Are you a geek?

SciFi channel aims to shed geeky image with new name.

The comments are pretty negative about this change. People who either a) fit the "geek" image SciFi is trying to bust or b) fit the alleged demographic are both offended. As a 48-year-old female who has been reading scifi for at least 36 of those years, I agree. (I also like video games, BTW, and my teen daughters do, as well).

I recommend reading the comments, though. Some of them are pretty funny and point out things about the name that were apparently missed in the market research. (One person claims that "syfy" in Polish means "things that are stinky.") I liked the suggest of changing the channel name to OOPS, as in "Our Original Programming Sucks."

Some people pointed out that the programming changes (wrestling, anyone?) are what drive people away. Start out by providing interesting, quality programming and gradually get rid of the interesting, quality stuff, replacing it with, well, crap, and yes, you will lose viewers.

But who are the customers to argue with the marketing people? We may be the target audience, but obviously they know better than we do about what we want. Right.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Perhaps they needed something, but they are fixing the wrong thing.