In September 1992 I was living in Denver with some friends of my family, Joan and Larry. They were an older couple who offered me their basement apartment. (By older I mean they were in their 50’s, seemed old when I was 20. Not so much now…)
I was working a mundane job with a horrible swing-shift schedule, 3pm-11pm. When I got home from work two things were always true. Joan left a plate of home cooked food for me in the fridge and Larry was watching TV drinking a Coors.
He was a mechanic at Coors Brewing and it was the only beer allowed in his house. If someone brought over a different beer he would tell them to leave it in the car, saying ‘Coors pays the bills in this house so that’s the only beer we drink.’ It’s an old school loyalty that few have anymore. But I digress…
When I came home from work I’d nuke the plate of food and sit down with Larry to watch some TV. That time of night, even with cable, there wasn’t much to watch, at least not anything good. His go-to genre was science fiction and usually bad science fiction.
The Countdown
During those late night sessions I recall the build up to a new cable channel called the Sci-Fi Channel. The promos looked good and the channel had promise. In the pre-internet age it was hard to find information on the channel or it’s programming schedule.
Besides the short TV promos, newspaper articles and magazine ads were the only source of information.
Leading up to the launch of the channel was a countdown clock, letting you know how long you had to wait. The graphics were a mix of ‘mission control,’ 3D graphics, space settings and glimpses of shows the channel would air.
The Launch
On Thursday, 24 September 1992 the countdown reached zero, the screen went black and then the Sci-Fi Channel logo appeared, followed by a short intro and a dedication screen every true science fiction fan could appreciate. Dedicated to Issac Asimov and Gene Roddenberry.
Both men were on the original advisory board for the Sci-Fi channel and both men died before the channel launched. Roddenberry in October 1991, Asimov died in April 1992.
After the dedication, FTL (Faster Than Light) Newsfeed from the year 2142 came on with a floating head reminiscent to the MCP in Tron. There was a ‘news’ story saying the last remaining copy of Star Wars was found and restored and would be shown after the newsfeed.
Star Wars was the first movie shown on the Sci-Fi Channel and it was the good Star Wars, years before Lucas changed everything. Han shot first!
The Early Years
The original programming on the Sci-Fi Channel was amazing. Buck Rogers, Dr. Who, Battlestar Galactica, Night Gallery and more sci-fi classics aired nightly. The Sci-Fi channel also mixed in short, original programming, like the aforementioned FTL Newsfeed, which ran until 1996. NASA News highlighted the new and exciting projects taking place at NASA and Sci-Fi News covered science fiction news.
In the late 1990’s the Sci-Fi Channel started dabbling in scripted original programming. It’s first scripted series was Mission Genesis based on a trilogy titled Deepwater Black. It wasn’t a bad series but never caught on and was canceled after one season.
The Sci-Fi Channel found its best success acquiring the rights to shows instead of creating them. It acquired hits like Farscape, Sliders, Poltergeist: The Legacy and perhaps their biggest acquisition was in 1997 with Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was canceled the previous year by Comedy Central.
The channel also aired a lot of Japanese anime in the early years. It mostly played on Saturday mornings, replacing the Saturday cartoons of my younger years. I’m a big fan of anime and love watching them. A few of the shows I remember watching were Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D, Akira, Street Fighter and Highlander. Jason recently watched Akira for the first time and shared his thoughts on the movie.
The 2000s
As the new millennium dawned the Sci-Fi Channel was just hitting it’s stride. A new logo was revealed to coincide with the debut of a Steven Spielberg series titled Taken, a miniseries following three families from 1944 to the present (2002) as they deal with the aftermath of the UFO crash in Roswell and alien encounters.
Taken is a fantastic sci-fi series! Alien encounters mixed with real UFO lore makes you wonder if it’s fact or fiction. Like all Spielberg projects the aliens aren’t the focal point. The human characters and storytelling are the important pieces. The writing is good and it stars a young Dakota Fanning.
If you can find it anywhere <cough> youtube <cough>, it’s worth watching.
They continued to purchase rights to more canceled series, acquiring Stargate SG-1, Andromeda and The Outer Limits. They also ramped up their original programming titles; the 2000s saw some of their most beloved series hit the airwaves.
The Stargate franchise was expanded to include Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. The most popular show was a rebooted version of Battlestar Galactica, which ran for four season, followed by several miniseries and a prequel series.
The Stargate and Battlestar Galactica series garnered over 30 Emmy nominations taking home five wins as well as numerous wins in other Sci-Fi award ceremonies.
The success gave the Sci-Fi Channel resources to create other great series. Warehouse 13 ran for five seasons following two secret service agents as they recover supernatural artifacts and store them in Warehouse 13. It’s a great series that I’d describe as a (somewhat) lighter version of The X-Files. The series got better ever season and should have run longer.
Other Sci-Fi originals including Flash Gordon, Eureka, Tremors (a spin-off of the movie franchise) and The Dresdan Files all debuted in the 2000s. The shows varied in success but none of them saw the same success as Stargate or Battlestar Galactica.
The 2000s is also the birth of the Sci-Fi original movie. Instead of trying to compete with the blockbusters they fully embraced low-budget, independently made B-movie’s. Some of the early movies include Ice Spiders, Dinocroc, Frankenfish, Kraken, Star Runners and Mindstorm.
The 2010s
In the late 2000s someone at NBC Universal came up with the idea to rename the Sci-Fi Channel, it was officially renamed in July 2009. One of the main reasons for the rename was for trademark purposes. You can’t trademark a generic word like Sci-Fi, but you can trademark the ridiculous word SyFy. Let the jokes begin…
With the name change came programming changes as well. Syfy went all in on reality shows (not unlike the History channel or any channel during the time). In the 2010s Syfy produced over 50 reality shows. Most were paranormal in nature, with an odd cooking show thrown in, a few magic shows and even a couple of game shows.
In that same time period they produced around 25 scripted shows, the majority lasting only one or two seasons. A few of the better scripted shows were Wynonna Earp, 12 Monkeys and The Expanse. Strangely WWE NXT and SmackDown also aired on the channel in the 2010’s.
Syfy Original movies took off during the 2010s with Sharknado making the biggest splash in 2013. It’s popularity spawned five sequels and three spin-offs. How Sharknado is more popular than Arachnoquake is a mystery.
Syfy produced over 100 original films in the 2010s. Shark themes were so prevalent you’d think they were sponsoring Shark Week. Titles like Sharknado (and it’s sequels), Sharktopus, Ghost Shark, Avalanche Sharks, Sand Sharks, 2-Headed Shark Attack, followed by 3-Headed Shark Attack and then 5-Headed Shark Attack, Zombie Shark… you get the idea. There are over 40 Syfy original movies with shark in the title!
The Future of Syfy
Syfy…uh, sci-fi is all about predicting or rather speculating the future but no one knows what the future holds for the Syfy channel.
In 2017 there was another re-branding push. The name, Syfy, remained but the logo changed. Along with the logo change network head Chris McCumber stated they were going to create new shows to appeal to sci-fi and fantasy fans, “put fans at the center of everything we do.”
McCumber left Syfy in 2020. There have only been two scripted shows produced since 2020 and both failed after one season. The last reality show produced by Syfy was in 2017, which is reassuring.
Even the Syfy original movies have slowed to a crawl. Only a handful of new movies over the last three years.
Unfortunately with the currently writers and actors strike any new shows will be months and more likely years away.
Syfy has a huge back catalog of sci-fi related content they can rely on if they choose. They own the rights to all the great shows from the 70s and 80s that helped launch the channel back in 1992. They also have the great series from the 2000s like Battlestar Galactica.
I hope the current head of Syfy leans into its roots and produces more great science fiction series.
Celebrating 30 years of the Sci-Fi (Syfy) Channel brings back great memories of my tiny basement apartment, late night TV viewing and the the early days of niche cable channels. I remain friends with Joan and Larry to this day, well, Larry. Joan passed away in 2017, Larry lives less than five miles away and still only allows Coors in his house.
Did you watch the Sci-Fi Channel Countdown? Share your memories in the comments below.
I don’t remember watching Sci-Fi too much until they got MST3K. Though that countdown seems really well done. My Sci-Fi tastes are not very broad. I enjoy some very much, but definitely not all or even most. I do find myself stopping on the channel once in a while now when they happen to be showing a movie I like.