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- See Sci Fi Channel for a list of other Sci Fi channels.
Sci Fi is an American cable television channel, launched in 1992 and currently owned by corporate conglomerate NBC Universal, specializing in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal programming.
History
The channel was launched in 1992 as a sister cable channel to USA Network by then-owners Paramount Pictures (which was later acquired by Viacom in 1994) and MCA (then part of Japanese electronic giant Matsushita), the owner of Universal Studios, each with a 50 percent stake in the venture.
The channel was seen as a natural fit with classic film and television series that both studios had in their vaults, including Paramount's The Original Series and classic Universal horror films such as Dracula and Frankenstein.
At the time of the launch of the channel, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, an advisory board member for the channel said, "The Sci-Fi Channel will be bigger than Star Trek." Other advisers of the channel included author Isaac Asimov, who died before the channel went on the air.A channel for science fiction, Omni, October 1992.
In 1997, Seagram, which bought MCA in 1995, purchased Viacom's interest in USA and Sci-Fi, and sold the networks to Barry Diller in 1998 to form USA Networks, Inc. Diller later sold USA's non-shopping (film and TV) assets, including Sci-Fi, to Universal's then-parent Vivendi Universal in 2002. Vivendi's film, television, and cable TV assets were then merged with General Electric's NBC to form NBC Universal in 2004.
Sci Fi original programming
Sci Fi has found a profitable niche in creating its own television movies, miniseries and series. As of April 2006, these included the on-air series, Battlestar Galactica, Scare Tactics, Stargate Atlantis and Tripping the Rift.
The channel has also had success in continuing, with new episodes, canceled series from other networks. These have included Stargate SG-1 and Mystery Science Theater 3000 (originally created on Showtime and Comedy Central, respectively).
In 2006, Sci Fi began to air World Wrestling Entertainment's third brand, Extreme Championship Wrestling.
Sci Fi miniseries
Sci Fi original programming gained national prominence in 2003 with the airing of Steven Spielberg Presents: Taken, which won the Emmy Award that year for best miniseries. Sci Fi's current Battlestar Galactica series started out as a miniseries that same year. Sci Fi miniseries for the 2006-2007 season included The Triangle and The Dragon King.Sci Fi Pictures original movies
Since 2002 the channel has earned strong ratings from television movies it commissions. Typically independently-made B movie-quality monster movies with total budgets of $1 to 2 million, they usually air on Saturday nights.Wolf, Gary. "We've Created a Monster!," Wired, October 2004 In April 2005 the network announced that it would air 28 original movies on Saturday nights through 2006.SCI FI Announces Films for '06." press release, 14 April 2005.M. Night Shyamalan hoax
In 2004, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan was involved in a media hoax with the Sci Fi Channel, which when eventually uncovered by the press prompted Sci Fi's parent company, NBC-Universal, to denounce the undertaking as "not consistent with our policy at NBC. We would never intend to offend the public or the press and value our relationship with both". Associated Press story on CBS News site (July 20, 2004): " Sci-Fi Channel Admits Hoax, 'Documentary' On Reclusive Filmaker Is Bogus
Sci Fi claimed in its "documentary" special — The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, shot on the set of The Village — that Shyamalan was legally dead for nearly a half-hour while drowned in a frozen pond in a childhood accident, and that upon being rescued he had experiences of communicating with spirits, fueling an obsession with the supernatural. The Sci Fi Channel also claimed that Shyamalan had grown "sour" when the "documentary" filmmakers' questions got too personal, and had therefore withdrawn from participating and threatened to sue the filmmakers.
In truth, Shyamalan developed the hoax with Sci Fi, going so far as having Sci Fi staffers sign non-disclosure agreements with a $5 million fine attached, and required Shyamalan's office to formally approve each step. Neither the childhood accident nor the supposed rift with the filmmakers ever occurred. The hoax included a non-existent Sci Fi publicist, "David Westover", whose name appeared on press releases regarding the special. Sci Fi also fed false news stories to the Associated Press Associated Press (June 16, 2004): "Profile of M. Night Shyamalan goes sour: Sci Fi Channel is still planning to air the documentary" and Zap2It.com Zap2It.com (June 17, 2004): "Sci Fi Schedules Controversial Shyamalan Doc", among others. A New York Post news item, based on a Sci Fi press release, referred to Shyamalan's attorneys threatening to sue the filmmakers; the attorneys named were non-existent.
