The Sci-Fi Channel Part 2

We start with the big thesis: the Sci-Fi Channel is an early masterclass in niche marketing, built on the belief that sci-fi fans are loyal and underserved. From there we dig into the credibility play of bringing in Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov, and how the network’s direction shifts once the people with real “skin in the game” are gone. We also revisit the weirdest, most charming early experiments like Faster-Than-Light Newsfeed, the idea that the network itself has a story, and the scrappy reality of filling a schedule with syndicated classics before the bigger deals arrive.

Transcript

Niche TV And Geek Audiences

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And I wish the lighting was better in Star Trek Discovery. You can't even see the bridge. We have to have new X-Men.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Gentlemen, let's run our minds.

SPEAKER_04 0:35

I mean, really, if you look at the totality, the history of the sci-fi channel, that's what they're trying to do almost from the get-go.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

Of trying to expand, be hipper, be cooler. They wanted the sci-fi fan audience, but they also kind of loathed it and wanted anything else but that.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Yes, that's true. If that advisory board had been on board the whole time during its actual execution, things might have been different. But because both of the big guys they had on the advisory board died right before it premiered, I think it just kind of was left up to network executives and studio executives and not anybody who really had skin in the game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20

But you also wondered have we ever had anything that was I think maybe like an ESPN. I think that has innately sport fans who made a sports show about sports?

SPEAKER_02 1:32

That's a good that's a good parallel, actually. I think ESPN and sci-fi channel are relatively decent parallels. Uh granted, there's a more broad mainstream appeal to sports, so that's an easier one to expand and do their thing and and find their niche. But the sci-fi channel, and I think in relative parallel, the comedy channel, later known as Comedy Central, does something similar where they find these niche avenues and then they get people in charge who understand it, then kind of guide the direction of it. I think sci-fi, it's one of the biggest problems is that the guys they picked both die right before the fucking channel premieres.

SPEAKER_04 2:12

Well, you had the people who were actually behind it, you know, they were like, oh, we think this would be good and make money. Right. They were not like, I love science fiction and want to make something devoted to science fiction. This is a great idea. It has legs, people will come to this, let's make it happen. Yep. So I mean, you're coming from it, not from a passion of the product, but a desire for the consumer.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

True. Which is why, like, it's sad when Roddenberry and Asimov die, if they had lived, they might have worked as essentially executive producer roles of the network, instead of just being run by network execs that don't give a shit about the content, just finding a consumer base.

SPEAKER_04 2:51

It's possible, but I mean the sci-fi channel never got off the ground without the giant corporate interest.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Of course not.

SPEAKER_04 2:59

I'm not exactly sure they would have necessarily kept these sci-fi writers on board to guide the boat.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

I feel like with the sci-fi channel, as we talked about in the last episode, the idea came from a dude at a blockbuster. Where they were like, sci-fi fans are super loyal and rabbit, and so they'll always come back. So they did a brilliant thing, to be honest, something that they probably wouldn't do today with the Ellisons of the world. When they brought on Asimov and Roddenberry, two different sides of the coin, one a legitimate writer, the other sort of a failed writer, but found success in producing television in the genre. That's how they got the gears moving and got it on the air. I feel like if they had kept up with the idea that the brains behind the network, at least overseeing some influence, even just the little that they did already, I think kept it legitimate in that sense, instead of just being an empty space. Like now you have Pluto TV and Roku TV and all that shit where they have these channels where they get IP in syndication and then run it in sub-genres, more and more specific sub-genres as you go. There's a murder she wrote channel on Roku TV and Pluto TV. This was a cable network, which was different. But today the streaming channels are com are a different animal. They're more of a diluted version, but also more specifically targeted version of what the sci-fi channel is. But one of the reasons we wanted to talk about it was because I feel like it's the beginning of that shift into the way new media is consumed. There's the awful corporate side where they're like, well, we have all this IP, we have all this stuff that's just sitting around that does have a fan base that has already been made. It's on Betamax tapes sitting somewhere. Why don't we just create a thing so that people can watch it? Fox had just come out as a network. So it was the first time there were four networks on American television, and so cable networks became a thing. That's where you get HBO and Cinemax and Showtime and and all that. We talked about that a little bit last time. But the sci-fi channel, I think, was maybe the first real genuine foray into niche marketing which required very little original programming and had a rabid audience. But you know, it's a brand, but an entire genre of things that people really want to see. A certain demographic of people have a vested interest in it's kind of like when magazines were still big. You could get a sci-fi magazine, you could get Star Trek Communicator, the magazine. Uh if it helps, Slam, do you remember Slam, the basketball magazine? Maybe this was at the time when they had things like Wizard. They were printing magazines that were very niche-based. Before that, all you had was like sports illustrated. But in the 90s, uh you had like Slam magazine, which was the hip cool version of a basketball mag just basketball magazine. The sci-fi channel was that sort of it was one of the first attempts to break into niche markets. And I think this you know, I think this actually does tie into interestingly into your previous uh episode about the monoculture and how there is no monoculture. Because this is where it starts breaking down into categories of interest, of unfortunately, of consumers uh with very specific interests.

