Yeah, it's just sad. But I guess it's all about profit. I mean, if you look at some of the other cable networks, you really can't tell what they stand for anymore. Reruns of "Law and Order", "Frasier", "My Wife and Kids", "Cheers", "Supernatural", "Charmed", etc., abound. Often one can no longer tell what the station's particular focus is supposed to be...
----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Baxter" <martinbaxt...@gmail.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 6:19:54 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] WTF--SyFy Fridays Changing to Wrestling? Took me twenty seconds to shake off the shock before I could reply... To paraphrase one of the Founding Fathers, "Now is the time for all good people to chip in and create a competitive network against this crap." On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 9:44 PM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net > wrote: Well, how much more does SyFy plan to get away from the scifi motif? They claim it's a zero-sum gain, since one wrestling show is going away, to be replaced by another, and since they claim Tuesday nights will generate better viewership. But this is utter bullcrap. A two hour wrestling block on Friday nights? I just don't get this... ******************************************************* http://www.multichannel.com/article/451611-Syfy_s_Wrestling_Upgrade_SmackDown_on_Fridays.php Syfy’s Wrestling Upgrade: ‘SmackDown’ on Fridays By Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 4/19/2010 12:01:00 AM Syfy hopes to pin down young wrestling fans on Friday nights with the fall launch of World Wrestling Entertainment’s popular Friday Night SmackDown , newly acquired by the NBC Universal outlet. Syfy will air the two-hour, weekly series — which migrates from broadcast network MyNetworkTV — beginning Oct. 1, during the 8 to 10 p.m. slot on Fridays that had been home to Syfy’s original series. To make room for SmackDown , Syfy will move original franchises such as Caprica and Sanctuary , which had aired on “Syfy Friday,” to Tuesday nights.Th ey replace wrestling reality series WWE NXT, which will leave the network’s schedule in October. WWE NXT — formerly ECW — has averaged 1.4 million viewers since launching last month. Friday Night SmackDown averages more than 3.4 million viewers a week on MyNetworkTV, making it the second most popular WWE franchise behind USA Network’s WWE Monday Night Raw . “I think this is a fantastic opportunity to upgrade what we already have and bring in a bigger WWE franchise — SmackDown being the second biggest after Raw ,” Syfy president Dave Howe said. “ SmackDown attracts a bigger, more family oriented audience, so it’s more helpful in terms of cross-promotion with the rest of the schedule.” ORIGINALS MOVE TO TUESDAY Howe said Tuesdays will provide greater exposure for those originals than Fridays, typically a slower night in terms of television viewing. Freshman original series Warehouse 13 , for example, averaged a networkhigh 3.8 million total viewers last summer on Tuesday nights. Howe hasn’t totally ruled out the possibility of launching a scripted series in the Friday 10 p.m. time slot. “We still have Fridays at 10, so what we’re aiming to do is use SmackDown as a springboard to launch new shows on Friday, or put in repeats of our scripted shows so that we can continue to grow that SmackDown audience across our schedule,” he said. WWE officials are said to be “currently in negotiations” with other distributors regarding future carriage of WWE NXT . -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik
