The Sci-Fi Channel: A Primer

We're Back! And with that we start a new mini series about The Sci-Fi Channel (SyFy, if ya nasty) and its wild diaspora. 

Something strange happened on old-school satellite TV: a channel appeared out of nowhere, looping wormholes and bright “screensaver” tunnels with no station ID, no ads, and no explanation. Then it teased an invasion and started a countdown clock. That mystery wasn’t pirate radio, it was the marketing fuse that lit the Sci-Fi Channel’s 1992 launch, and we can still feel the ripple effects today.

Transcript

Cold Open And Introductions

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Welcome to the Monday. Last week of the minute called the truth. Come like a five three minutes of 40 minutes. Five minutes for 40 minutes. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think gentlemen.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Let's run our minds.

unknown 1:21

Charge the lightning field.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. This is our show. We do this show. I'm Skip.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Everyone's telling me then these days. I'm Jake. Yes, it is our show. We do this show.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I think therefore I am Sebastian.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

IPOD, therefore it is. Poignant, actually.

Why The Sci-Fi Channel Mattered

Founders, Polls, And The Asimov Pitch

SPEAKER_01 1:46

It's pretty deep if you dive in. That's deep, bro. So we are gonna launch into a miniseries, the name of which has yet to be determined. But we're talking about the sci-fi channel. Its origins, its indeed, its intended purpose and its impact on society at large, which is surprising, then also tragic in many ways. So we thought we'd go into what the sci-fi channel was, what it became, and then what it is now. And then we were going to break down a series of shows that were on the sci-fi channel and only on the sci-fi channel, which was the only way you could watch them. Because until Tubi, there was never such a great resource for obscure television and movies than the sci-fi channel. Outside of the USA network and sometimes TNT, you never got to see Arena or Supercar. Or even quite frankly, outside of a lot of PBS stations, Doctor Who. Doctor Who and the original series of Star Trek, because there was a dispute over who had the rights NBC or CBS, because the original pilot was NBC, and then it failed, but then the second pilot was on CBS. That's a whole rickamorole. The sci-fi channel. I was so excited when this came out. My parents were super excited. There was this really cool thing that they did when they were about to launch. And this is before streaming, obviously. This is the 90s. This was during the rise of cable networks, which we take for granted now. That whole era has died and moved into streaming. But this was around the time that, for instance, HBO, which just used an aggregator for movies that were never going to be shown on network TV, they created their first original content with stuff like the Larry Sanders show. Science fiction fantasy type shows and movies were traded around on VHS tapes. So the sci-fi channel was originally launched on September 24th, 1992. It was a cable network, and some of their first programming was Star Trek the original series and Star Trek the animated series. Star Trek creator, the great bird of the galaxy, Gene Roddenberry, and prolific sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov served on the initial advisory board for the creation of this network. Which is really interesting. First of all, that a network had an advisory board, and that they were and then they were some of the most prolific icons in the history of that genre. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

That board is created because of Mitchell Rubinstein and Lori Silvers. They were a married couple, and in 1988, they were attorneys and entrepreneurs. Now they had been involved with cable carrier, and they wanted to make a new channel. Now, Lori, she came up with the idea of something called the hair and makeup channel. Which she thought was going to be huge.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

And would be today, if it doesn't already exist.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah, I'm sure it's out there. But Mitchell had a different idea. He thought, what about a channel devoted just to science fiction? Lori was very uh non-plussed and non-convinced. Mitchell. So Mitchell took her to a local blockbuster video. And they went to the a big section there, and it was science fiction and fantasy films. It's all over. Mitchell showed her the top ten grossing films of all time. Seven or eight of them were science fiction sh films. It's the 80s, baby. Or fantasy or Star Wars. And they talked to the manager of the blockbuster, and he talked about how science fiction fans were rabbit, and they would come in, rent a movie, they would bring it back promptly and rent it again. And they would just do that again and again.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

What an amazing snapshot of a time that we're talking about where instead of hiring Mackenzie or some other consulting firm or whatever, they just went to a blockbuster video. There has never been a more like of that moment.