SPEAKER_04 6:35

Uh the proliferation of outlets and the ability for average consumer to you know have their selection of what they want to follow. They're not just reading Time magazine.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 6:47

They're not just watching CBS news. Now they can they can go to CNN, they can go to MTV.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

MTV, I think, is a another great example because it long before this, but I think it's one of those niche things that um really started changing that landscape.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Years after that, then MTV had its downfall. Which is really what happens to sci-fi as well, and we'll theoretically get to that.

Roddenberry Asimov And Lost Guidance

SPEAKER_02 7:09

But yeah, so my premise was that it was almost like what the magazine niche was when print was still relevant. That the idea that you could cater to an audience that throughout most of American pop culture history wasn't represented and definitely wasn't as focused on very specific interests. And so when sci-fi comes out, it fills this void. You got to watch things that either if you're older you had seen as a kid, or discovering for the first time, it filled a niche set of interests. That's a lot of stream of consciousness there. So yeah. This is a little scattered. By the way, this is Dispatch Ajax. I'm skipped. It's true. This is our show. We talk more off-camera about this stuff than we do on actually recorded. So it's you guys should be in the room. It's chaos, and also somehow like doing, you know, a poetic dance. It's this beautiful uh collaboration that we've enjoyed for a very long time, and that's why we do the show.

SPEAKER_04 8:18

Imagine a large early high school kid with a stick in a garage twirling it as if it was a lightsaber, but the audio form. That is us.

Launch Night And FTL Newsfeed

SPEAKER_02 8:29

But also now as adults feeling completely justified. Watching the rise, peak, and then fall, maybe, of this geek media genre in in what used to be the monoculture. But also exists in uh it exists today because those things are relevant to a very specific demographic, and that's what the sci-fi channel seized on. And contemporaneously, it even though like you and I talked about how there is no monoculture, everybody's seen the Avengers movies. And if public opinion, if there is a superhero fatigue, if the mainstream culture decides they're done with superheroes like they were done with Westerns, no matter what, there was always this certain demographic that was going to be into this. There are always gonna be certain people who read romance novels, there are always gonna be certain people who watch sci-fi, who read sci-fi books, who read comic books. This was a sort of a very early attempt to tap into that demographic. The advisory board of Roddenberry and Asimov, I think, genuinely took that seriously, but they weren't being patronizing or condescending about it. Today it's a little different in a lot of ways. 30 minutes before we did this. But the lead up to the debut of the sci-fi channel had these ominous uh promos that they forewarned of something that was coming for you. In New York, Leonard Namoy was dragged out in front of cameras as the master of ceremonies for a launch party held in the Hayden Planetarium. Leonard Moy has a long history of donating to planetariums. The Griffith Observatory, he pledged something like five million dollars to the expansion. If you've ever been there, it fucking rules. His wing is awesome. They really wanted to make this a big event. And as we talked about before, the only original programming that the sci-fi channel did was Faster Than Light newsfeed, which was a fictional and honestly horribly written and cheesy in every aspect, both writing and special effects.

SPEAKER_05 10:39

Welcome to Common Satellite Service. You have selected Faster-Than Light on Tuesday, 30 January, 2146.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

The World Congress official list of extinct species has a new addition. The once common vision is no more. However, you change twice the clothes styles held an encouraging press conference.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Extinct species. With modern genetic technology, no species need to be extinct. As a public service, Cone Styles Incorporated is offering to bring back all extinct species. That's right. If we can isolate a sample of DNA from any extinct species, we can clone it out and bring it back. Leave it to us, and we'll see to it that the only thing extinct around here is the extinct species list.

SPEAKER_04 11:45

Yes, because the premise was that it was a news outlet that was breaking in between programming to you discuss whatever events were happening on Mars or with a large corporation or whatever science fiction element in the far year. It was 2130 or it was 2142, so it was I was pretty close.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Yeah, you're very close. It was a hundred it was literally 150 years after the current time was the premise. Right off the bat, the sci-fi channel was really re unique because it presented itself as if you were in the future and this channel is showing you things from the past. And interstitially, they would show you things that were happening in the current time. Which is fascinating because like the whole like the whole idea is that the net the network itself is a narrative, that it exists in a different time, which I can't think of a more perfect way to do a science fiction channel. That it's they're already assuming that you live in the future, and then they're showing you stuff that you've seen from before. Because like we told you before, their first thing they ever showed was Star Wars, and the FTL Newsfeed presented it as a lost, and this is remarkably ironic. They presented it as someone found the original theatrical release version of Star Wars, which is total shade on George Lucas because this would have been pre-special editions. The special edition by quite a few years, actually.

SPEAKER_04 13:14

Because that wasn't until 96, right? Didn't he release the special editions before the prequels? It was like right before the prequels.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Which means this is just prescient. Yes. Yeah. They just found the original theatrical release of Star Wars, which you cannot find. They don't exist anymore. Kind of like when the Beatles did uh Let It Be Naked or whatever, and he just The FTL Newsfeed was yeah, uh essentially a fictional short form interstitial from starting from the year 2142, and they were oftentimes just bumpers to shows that they would premiere or they would show shows that were old or were basically just in they were available for syndication, but not ever shown on networks except maybe on I don't know, Saturday mornings or Sunday mornings on some other whatever network needed to fill programming.

Early Programming Buzz And Anime

SPEAKER_04 14:08

Yeah, because at the beginning of the sci-fi channel, they did not have the library, like not all the deals were inked and everything, and so they didn't have access to a lot of programming. It was and they only had a small budget, so a lot of the stuff you got were old programs that they could easily get access to. Flash Gordon old serials, your Buck Ryger's Dark Shadows was something that was like one of their bigger shows they had at the time. They were able to show Doctor Who even Star Trek Incredible Hulk. Technically, they didn't have Star Trek, they had Star Trek the animated series. They didn't end up getting Star Trek till five or six years into their existence because originally at this time the next generation was on. That was really exciting. The only place you could get see star of Star Trek was on old reruns, but they did not have access to that, and they could not afford those at the time. So you just had these old things like old Lost in Space or smaller shows that just hadn't ever really found an audience with the Time Tunnel or the Voyagers stuff like that. But essentially early on, it was old horror movie reruns, old horror uh sci-fi movie reruns, and more like older or smaller TV shows that they could easily get access to. That's right. Yeah, they did start having their own programming come not too long after. They had a show called Sci-Fi Buzz, which is kind of like the entertainment tonight for science fiction.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Wow, that takes me back. I remember that.

SPEAKER_04 15:40

Yeah. This is when like Entertainment Tonight was still new and interesting. But and you'd have a couple hosts and they'd talk about hey, this was they're making a Batman movie. How about that? Let's discuss this kind of thing. This was the only where placed you got this, or in newsletters or Star Lark magazine, things like that. But on TV, nobody was talking about this stuff, especially not just science fiction fantasy things. On Sci-Fi Buzz, they also had a running segment with Harlan Ellison, and essentially Harlan Ellison hates this. And he would just rail against whatever thing was in sci-fi pop culture at the time and how much he loathed it.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

He and Gene Roddenberry hated each other like with a passion. In fact, Harlan Ellison sued Gene Roddenberry for altering his script for one of the greatest original series episodes of all time, The City on the Edge of Forever, which was originally called Edith Keeler Must Die, which, by the way, spoiler alert, you're getting away in the title. Gene Roddenberry rewrote it. Harlan Ellison sued him. There was this big thing, and there was a long, protracted lawsuit or whatever about about it. Uh what would be the analog today of a Harlan Ellison thing like that? It'd be like, I don't know, like John Oliver?

SPEAKER_04 16:55

Like I No, I think the Harlan Eslin thing would be Tucker Carlson. I don't know. See, you're going like one, you're in politics. Well, I'm just thinking of thinking for something that's actually on. Just I would think what I would think it's like the old Andy Rooney um 60 Minutes. Yeah. 60 Minutes. But if it was George R. R. Martin and talked about how much he hated like the new Spider-Man is bullshit.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Yes. The humorless Andy Rooney, where he just like rant about how much he I actually watched 60 Minutes one time as a kid, I remember with my grandparents, and he was just talking about how much he hates the way that serials are named. And I'm like, get the fuck out of here, dude. Come on.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

But that is such a party's voice and as Bane as bullshit. And I hate it.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

I wish the lighting was better in Star Trek Discovery. You can't even see the bridge.

SPEAKER_04 17:49

Why do we have to have new X-Men? They so they had that. They also had a Canadian import TV show called the Anti-Gravity Room, and this focused on video games and comic books with showed like news and interviews. They would be promoting new game systems and things. This is a proto G4 program. But it was like, this is this is the early 90s. This is like brand new, and they're showing Sega Saturn's coming out. Here's what's this is gonna be really breaking the ground. It unfortunately didn't get a whole lot of footing, didn't last super long. But the beginning of what would really take off and become a thing 20, 30 years down the line.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Man, way ahead of its time. If it had premiered now, it'd be huge. But the issue is that if it didn't exist already, we wouldn't have what we have today. True.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

Similarly, sci-fi was one of the first to treat anime with real respect in Gravitas as they had Saturday anime. This was every Saturday morning. They would bring over anime from Japan and show it. You'd have Akira, Ghost in the Shell, things like that. Yeah, that's how I perceive it. Yeah. For a lot of people, this is like their first foray into what anime could do. It didn't like last forever, but eventually they had Animonde and they kept anime programming going through a lot of sci-fi channels run, but as like a just breaking out of the 80s and then showing anime on cable TV. It just wasn't happening. It wasn't happening in fact. They weren't necessarily the first people to show anime, but they at least didn't approach it as just kid stuff. This was stuff for adults to enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Relatively parallel to the creation of Sci-Fi Channel, the uh Cartoon Network used to show Japanimation, is what they called it, and that they would often show anime imported from Japan. And Cartoon Network is another very similar sort of niche network that came up around the same time. That's all I had to say about it.

SPEAKER_04 19:42

As they like again, they got deals with Paramount and things, so they were able to get more programming. This is where they started having some bigger shows that came on, or some interesting things that only they did. They were at the forefront of doing letterbox showings of programming. They did letterbox showings of Star Wars when they got Babylon 5. They hosted special letterbox showing that was the original format of Babylon 5. So they showed it in letterbox. Now again, this is they didn't have every TV was square at this time. There were no widescreen format. This is again decades ahead of its time. And if you showed that, probably everybody turning on who was above the age of 35 is like, why are there black bars on my TV? 100%.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

100%. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna ask you. It was the forefront. I remember people complaining about that all the time when we did the switch over to HD. When I was because I was working in TV when we switched over from 4x3 formats to not only just to digital, which was also the same time they switched over to 16 by 9 formats. So like letterbox when you go to a theater, you're not looking at a square.

SPEAKER_04 20:57

You are looking at a long, elongated rectangle that's a wider frame of vision. And that is how films are shown. Now, when they would be ported over to televisions, they would cut them up. And so you would cut off the sides and you'd lengthen the top and bottom so it fit the whole screen. A lot of movies aren't made for that. And so another way of the standard formatting is what they call pan and scan.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:23

And that is where they would take the frame of reference and focus it when they're editing things for TV, or for at the time VHS or DVD production to cut out parts of the shot and focus on what they think is highlighted or should be highlighted in that specific shot. But you're missing the totality of what's to be seen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

When widescreen TVs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:47

Yeah. I mean, it for some things it ruins. I can't think of anything that it helps, but I don't think it ever benefits anyone. Some example. I'm sure there's something, but essentially it was always I mean that's why it If any of the connoisseurs, especially like when you're growing up in the 90s and 2000s, especially as someone who worked at a video store, was a Cinephile. I wanted widescreen format, I wanted letterbox. And I have to explain to people as they come up and rent their copy of Mrs. Doubtfire. Why is the oh yeah, I'm getting it this way. But when they're running a copy of Lawrence of Arabia and it's in Letterboxd, why are there these black bars on the top of my screen? I'm like, let's this is the way it's shot on anamorphic widescreen and 6x9. And they don't really get that. They're just like, you're cutting off most of my all I'm seeing is black everywhere. I'm like, this is how it's meant to be seen. If you just want to wait 10 years, you're gonna have a TV that fits this and it will make sense to you.

Letterbox Wars And UHF Energy

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Because we're working at a video store and we're from the future, so we can tell you right now this is how it's going to be. I know things, and sir, you're stupid. Yep, that's the summary right there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:54

Yeah, yeah. I saw you just come out of the beaded room, take your East Eats West Volume 5, and go enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Yeah, I see you have your copy of the Asian Invasion 16. You know what? That one was shot as in three by four at that point, so it's okay. And if not, it doesn't fucking matter.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

They will pan and scan to the insertion shot for you specifically, sir. No worries. That is something that was they were doing early on the time. And then a few years in, they finally got access to some bigger shows, and they got Star Trek the original series, which was a little late, and they still didn't have access to the next generation, but they did have the original series, and when they would show it, they would have cast members in between the commercials. They would talk about their filming process or give little anecdotes about the episode or whatnot. Just kind of things to spruce up the feel and the whole Star Trek experience.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

That was to give legitimacy to the network in and of itself. Not only was Star Trek about to hit its absolute peak in the 90s, but they wanted to give legitimacy to the network itself. And so by bringing on actual actors and actual celebrities to come on and talk about the programming, instead of it just feeling like they're showing syndicated television on loop with no oversight or no thought behind it, which is what we have today, it was curated. That's what it felt like. Get us into the late 90s? In that middle ground that that time, right after it premiered, they were very experimental. They do promos and they do every now and then like short form original content to keep people engaged, and this was definitely at the direction of the original advisory board, who unfortunately were already dead, but the vision that they gave to the sci-fi channel, their directives were to keep their audience engaged, because otherwise it just feels like you're watching, and boy, this is gonna date the entire thing. It's almost like if they hadn't done those things, it would be like watching a UHF channel.

SPEAKER_04 24:54

What's a UHF channel?

SPEAKER_02 24:55

I'm glad you asked, Jake. For people our age, and we're not even that old, but technology changes.

SPEAKER_04 25:00

UHF is like like before my time, really, in a lot of ways.

X-Files Influence And Friday Slots

SPEAKER_02 25:04

I'm a year older than you. I don't know. It's not that crazy. I'm not even a year older than you. Back when television was television, when we only had three networks. Back when TV was legitimately television. It used to be that just like with radio, you had AM and FM. Amplitude modulation and frequency modulation. They were just different ways to different. I had to explain it without going about uh talking about the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but there is just don't just skip it. I will. There are two different two different carrier waves that they would use to broadcast information. AM was the original radio, and then FM was think of it as a more advanced radio. And still to this day, you can switch back and forth between the two. They both still broadcast. AM is mostly populated by public radio and religious content, and it's crazy if you try and scan the AM networks going through any place in the Midwest or the South. The same with television. There was VHF and UHF. And so there was a there was a basic platform for broadcasting analog television, UHF. And then later they had a more advanced version, VHF. And if you've ever seen the movie UHF, fantastic film by Weird L. The weirdest Albert. The I don't know why I said it so formally. They uh Nobody knows. Everybody knows Weird L. UHF became the sort of also RAND. It was considered substandard. And you'd have to switch back and forth between UHF and VHF to get the channels you wanted. And specifically in Kansas City, where we grew up, one of the main UHF stations was Channel 62. It was a channel basically devoted to just showing syndicated television. It didn't have original programming, except maybe on the weekends, you'd have the they would have the drive-in with the guy that owned used carve dealership, and he would show like Robocop or something really late at night. Late night drive-in type movies, monster movies, really underseen stuff. No, his name is Ray something. It was Ray. That is a very specific snapshot of a time. And so UHF channels were essentially just showing Ray Steel. He would show a late night, essentially cult movie thing on Fridays. That was some of their only original programming, was just shooting somebody introducing something that was already in syndication or was cheap to get to show on TV. And the reason I bring all of that up is that's what UHF was. There was a possibility that's what the sci-fi channel would become. That UHF channel where you just showed syndicated stuff without any real forethought behind it. And it would be random. You don't know. It could be leave it to Beaver one day, it could be make room for Danny one day, it could be the Lucy show, it could be Robocop. You don't know. So the sci-fi channel wanted to try to separate itself from that stigma by yes, getting that type of programming, but having forethought behind it. Intentionally programming things that were thematic or had like some original content like the sci-fi buzz show or the inner interstitials of the faster-than-light news feed.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

So if you look at the landscape of the early 90s, what was really popular, there was one show. Star Trek had passed its peak by the time Sci-Fi had acquired it, but one show was dominating the field. That is a little conspiracy show called The X-Files.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_04 28:31

Everybody loved the X-Files.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

We all did.

SPEAKER_04 28:34

And it was great. No, that's a conspiracy. I don't believe it.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

It didn't happen. I saw it happen, so it's telling me it didn't happen.

SPEAKER_04 28:42

But it was huge. And so people were trying to jump in on that buzz. Now, there were two things that really kind of made the success of X-Files stick out. One was its conspiracy nature. Obviously, America at this time in the early to mid-90s, conspiracy was beginning to take hold of every part of our culture. And it really has only gotten worse in the subsequent decades. You had a conspiracy show about big shadowy government elites and possible cover-up of aliens and monsters and all kinds of things that was fun to deal with. Now that is the people running our government. So it's not as fun. But at the time, it was new and exciting. So Sci-Fi Channel, along with other shows, were trying to put conspiracy content into their programming. Sci-fi had a few different shows based around that. I think Taken being the biggest one, which we'll talk about in a bit, but none of their stuff really ever had the impact or the excitement or the quality that X-Files did. So just because you have something similar doesn't mean it's going to be great. You can have the Avengers, just because Morbius is also a comic book-based property, does not mean it's going to be good or anybody's going to want to watch it. Two, they put X-Files on at the dreaded Friday time slot. Oh, yeah. Generally, any show that you put on the Friday time slot is mostly a death slot. Friday night is the biggest time for people not to be watching their TV. It's that and Saturday night. So putting on what was the biggest show in the United States, it was amazing that it was doing so well. But it just it was so good, and people wanted it so bad, they would stay home and make it appointment television.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Big time.

SPEAKER_04 30:30

As sci-fi did their programming, they tried to do a similar thing and thought sci-fi people, they are they're staying home and they're not going out on dates or anything. They're cracking a bag of funions and sitting on their couch and watching stuff. Unfortunately, that isn't quite the case. And the things that they tried to put on their Friday time slot generally didn't do great either. But one of the things that did do decently in the Friday time slot is a show that Sliders took after its cancellation. And it's a show called became one of their bigger shows in the their early years, a show called Sliders. This was Sci-Fi's biggest show for at least a couple years in the mid-90s. Essentially, Sliders is a show about think of Quantum Leap, where you know this guy, he's trying to get back to his timeline, but he's stuck living all these other lives throughout history, and he's always like trying to get back to his home. Sliders is similar, where it's a group of people and they are jumping through these wormholes, trying to get back to their home, but they're jumping through all these alternate realities. Whether, you know, your standard, what if the Nazis won? What if women dominate society? What if dinosaurs still ruled the world? Whatever. It was just like every episode was like the reality of the week. It's a fun show. It did pretty well. But as like sci-fi. Yeah. The first two seasons, sci-fi, they tried to change the formula, they changed casts, they tried to make a little hipper and sexier. Two diminishing returns every time. Now, this was in the beginning of what I would call the hipper sexier revolution of sci-fi. And this comes from kind of the person who started Fox and some of proteges. Now I'm going to give you a little bit of history on that so you have a better sense of what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

