MediaLog MediaBrief: Sci Fi Channel to Change Name to "Syfy"

Making the media news rounds today are plans by NBC Universal to change the name of Sci Fi Channel to Syfy. (Articles reporting said name change are here, here, and here.) The new name, while retaining identification with the genre of science fiction (it's pronounced the same as "sci fi"), is meant to broaden the appeal and scope of the network, with programming related to additional topics such as paranormal phenomena, fantasy, and other broadly scientific/fictional realms.

This strikes me as a rather bone-headed move by NBC Universal. Although not as widely viewed as some cable networks by virtue of the fact that its subject matter is not every viewer's cup of tea, Sci Fi Channel has had a strong identity that has catered to hardcore science fiction fans, as well as others who may not be as hardcore but who have been attracted to the channel by programming such as critical darling "Battlestar Galactica." This name change seems to be (potentially) chucking most of that brand equity and loyal viewer goodwill in a gambit to broaden the network's appeal. There's a very good chance that longtime loyal Sci Fi Channel viewers will be upset with the change (which includes the network's related properties, such as its popular website), and that nonviewers will likely remain uninterested in the network's offerings. There's also the chance that casual viewers seeing the name"Syfy"--with the built-in pronunciation issues for those not hip to the change --will not make the connection to the old Sci Fi Channel.

The change also strikes me as another in the trend of cable branding changes that has made most of the cable programming landscape into a mushy mess of watered down network identities in the free-for-all of attracting viewers. Rather than stick with what is perhaps a smaller but also a more loyal core of viewers, channels have made changes (not always involving the name of the network) that have represented abandonments of the network's original identity. ("Ice Road Truckers" on History Channel, anyone? How about truTV? Don't get me started on TV Land.) In many respects, what was once a terrain of well-established and well-defined niches for cable networks has become a muddled and increasingly desperate grasping for elusive large-scale audiences. Sci Fi Channel's rebranding as Syfy is merely the latest example of this.

Book Review: "The Sweeps: Behind the Scenes in Network TV" (1984) by Mark Christensen & Cameron Stauth

"The Sweeps" is another in the genre of TV books that I like to call "industry snapshots." These are books that provide an inside (or as the subtitle here indicates, "behind the scenes") look at the state of the TV industry at the time of their writing, offering a variety of perspectives from executives, creative personnel, and contemporary press accounts. Other books in this journalistic "snapshot" genre include Sally Bedell's "Up the Tube" (1981), Martin Mayer's "About Television" (1972), and the more recent "Desperate Networks" (2006) by Bill Carter.

"The Sweeps," published in mid-1984, chronicles American television in the spring, summer, and fall of 1983, as programming decisions were being made and then implemented for the 1983-1984 television season. Christensen and Stauth follow a number of different TV-industry personalities during this period, charting their fortunes over the course of the year and gaining their insights about the TV industry going into the mid-1980s. At the time "The Sweeps" was published, these observations were current and reflected the state of the TV art; now (as in all books of this genre), they provide a valuable historical "snapshot" of the TV industry and its practices at the time.

The personalities featured in "The Sweeps" cut across a broad range of TV industry types. These include early-1980s TV superstars such as Ed Asner, who was going through a career crisis due to his controversial political views, and then-up-and-comers who would become TV stalwarts, such as Harry Anderson and Ted Danson. Particularly interesting are Anderson's irreverance as he books game show appearances and magician gigs as hedges against the failure of his new sitcom "Night Court," and Danson's insecurity as "Cheers" struggles to hang on and Danson wins a nomination but not the award itself for Best Comedy Actor in the 1983 Emmys.

Equally intriguing are fringe figures such as Larry Colton and Corky Hubbert. Colton, a washed up pro baseball pitcher with little TV industry experience, takes a gamble by becoming involved in the development of a scheme to franchise a soap opera format to local TV stations (which for him means becoming a producer on a show called "Pillars of Portland"). Hubbert, a little person known at the time for a memorable appearance in the movie "Under the Rainbow," had fallen on hard times and throughout 1983 was flamboyantly trying to land acting gigs that would catapult him back to relative stardom. The stories of these two provide a counterpoint to those of other, established but still struggling TV industry figures.