The Sci-Fi Name Fight

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yes. Yeah. This was a husband trying to convince his wife that this was a good idea. Because at that point in time, she wasn't really into science fiction much. But she saw the numbers that were out there, like the rentals, the what the manager was talking about, how the business seemed to work, and how the genre was taken to by fans. So she went out and she hired Gallup to run a national poll. And uh everybody watching cable, the numbers were huge that they would be interested in a science fiction only channel. Whether it was old viewers, new viewers, old sci-fi, new sci-fi, whatever, the numbers bore out through the polling that it would be a hit and people wanted it. So they saw this as a huge opportunity. This is when they put together their board of advisors, with Isaac Asimov being the head of it. Through one of his collaborators, they were able to get a lunch with him and they pitched their idea for a sci-fi channel. And he thought it actually was a great idea, and he thought they should do it because he thought that putting science fiction programming on TV consistently would be a great way to capture young science fiction fans because he thought at that point kids weren't reading that much anymore. And by having something on the TV, it would bleed in, and then they'd become bigger fans and they'd go out more broadly into the science fiction fantasy world. They didn't really know where to go at that point, but Asimov had a friend that had a bunch of Hollywood muscle, and he thought he could bring him on board. That friend was Gene Roddenberry. And it's by helping him get on board that they were then able to grease some of the gears and start getting some connections into Hollywood. Now they faced pushback from science fiction creators at the time. Part of their little board that they wanted, a lot of them thought that the label of sci-fi was dumbing down science fiction and that it was a bad idea. They didn't like shortening sci-fi. They wanted to call it the SF channel. They thought that would be better. Okay. Lori and Mitch were worried that if it was the SF channel, people think it was a channel about San Francisco.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah, yes. And especially if you ever watch Star Trek where 90% of Earth-based stuff is centered out of San Francisco.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

So they were like, nah, we're not sure. We think sci-fi is the right way to go. But their little board was non-plussed with it. But Asimov stood up and he explained himself that no sci-fi using this shortened term would be good overall. And eventually all the other science fiction writers and creators got on board. What the sci-fi channel does with their naming after that, you wonder if maybe they had a point. Well, I think they definitely had a point. Yeah, they had thought about just naming it the science fiction channel, but their polling also pointed to people who saw that it just said science fiction. Too many of them thought it would be a science channel and they would not be as into that.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

The genre in literature went through many iterations, one of the later most recognizable would have been scientific fiction, because it wasn't necessarily hard based in science. It was scientific-ish fiction.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah, and folks, we like our science rock hard.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I am right now.

USA Network Takes Control

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So they had uh an advisory board, they had an idea, they were trying to get the some money and some connections together. What they really didn't have was a lineup. They were having some trouble with that, but they were able to score a deal to work with Disney and their theme park through a crazy weird connection with their bank and their fellow attorney and trying to get deals. So they were gonna have a studio space next to where the famed Disney Illustrators worked. So essentially, at the same time that they were coming up with the idea for Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, ideally they would be filming science fiction shows in a lot directly next to it. I think their original idea was like a untitled superhero show, a what do they say? A game show set in a haunted house kind of thing. Oh, yeah. And some other things. That's where they're gonna be able to have original programming, working with MGM and Disney with this. That's where they're gonna produce new shows. Now, eventually they just didn't have the financial backing for real success for creating their own channel. They needed money for satellite transponders and licensing fees and different things. So this is when they went to a somewhat fledgling channel at the time, but one of the bigger up-and-comers in the world of media, the USA network. And this was run by Kate Koppowitz, who started out with the MSG Sports Channel. She turned it into the USA network. She was essentially a titan of the cable industry, but really never got her due. She was a key player in the integration of satellite to air sporting events. It's because of her they aired the Thriller in Manila. Ah, yes. She turned what was a local regional sports channel into the USA network, which at the time was like one of the biggest cable channels anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Which is very funny if you think about it today retroactively.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Now the USA Network was co-owned by Paramount and MCA. Kate loved the idea, supposedly, of the sci-fi channel when Lori was pitching it, and after negotiating for a few weeks, she said she needed to go back to her partners and discuss. The story that Lori tells was that Kate came back to Lori and said, Hey, USA Network, Paramount, MCA, we're all in. But we don't want to give you money. We want to own it. Lori obviously was like a little I don't know. I've been working years of my life at this point on this project. I'm passionate about it. This is our idea. Kate told her that you can either sell it to us or we're just gonna go make it on our own without you. This is a gold ticket idea, and we don't need you to be part of it. You can either be with us or we're gonna crush or with the terrorists.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

I love this, but obviously there's no way we could go up against these major studios, these multimillion dollar corporations, one of the biggest cable companies in the world. It's just not gonna happen. They did end up selling the sci-fi channel to the USA network. If you listen to Coppowitz version, it's a little bit more nuanced and a struggle to get the green light from Paramount MCA and their higher-ups at USA. But in the end, now the USA network had sci-fi channel, and now sci-fi channel had a whole vast library of IP to program with. Stuff they wouldn't have had before at the beginning. Stuff like Battlestar Galactica, Night Gallery, The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers, Colchak the Night Stalker, Bionic Woman, the failed Planet of the Apes series, and Misfits of Science.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