I'm glad you brought up Sliders, and maybe we should end on Sliders because we've been going for so long. But may Sliders is really an important pillar in what we're what we're talking about with the Sci-Fi Channel because Sliders was a show that was produced on Fox first and then cancelled by Fox but picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel. This would become a model that the sci-fi channel would use in expanding its repertoire in original programming by just picking up the production of other shows that were established. Also happened to Mystery Science Theater 3000.

SPEAKER_04 32:48

Yeah, which we will get to.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

Yeah. They just kind of picked it up and were like, hey, this is kind of this is our jam. Let's go for it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:54

Which, as a still, still a bit of a fledging company, taking off things that you thought had legs or could have legs, and then trying to milk the most out of them that had mainstream wide mass appeal instead of trying to create a new audience whole cloth. That was a good idea. It was a cost saving measure. None of this were too expensive. And you had, again, that audience that's pointing porting over. Give me a few.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

It also ruined the show, to be perfectly honest. The sci-fi channel. When the stuff when they moved to the sci-fi channel, it was so bad. It's funny because there's a direct one-to-one about sliders when it got bad. I remember it was right after the movie Species had come out. They start doing Slider starts doing stuff that's instead of just like cool high concept sci-fi stuff, they start doing what's popular in modern pop sci-fi. And so when Species comes out, they do a species episode essentially. The show really fell off. They the even the production design got worse. It thought it needed to be edgier and sexier to justify its existence, even though if it had just kept up with the way it was, it probably would have been fine.

Sliders The Pickup Model

SPEAKER_04 34:02

Yeah. So to give you a little bit of context, again, USA Network owned sci-fi channel. And in 1992, USA was owned by Paramount Pictures and MCA. Now MCA was owned by the Masashita electric company, aka Panasonic. In 1982, the Masashita sold MCA to Seagrim's. That's right. The wine cooler company.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Yes. Okay. I like which directions we went there.

SPEAKER_04 34:32

I always think of if again, like if any of you were younger, go Google Seagrim's ads, and you'll probably see Bruce Willis in the early 90s. That's promoting his Seagram's wine cooler. He was like the face of the company for a bit.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

I thought that was before he got famous. I thought that was like his first thing. He did a he did a wine cooler commercial like before Die Hard. This was uh late 80s. So 86, 87. Oh, so it was like during his like okay, his rise.

SPEAKER_04 35:03

Yes, yes. This was I think this was around the time like Moonlighting and Die Hard and then kind of brought him out of that.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

So he became a star. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 35:12

Uh Seagrams had owned it. In 1984, Paramount was sold to Viacom. Viacom owned MTV, Nickelodeon, and Showtime. In 1995, Seagram's purchased Viacom stake in the sci-fi USA that it didn't have. That was for$1.7 billion at the time. And then sold that to Barry Diller. Now, at the same time, Vivendi Universal, which was a French water company, they purchased a majority control of USA. This will all come back. I need to talk about Barry Diller for a second. Barry Diller was a network wonder kid. He dropped out of UCLA three weeks after classes, and then he used family connections to get to get a job at William Morris Agency. This is kind of like the biggest talent agency in Hollywood. Yeah. He worked in the mailroom and there he soaked up all he could by opening and reading other people's mail. By 19 by yeah, in 1965, at age 23, he went on to become the VP of ABC. And he created what we now know as the modern made-for-tv movie. By 32, he was chairman and CFO of Paramount Pictures.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

The Burning Bed, I think was the first one of the first made-for-tv movies.

SPEAKER_04 36:37

That and then Roots. By 42, he had left Paramount Pictures and became the head of the brand new Fox Network. Now, Diller had previously tried in 1977 to create his own TV channel with or own network channel with the Paramount Television Services, but that failed. And two weeks before launch of Paramount, the organization they got cold feet and they pulled it. Now, this is despite them working on many things. One of those things they were working on was Star Trek Phase 2. Oh boy! Which was to be the sequel to the original Star Trek show. And when that failed, they took some of those elements and plot details from the show and made Star Trek the original motion picture.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

It was very similar to Battlestar Galactica in that the opposite of Glenn Larson's Battlestar Galactica. So they canceled Star Trek Phase 2 in favor of a movie because of the success of Star Wars. When Star Trek the Motion Picture tanked a little bit, Battlestar Galactica moved back into being from a motion picture into a TV series. To give context for that. Yeah. Didn't mean to derail you, sorry. It's just like that's a good one.

