Sci Fi becomes SyFy

Sometimes you just have to shake your head at the so-called image makers. Someone thought it was a good idea to rebrand the Sci Fi Channel as SyFy. As soon as the news was announced, a collective ‘ugh, that’s awful’ could be heard around the Internet. The renaming has good intentions. ‘Sci fi’ couldn’t be trademarked owing to the fact that it has been in collective use for decades. Further, you can’t argue with the fact that SyFy is pretty unique, distinguishing it from a host of other cable channel names. At the same time, it’s somewhat similar to the old name.

However, good intentions haven’t stopped the scorn that’s been heaped on the name change. A writer at Cnet called the change “perhaps the most ill-advised branding move since New Coke.” Gawker commented that the network’s new tagline, Imagine Greater, “means nothing and is grammatically incoherent.” Ouch.

Via New York Times.