A lot of those were failed, by the way. Not just that one.

unknown 12:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

But by doing this, the previous deal with MGM and Disney had to be scrapped. So the ideas that they had to film on the lot and work with them, they no longer worked. They were superseded by this USA network purchase. They kept Lori on for a few years as vice chairman to sell to cable operators, which she had the passion, being an entrepreneur, working at this for years. She did a great job of selling it to different cable operators and got it on lineups across the nation. At this point, it was time they had the programming, they had the money, they had the wherewithal, they had the connections within the cable thing, and they were able to get a channel on the lineups.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

They had the technology.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

They launched. And you had the title card that lionized Isaac Asimov and Gene Roddenberry. Unfortunately, both had just passed months prior to the launch. And then you had the first episode of FTL.

SPEAKER_03 13:48

Welcome to Commonwealth FTL Newsfeed. 24 September, 2142.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

This is an FTL Newsfeed Special Report. Coming to this more, the curator of this Commonwealth Florida Museum and Theme Park, announced today that the only known complete print of the 165-year-old science fiction masterpiece. For more news, including the latest on the identity chip controversy, be sure to watch the next regularly scheduled FTL Newsfeed right after Star Wars.

Launch Night, FTL News, And Star Wars

SPEAKER_01 14:52

I don't know if you ever heard of that. Yes, that is the long and short of it, and in this series we will get into more detail about this. But leading up to that, they did one of the greatest marketing campaigns in the history of television where they did this thing where they the channel existed on a satellite network. My grandparents had a s an actual fucking satellite in their backyard, a giant satellite dish, so they could do this.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

But you'd go Yeah, I don't think kids understand like what you needed back then. This wasn't direct TV. No.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

This was a huge, what'd you say, like 20, 30 foot satellite? Yes. The satellite dish my grandparents had was it was probably 20 foot across at least. And you had to the tuner, th that what they called it, the remote that they used, literally was this silverless brushed aluminum remote that had only two buttons, up or down, and what it would do was it would turn, based on your button inputs, the entire dish one way or another, which is crazy. That's some Cold War bullshit, but was the standard at the time, and so you had to literally move your satellite dish to connect to a different satellite that would be beaming this information to your dish and then into your box that would translate that information into their broadcast. And so it existed as a spot on I don't want to say virtual, but like a list of stuff unnamed, where you'd have to be like, okay, if I want to watch HBO, I I have to like tune it to this basically GPS coordinates to connect with the satellite. Okay, so you're doing that and you're going through and you're, for lack of a better term, scrolling through these satellite outputs. All of a sudden, one day, there was this channel that was just showing loops of video with no no explanation, no commercial breaks, no station IDs, all that stuff that spawned out of the War of the Worlds radio play and all that stuff. It was just you'd come across this channel that was showing essentially screensavers, these just loops of bright colors and simulated tunnels and wormholes, or sometimes it would show like planets as you go through the solar system with no explanation or context. It felt like pirate radio type stuff. And I'd go to my grandparents' house to tune into it every day to see if there was some sort of hint as to what it was. And it wasn't until the debut of the channel as a channel to identify itself it put out this ominous promo speaking of an invasion that was quote coming for you. And then it started a countdown clock that would tick down the hours, minutes, and seconds until the sci-fi channel would make its debut. And I was obsessed with it. It's kind of like how I don't know if you remember, but when the Cloverfield trailer premiered and everybody had all these like online obsessive theories about what it was and what it was going to be. Is it a Godzilla movie? Is it not? That's what the sci-fi channel did. They did this for months leading up to the premiere of the thing. And I was like, are we getting aliens? Are aliens talking to us? I couldn't wait. And it worked. This countdown led to the premiere of the sci-fi channel. Hyphenated. The original is hyphenated, yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

And that will obviously change over the years. It will morph, it will evolve into its lesser form.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

The first thing they show.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

First, the after the countdown, they do a title card that gives praise and thanks to Isaac Asimov and Gene Roddenberry, again, who had just passed away months before. Unfortunately, yeah, and then they'd have the first of what is a oddity for years to come on the sci-fi channel of FTL News. Then the opening scroll of Star Wars. And this is pre a Star Wars New A New Hope. It was just Star Wars.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

This version of Star Wars does not exist anymore. What they showed was the theatrical release of the original Star Wars. You cannot find this anymore. This is it. This is Star Wars Star Wars. Where you can see the traveling mats of the TIE fighters as they fly by. Is there a better way to kick off a network?

SPEAKER_00 19:26

During research for this, I saw multiple news station segments of the upcoming premiere of the sci-fi channel. Although I think they call it the science fiction channel at the time.