SPEAKER_04 37:54

Text messages that I I need to respond to.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Yeah, at this point, Star Wars had changed the landscape of everything. Even though Star Wars technically, as we've maintained, his fantasy, it reignited people's love and interest for science fiction. And would change the direction of all of these franchises forever. The only reason Star Trek Phase 2 failed, it probably would have gone on to be a show and then probably got cancelled after a season or two. Instead, they shifted their focus to if Star Wars can work, Star Trek can work on the big screen. And so for the very first time, there's a Star Trek movie. So that's why phase two kind of fizzled down. Now there is footage of phase two. You can see phase two, some of it, online. They have released some of the uh pre-production stuff and some of the early footage that they shot, but it was ultimately decided that it would have been better to do a big budget movie in hopes of writing on the coattails of Star Wars than a show, the redux of a show that had been cancelled and only brought back for a third season because of a letter writing campaign, which was probably going to get cancelled again. But they also knew intuitively that there was a thirst, there was an audience that really loved Star Trek because they really loved sci-fi. Sci-fi fans really they are like we talked about in the last episode, but from that blockbuster guy, science fiction fans are rabid and they are loyal. And that leads into why they thought this was a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 39:25

Again, Diller had left Paramount and he's starting his own trying to start his own network, and Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox, gave him the power to lead the new artwork, but it was an early struggle. But not much lasted past their first real year, but they found a winning formula that was to focus on un underserved groups, mostly teens and minorities. They had shows like In Living Color and Martin and Beverly Hills 90210, and trying to what are things that people aren't seeing other places? And we will cater to them, and it was a massive success. People flocked to it.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Ironically, also early in the 90s, yes, we'll actually get to that.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

Okay. Early in the 90s, that the Fox took off, and the big three then became the big four. But in 1992, Diller shocked the industry by leaving Fox. Supposedly there was a rift between Diller and Rupert Murdoch. Nobody ever really knows. But he left Fox and out of the blue, he bought part of QVC. Oh wow. A strange move, but he took the money that he had from working at Fox and he built up and bought QVC. From there, he sold part of that and went to buy the home shopping network. And then he bought controlling interest in USA, sci-fi, and other over-the-air stations. Now in 1997, there were rumors of him wanting to create a seventh network, UPN. In 98, Diller bought Ticketmaster and some other things, and was one of the early examples of vertical integration in corporate maneuvering, something that was commonplace now, but truly novel at that time.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Yeah.

Barry Diller Bonnie Hammer And Rebrand

SPEAKER_04 41:25

That's all long past. Diller had a lot of control over at the USAIN Network and with Sci-Fi Channel. Essentially, he forced Kate Kopowitz out, the woman that we spoke about last episode, who took the reins for creating the sci-fi network from the original two idea holders and brought it to USAID Network and made it extant. Diller kicked her out, and in their her place, he put Stephen Chow and Bonnie Hammer. Now Chow had created America's Most Wanted at Fox along with cops. And when Diller had left, he had been made president of Fox, but he was fired after 10 weeks on the job. So when he left Fox, he came over to the Sci-Fi network to take over a big chunk of their programming. Now Bonnie Hammer, she was the other one that came on board through Diller, and she was the one most in charge of Sci-Fi's network after this point. And a lot of people point to her as a key driver of the network's decay. Now she had worked under Kate Kopowitz and was in the one of the few that was promoted internally. But once they fired Kate Kopowitz, he like Diller was like, hey, you do this and you do it the way I want you to do it. This group of Bonnie Hammer and Stephen Shao, their kind of main goal in the late 90s was to make sci-fi channel cooler and sexier. And they wanted to do this by again promoting flesh, promoting teen stuff, adding big names and a lot of star fuckery, and trying to get out of the bounds of just being sci-fi channel. Right. Which would lead us down the dark path of not only sci-fi channel not showing sci-fi stuff, but in 1997, they were in charge of the soft relaunch of sci-fi channel under its new name SCI FI. They were no longer nostalgia-based programming, but new expensive original programming and trying to bring in big demographics.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

They just don't get it. There's so many examples of that. This is the degradation of an idea without vision from people who understand the thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:45

At the beginning, it had some legs. So, like their new block Friday programming, which was the brainchild of Stephen Chow, this was Sliders, Poltergeist the Legacy.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Which was we talked about that.

SPEAKER_04 43:58

Which we talked about in a previous. Previous one of our October episodes.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_04 44:03

Now, this was a partnership between MGM and Sci-Fi because MGM had produced Poltergeist Legacy. This is a partnership that would later pay off with Stargate, but in this original Friday block of programming, again, you had Sliders, Poltergeist Legacy, First Wave, which was a massive failure. They had originally gave it an unprecedented three-season order before a single episode was shot. Wow. They did this because Francis Ford Coppola was the executive producer of that first season, but it was a massive underperformer. Now, what did they decide to do to try to get people to get on the show? Let's make it younger, let's make it hipper, let's make it sexier. What if we put Tracy Lords in there?

