just missed out.

[0b51d1an]

With the exception of the re-imagined BSG, most of the new shows on SciFi are garbage. "B" grade would be an upgrade.

Sure I want to see the classics, but the Stargate series was rubbish (movie = good/series = bad), Flash Gordon looks awful and I won't be watching, and so it goes. Oh and, less horror please. Horror != Science Fiction.

I guess with the exception of BSG I really don't watch anymore. Sad, really.

[the_boo]

About the only show I watch on Sci_Fi now is Atlantis. I watched the first season of Ghost Hunters, but it got old fast. Eureka's been off for so long I hardly remember it, I hope there will be a new season, what I really want to know is what's with ECW? You could put that on any of the Universal owned channels and it would get the same rating, so why Sci-Fi? I would like to see more decent original programming (NOT reality shows or anything from the people who brought us Flash and Tin Man) and maybe a few decent movies every weekend, sure my Dad loves to watch the crappy marathons of Snake movies every Saturday, but he's 60!

[heatfan]

I feel the same way, I miss all those all shows that made me watch Scifi when i was young. Only shows that i watch like clockwork are Stargate, and Battlestar Galactica.

Hey all,
I was raised on Sci-Fi and am a die hard fan of the channel. However I have seen so much ***** on the channel it makes me not want to watch it. B movie marathons eating up the weekends. Giant Crocs, Spiders, Mosquitos and Killer Yeti are not doing it for me anymore. I remember when you could see a Star Trek title on Sci-Fi. Did the channel get in a tiff with paramount? How about Space 1999, Babylon 5, the original Battlestar Galactica, and some classic movies like Laserblast, The Day the Earth stood still, and Battle beyond the stars. C'mon let's bring it back to the way it started. Thanks