After an AP reporter confronted Sci Fi Channel president Bonnie Hammer at a press conference, Hammer admitted the hoax, saying it was part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to generate pre-release publicity for The Village. Despite his office's disclosure-agreement requirement and approvals of each marketing step, Shymalan told the AP, "I was, of course, involved in the production of the special but had nothing to do with the marketing of it. If the Sci Fi Channel erred in their marketing strategy, it was totally out of enthusiasm". Associated Press (June 20, 2004), Ibid.
Anime shown on Sci Fi
Briefly in the early 1990s, Sci Fi showed anime movies, although they were often edited in order to fit the market pressures often placed on basic cable. It was the first to show the movie Akira in its original Streamline Pictures English dub, as well as showing episodes of Dominion Tank Police, Gall Force, and Project A-ko.
Anime shown on Sci Fi most frequently aired on Saturday mornings in a roughly two-hour block entitled "Saturday Anime." Each week, the network would air a different anime feature in this timeslot. During the late summer, Sci Fi used one week of its weeknight primetime slots to feature an anime theme week.
On August 26, 1996, Sci Fi aired the U.S. television premiere of Tenchi Muyo in Love, the first movie of the popular anime series. The premiere was heavily promoted prior to the airing. *
Although most of Sci Fi's anime programming was composed of feature-length films, a few, such as Dominion Tank Police, were OVAs cut together to fit into the feature timeslot. One regular feature of the Saturday Anime rotation was composed of the first three episodes of the 1990 fantasy OVA Record of Lodoss War — an awkward programming choice in that the third episode ends on a cliffhanger and Sci Fi never aired further episodes.
Non-science fiction-related programming
In 2004, Sci Fi began showing some non-sci fi programming. These have included:
- Special Victims Unit, shown on May 4, 2006
- WWE's Extreme Championship Wrestling, started June 13, 2006. *
SciFi.com
SciFi.com is the channel's website, launched in 1995 under the name "The Dominion", which it dropped in 2000.* In addition to information on the channel's programming, it covers science fiction in general, primarily through its semi-autonomous Science Fiction Weekly webzine, edited by Scott Edelman, and SciFi Wire newswire. Editors for the site itself have included David Alan Mack and Frank Lovece.
The site has won a Webby Award and a Flash Forward Award. From 2000 to 2005, it published original science fiction short stories in a section called SciFiction, edited by Ellen Datlow, who won a 2005 Hugo Award for her work there. The stories themselves won a World Fantasy Award; the first Theodore Sturgeon Award for online fiction (for Lucius Shepard's novella "Over Yonder"), and four of the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Awards, including the first for original onlne fiction (for Linda Nagata's novella "Goddesses").
Trivia
- As a placeholder for those who were about to receive the Sci Fi channel on cable, a loop of a fly through space in first-person perspective was shown, with a countdown clock in the corner that told viewers exactly when Sci Fi would begin programming. This went on for at least two months before the channel's inception.
- The first broadcast of the Sci Fi Channel on Sept 24, 1992, was an installment of FTL Newsfeed, a fictitious, serialized news program reporting current events from the year 2142. The 30-second episodes would continue to run for the channel's first four years, with new episodes on every weekday. The initial installment reported on the recovery of the original A New Hope movie, which the Sci-fi channel then proceeded to air as its first feature-length program. The film was said to have been refurbished and was now able to be viewed "in the privacy of your own head".
- In 1992, there was a block of animated television shows called "Cartoon Quest" which in 1995 was renamed The Animation Station. Among these were The Animated Series, and Galaxy High as well as marionette shows like Stingray and Captain Scarlet.
- This channel was the first American basic cable network to air Doctor Who.
Footnotes
References
General Electric subsidiaries | NBC Universal networks | SciFi Channel original movies | 1992 establishments | American television networks
"Sci Fi Channel (United States)"