SPEAKER_02 44:49

That's right, I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_04 44:51

To try to get people to watch. Look, she's a softcore uh diva, and she has tight leather pants and a boustier. Come watch this show. It never worked, but this was the thought process there. With every Poltergeist Legacy, with every first wave, there are also positives. In this Friday block, you had one of their biggest and best original programming, that is Farscape, which didn't have any of the hoopla, the press, the big names, or sexy, but not quite the overtly sexual nature. But it went on to become a fan favorite, and honestly, I think one of their best shows they ever made.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_04 45:33

Your post-Farscape, you're then you're getting like your Stargate, some of like their hit and misses, then we get Battlestar, then it's mostly downhill after that. Then you get into your reality programming, your game show stuff, your professional wrestling, and then essentially the death of the sci-fi channel.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

This is kind of ended on a little bit of a down note, but there was a bright side. These are the kinds of shows they used to show.

SPEAKER_04 45:57

I think we need to talk about next episode. We'll talk about them bringing on MST3K.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 46:03

A little bit of stuff, you have to mention Stargate at least, and then Battlestar, and then decline of the channel with all of the other bullshit.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

And it's funny that we have not even we haven't even tackled the that period that you and I thoroughly ironically enjoyed, the era of the sci-fi original, like Bloodsurf and all that shit. Remember that?

SPEAKER_04 46:24

Yeah. I thought we'd get into a little bit of as they're like expanding their original programming, then sci-fi gets known for making bad sci-fi movies. That's just uh awful. Then we can get into She-Wolf of London.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

Hell yeah, finally. People were clamoring.

SPEAKER_04 46:40

Sky Surfer Strike Force.

SPEAKER_02 46:42

These are all things that they had. That's the way it was. That's what the sci-fi channel was in like 2000, 2001, 2002. It was known for showing just shit TV. In fact, all the way up to Cert NATO. Which is its own phenomenon that we'll have to do.

SPEAKER_04 47:00

You can see where the idea for let's make things hip, cool, big names to get out of that glut that they felt they were stuck in.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

But that was like that was their reclamation project, though. That's the thing, is that like they had already done this stupid bullshit late 90s thing where they were like, we don't get sci-fi, so what if we make it less sci-fi? And then they tried to reclaim it by doing the wrong formula, and then once again doing the same thing. Let's make it less shitty by making it shittier. That's the cycle that sci-fi channel's gone through. We are right at that interesting point where we're both have a lot to say about it. So yeah, I think do we even need an outro? Well, let's just do an outro. It takes us like three minutes, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Okay, we're gonna stop there because this has already been a roller coaster, and to dive into what we're going into next is going to be its own separate thing. So we're going to pause it here for now, and then next time we're going to not only finish the sort of Shakespearean drama that is the sci-fi channel, but then we're gonna talk about some of the good stuff that they did, or at least the at least okay. I shouldn't use the word good. We're gonna dive into some of the weird obscure stuff that sci-fi channel did, or at least it used to show, when it was uh the sci-fi channel and not sci-fi with whys. And now it's even worse. So that is its own separate topic. So we're I I guess we'll pause it here and then thank you for guys for listening to this.

SPEAKER_04 48:28

Yeah, you do the first part, and I'll do the I'll do the other bit.

Wrap Up Thanks And House Rules

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Okay, alright. You're sort of saying thank you. No, it's fair, no, it's fair. I've walked into that trap. We would like to thank you for listening. We appreciate it every single week that we do this. We are back on track after my computer exploded or whatever, and now I have a new hard drive. We're ready to go and editing once again. Make sure that you have followed us on every platform you possibly can. We do try and put out stuff as often as we can. Things are getting much more constant, and that's good. We appreciate every single person that listens to our show, and we want to remind you that we are here to both introduce things that you may not know about geek culture, but also to help revisit and reinforce things that you may already know and uh love dearly. In that sense, please follow us on social media, which we suck at. Make sure you follow us on all of our major platforms, including Apple Podcasts, or any podcatcher that you prefer. And we will be coming up with video content theoretically soon, so look out for that. And make sure that though we are not, this is not a we don't get paid for this. This is not something we do for money. Maybe someday, but uh currently we don't do this for money, so there are no ads and there's no corporate sponsors. This is just us doing our thing, spreading our knowledge because this is what we know. Please make sure that you follow us on all those platforms, and that we want you to know that we are very thankful for your listenership. Jake, all of that being said, what should they do?

SPEAKER_04 50:02

Well, ideally they should clean themselves and their place around them up to some sort of reasonable degree. Uh make sure and tip their waiters, their waitresses, their bar staff, their DJs, their KJs, their AJs, their BJs, all the J's they can find. If you have a corporate overlord, make sure they know that you love and appreciate them. DJ Tanner, your whatever AI overlord is about to take them over, make sure that they are properly thanked and reciprocated. And until next glorious podcast with your favorite host, Skip and I, we would like to say wherever you go, there you are. Don't be mean.

SPEAKER_05 50:48

Please go away.