Ask Slashdot: Is It Time For SyFy To Go Premium?

Cutriss writes "Now that Caprica is gone and SG:U has concluded, I see new shows coming in their place such as Alphas and the Red Faction series, and I find myself asking if the fate of Atlantis and SG:U might have gone differently if SyFy had been a paid cable network. I know the Slashdot audience would probably trade a few dollars a month if it meant replacing wrestling and ghost-chasing shows with relicensed classics and more appropriate treatment of original content. Plus, with a paying audience, the ad space would become much more lucrative and SyFy could lose some of the seedier ads it has been saddled with lately, and better fund new original content."

Uh yeah...

[MickyTheIdiot]

Then they can make Megamonsterdragonfrog vs. Interstellar Goldfish with even better production values.

This whole story is a joke, right?

Re:Remember when (elitist post)

[indecks]

That's because current anime *is* crap. Adventures in Japanese Animation was probably 1993 or 1995? I can't remember, unfortunatley. Back then Anime was actually about robots (Robotech), or stuff like Akira (1988). The current pokemon/cardcaptor/bleach/trigun era of Anime is total garbage.

Watch stuff by Studio Ghibli. That's Anime. Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Nausicaa (an "OG" anime) and the like. There's also stuff like Akira, BubbleGum Crisis (not 2040), AD Police, Gunbuster, Dangaio, etc.

THAT is anime.

Re:Internet

[overlordofmu]

I want to make it clear that it is not your cable company keeping you from buying individual channels.

90% of TV channels are owned by one of seven large media conglomerates. Viacom, for instance, owns Comedy Central, Logo, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick@Nite, Nickelodeon, TeenNick, Nick Jr., MTV, VH1, MTV2, Tr3Ìs, CMT, Palladia. The cable companies cannot buy just one network and they are contractually required to group certain channel in certain ways. If the cable company doesn't agree to Viacom's terms, then no Nick, no MTV, no Spike. It is an all or nothing proposition.

How long do you think a cable company will stay in business if they don't have Nick or MTV? No Comedy Central?

The media companies hold the scarce resource (the channels and content) and they dictate the terms. One of those terms is that the cable company cannot a-la-cart the channels.

Don't blame the cable company, blame Viacom, Disney, National Amusements, News Corporation, Time Warner, General Electric and Sony.

I don't mean to rant, just trying to educate.

Don't like it? Write your congress-person, pay them more than the media company lobbyists do or boycott mass media. But don't blame the wrong group.