The Satellite Countdown Marketing Mystery

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Yeah, because they don't know what the fuck is going on. It's like an arrest of development where like they flash back and they're the Fox News anchors. Do you want coffee with foam in it? Wait till you hear what it costs. And the first thing they do is their own fictional sub-show. An interstitial universe that they create that is supposed to tie everything together and then boom the drop of the opening title sequence to Star Wars. It was so cool. Especially if you were a sci-fi fan.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah. One, it is science fiction fans, so they have a natural inclination to fanaticism and fandom and breaking things down and waiting for their favorite thing to drop. Two, uh this was a first. This was an oasis in a desert. You couldn't see Star Wars on TV unless you went and rented it at the video store or they happened to show it on one of the big four. I guess big three at that time, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:36

And especially because Lucas was vehemently opposed to Star Wars ever being put out on home video. He thought it should just be a theater experience. Also, he didn't want it to get that was back in the time when they thought VCRs and and VHS was just pirating things. Uh one of those cycles we go through over and over again. But it's like a rhyme. History does it doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. It was a huge media moment. And yes, it feels like it's for a niche crowd, except they knew it was going to be a big deal. And we take the sci-fi channel today for granted, and I know it's changed even in the last 10 years or five years, but when it came out was a big deal. There were only three real networks. Fox was a burgeoning network, but there were only three real networks NBC, ABC, and CBS. Cable, you only had a few. You had HBO, the Playboy Channel, Penthouse, or whatever, and Showtime, Cinemax, and then I don't know. I don't even know that Comedy Central or the Comedy Channel was around back then. Maybe around the same time.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Technically, the comedy channel and humor were around, which would later be merged into comedy central, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Yeah. Around the same time. This is all this is the birth of the network system that we know today. And it was a huge premiere and Though it may seem niche, all of the research they had done, there was always a thing at Paramount where they said, we'll always make Star Trek movies because Star Trek will never lose us money. There is always a built-in fan base. And not just that, it had a more broad appeal than people think there would be. And it premiered it was a huge deal for a large swath of the American audience. This release would be, I think, not only a portent for things to come, it would help set the stage for how networks worked, how cable networks worked, and then eventually how streaming networks worked. There would be no HD TV, there would be no Discovery Network, all of these other genre-focused networks, were it not for the sci-fi channel. And it's funny because in its origins, it involved, like you said, Disney, Universal, Paramount, MSG, like USA, all of these other networks coming together to make this a realized thing. And I think today people sleep on it because of what it is now, but man, it was secretly a big deal. And that's what we're going to get into in this series. Forthwith, not just the fascinating origins and makeup of the sci-fi channel itself, but then all the fun things that the sci-fi channel does, what it helped us see that we would not have normally been able to, and how that leads to things like Tubi. Also, how it leads to things like the origin of YouTube, the original YouTube, before Google bought it.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

And Yep, I think I think you already got it. Okay, fine. This is all the stuff you just whatever. Borg say stop.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Borg's Frankie say relax.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Borg said good, stop licking.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

What's funny because that's exactly what Miles is doing right now.

Why It Changed TV And The Farewell

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Thanks for listening. Borg say come back. Jake say relax. He's gonna yes, we're gonna get into a little bit of the history of sci-fi channel and some shows that spawned out of that and what that meant for long-term pop culture and television viewing, media consumption. But until then, we'd like to thank you all for uh spending some time with us. Please share, subscribe, rate us. We didn't talk about anything.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

The final five stars. I don't know. Rate us five Cylons.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Borg say rate five Cylon. Borg likes Cylon. Boy, they sure would. Yeah, rate it the final five Cylons on the podcast app of your choice. Ideally Apple Podcasts. It's the best way for it to get heard and thus seen. Spread the news on the FTL newswork. Newswork? That's not a word. News network. Yes. Borg not bring two word together. Borg smash. Borg go bed now. But yes, I'll come back for that. But until Borg Explain Sci-Fi channel you skip. Say and for Borg.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

I look at the Borger like an unfrozen caveman. Borg is unsure and scared by your fancy podcast linguistics. What tiny man lives inside the radio in my car and jumped into traffic. Yes, we would encourage you, please do everything that Jake just said, uh, except jumping into traffic, which is what I guess what I said, but please follow our show, do those things, engage with us as Jean-Luc Picard would encourage you to do. Please make sure you have cleaned up half of yourselves to some sort of reasonable degree. Make sure you've paid your tabs, make sure you've tipped your bartenders, your KJs, your DJs, your podcasters. Don't forget to support your local comic shops and retailers. And remember, no matter where you go, there you are. Borg agree. Borg say yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Please go away.