One of these such figures is writer-producer Allan Katz. Katz, who cut his TV industry teeth working on shows like "M*A*S*H," "Rhoda," and "Laugh-In," was in 1983 trying to juggle several different incipient projects: a sitcom pilot called "The National Snoop" that was considered but not picked up by NBC for fall 1983; a play, "Kaufman and Klein," for which he was trying to cast Ed Asner and/or Walter Matthau; and his baby, a feature film project called "The Hunchback of UCLA," which he also wanted to star in despite the fact that he'd never acted in his life.

Perhaps the central story of "The Sweeps" is that of aspiring TV writer Tony Colvin. At the beginning of 1983 (and in the opening chapter of the book), Colvin was giving up a successful career as a bank executive to break into TV writing by working as a gofer for the "Cheers" cast and crew. By the middle of the year (and the middle of the book), Colvin had landed a job as a story editor on the new sitcom "Just Our Luck." By the end of the year (and the end of the book's last chapter), he had lost that job (and his best chance at a TV career) due to the show's cancellation and, having given up his banking career, was in exile as a rental car salesman.

As it tells the story of all these personalities, "The Sweeps" also tells the story of several of the new and returning shows of 1983. It is fascinating to read about the anxieties of the cast and crew of the now-venerated "Cheers" (Danson chief among them) as its future in 1983 (its second year on the air) was anything but secure. "We Got It Made," starring the voluptuous Teri Copley and created by the deposed network programming chief Fred Silverman, is one of the new 1983-84 shows prominently chronicled in the book.

The entire slate of new NBC shows for fall 1983 is given special attention, including "Manimal," "Boone," "Bay City Blues," "Jennifer Slept Here," and "Mr. Smith." The network struggled unsuccessfully with these shows in 1983-84 in an attempt to raise itself out of a years-long ratings slump under new president Grant Tinker and new programming chief Brandon Tartikoff. (One of the great ironies of reading this particular "snapshot" book now is knowing that not long after "The Sweeps" was published the slump would end in a big way with the premiere of "The Cosby Show," which would soon become TV's number one program.)

In general, "The Sweeps" presents a detailed and fascinating snapshot of American TV circa 1983. Some persistent problems hamper the book's ability to do so, though. For one, some of the stories seem a little disjointed from the book's main thrust of chronicling the TV industry. Corky Hubbert's story, while compelling enough in and of itself, seems detached from a consideration of TV, due to the fact that most of Hubbert's previous experience and 1983 aspirations and acting gigs concern the film industry rather than television. Also, Christensen and Stauth's writing has an odd (and distracting) stylistic proclivity towards sentence fragments that at times makes it seem unprofessional (and just plain bad writing).

These quibbles do not, ultimately, overly detract from the value of "The Sweeps" as one of these "snapshot" tomes. As I've said before, these kinds of books are media scholarship's equivalent of prehistoric insects trapped in amber, and as such they offer crucially important and insightful looks at what the American media was like in a particular place at a particular time. "The Sweeps" fulfills this function for the American TV industry in 1983.

MediaLog MediaBrief: GSN Revamps Logo/Slogan (Again)

"Maybe This One Will Stick" Dept.-- The New York Times' TV Decoder blog is reporting today that cable network GSN is about to undergo another revamping of its image. The network will soon have a new logo (nine small squares in a variety of shades of orange and red, with the initials G, S, N in the middle three squares), under which is a new slogan, "Play Everyday." This will replace the current logo, a black box with the network's initials in the lower half (sometimes with the box and initials taking on different colors) and slogan, "The Network for Games."

I'm not sure how long the network has had its outgoing logo/slogan, but by cable network standards it hasn't been very long (a couple of years I think). GSN, of course, started in the mid-1990s as the Game Show Network, an identity it maintained for its first decade or so (with a couple of different logos). The current logo/slogan was adopted (along with the elimination of the network's original name in favor of its initials only) when it attempted to broaden its appeal beyond repeats of old TV game shows. The outgoing slogan, "The Network for Games," and the contraction of the network's name to its initials, were meant to indicate that game shows (including a sharp increase of new original shows) had become only part of the channel's offerings. These expanded to include any kind of programming that was game-related, including reality-competition shows (such as repeats of "Dog Eat Dog") and poker and bingo programs (the latter have been especially emphasized in recent months).

Over the last year or two, GSN has increasingly been emphasizing the online games that are available to play on its website, and it is this feature of the network that the new logo/slogan seems to be highlighting. These games are versions of classic game shows such as "The Price is Right" and of current GSN original game shows, as well as more garden-variety games such as solitaire and bingo. The aim, it seems from the TV Decoder article, is to strengthen the link between the on-air programming and the online offerings. Creating a strong link of this kind between a network's programming and its website is smart business these days, as cable and broadcast entities of all kinds (e.g. news providers) are more and more becoming "multimedia platforms" rather than strictly TV networks. The relatively frequent changes of logos, slogans, and emphases of GSN, though, seems to indicate that the network has had problems making an identity stick.

Book Review: "The Cool Fire" (1976) by Bob Shanks

The MediaLog has an affinity for books that when they were originally written and published were meant to be up-to-date overviews of their respective media industries (i.e. TV or film), but when read now are woefully and sometimes comically out of date. Of course, the reason why such books are interesting now is because they provide an excellent historical "snapshot" of the industry as of the time they were written. I've been a fan for a long time of books like Levinson and Link's "Stay Tuned" (1981) and Mayer's "About Television" (1972), both of which fit into this category. "The Cool Fire" (subtitled "How to Make It in Television") by Bob Shanks, from 1976, also fits firmly within this tradition.

Shanks was at the time an executive at ABC, in charge of, among other things, the network's late-night "Wide World of Entertainment" series. He'd had a lengthy career dating back to the 1950s, starting as a bit part actor (he jestingly recounts having been killed on several different shows) and progressing through stints as a talent booker on the Jack Paar "Tonight Show," a producer on the "Merv Griffin Show," and an independent television producer. His take on the television industry circa the mid-seventies is informed by this varied experience and the book (indicated by the subtitle) takes the shape of an advisory tome for those interested in television careers.

Whether or not the book serves (or more accurately, served) as an adequate such advisory I cannot say, but it is fascinating to read now to see the nature of the advice Shanks gives and more so in the different areas of television industry operations he covers. Remember, this was a time when the three broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) were at the peak of their power and influence and reigned nearly unchallenged in their purchase on the attention of American audiences. Fox and the other smaller broadcast networks were still a pipe dream. Television syndication was fledgling compared to what it is today. This was a pre-home video, pre-cable, pre-internet and pre-video gaming era. The expectations were vastly different than what they are now. Shanks mentions several times in the book that for a TV series to survive cancellation it needs to post ratings of at least a 30 share--ratings that even the top programs today would kill for! Interesting too is Shanks' take on how to navigate the network bureaucracies in order to get programs sold, and he offers several examples from his own career, regarding now-quaint shows such as "Great American Homes" (a syndicated effort hosted by E.G. Marshall) and "Great American Dream Machine" (a magazine-format show aired on PBS). (Not all the shows Shanks produced had the word "great" in their titles.)

Equally interesting, because they are the most obsolete, are the chapters on the production process and on technical issues related to TV production. Shanks takes the reader step by step through the TV production process, here incorporating examples mostly from his experience producing the Griffin show. Detailed descriptions of TV equipment in all phases of production are provided, even to the extent of suggesting which models of cameras, etc., are the best. The result, as with the book in general (as, indeed, with most of the books in this category as mentioned above), resembles that of a prehistoric insect trapped in amber: a look at how the TV industry operated at a very specific moment in time, available for us now to examine and utilize in understanding American television history.