By Kenn Gold

Things are a-changing over at SCI FI Channel, and network President, Dave Howe, recently set down to discuss the motivation and reasoning behind the drive to re-brand the network Syfy with MediaBlvd's editor and others.  He also answered questions about the release of Caprica on DVD in April, and discussed how exactly the new name was chosen.

 Dave Howe>  I just want to kind of kick off by thanking you all for joining this conference call and obviously to say to you that no holds barred here.  We want to be as open and honest and have a good conversation about where we are so that you can ask me the points that you’ve heard from the people that respond to your sites and I can kind of respond on our behalf. So fire away.

MediaBlvd> What I’m seeing out in the fan sites on the Internet is a question about the origin of the name Syfy, I mean, I think you probably know that there was another really popular site out there using that name. And there seems to be not a lot of recognition out there or at least a lot of people are saying that NBC and the SciFi Channel is not acknowledging that. Can you comment on that?

Dave Howe> I don’t think that’s the case that we’re not acknowledging it. I think we’ve been actively working on this brand evolution for the last two years. And we’ve explored a lot of name options. And I think at the point at which there are any short list of names the first thing we do obviously is look at the URLs and look at whether any of the names are trademark protectable.

 And I think once we looked at alternative names and we also looked at whether there was a way of taking ownership of our existing name through an addition of extra letters or changing the order of the letters I think once we settled on Syfy it became apparent to us that the Syfy Portal existed. And we haven’t  not commented on that directly. And that’s a point of fact that Syfy Portal is now Airlock Alpha.

MediaBlvd> Okay and just another question, a follow-up here, if you guys are changing the brand name or changing the name it seems like the last few years or the last maybe two or three years SciFi has really gone beyond what - at least what I would call hardcore sci-fi, I mean, you’ve kind of expanded into the reality shows and, yeah, some of those have a sci-fi tinge like  Estate of Panic and some of the others which are very good shows, I love the show, Chase, for example.  And the wrestling stuff, I mean, it kind of embraces more than just hardcore sci-fi. So if you’re looking at a brand why just go with kind of a phonetic change of SciFi rather than I guess coming up with something that embraces maybe what the network has really become over the last few years?

Dave Howe> I think the honest answer to that actually is that we didn’t come up with a name that we liked any better than what we’ve gone with which was Syfy. Naming is an incredibly tough exercise. And I’ve been at Sci Fi for eight years, I’ve been in the TV business a marketing head for about 20 years. And trust me the hardest and toughest thing to ever get to is a name that everybody likes; it’s incredibly subjective. It’s never going to solve all of life’s problems for you. There will always be things that it does communicate, things that it doesn’t communicate.

 But at the end of the day as you rightly said, people watch content, people watch shows. And they’re not going to be drawn to something or alienated from something necessarily just because of the name. So we didn’t come up with a name - a short listed name that we liked. And just to your point about Syfy Portal, the other thing actually which I forgot - the other point which I forgot to make is we were able to secure syfy.com before we even entered into a conversation with Syfy Portal. So although that name was taken in relation to Syfy Portal, syfy.com was available and we secured that and very early on this process.

MediaBlvd> I have seen some negative comments about the name change, some kind of nasty, as well as some actually pretty positive about it. Are you tracking or is somebody at the network tracking your core fan base response? And just looking at how people were taking it?

Dave Howe> Yes we are tracking it. And we’re reading all of the message boards and Twitter and we’ve got people basically monitoring it all. And I get like a summary of what people are saying. And I’m not I’m not surprised at all by the comments that we’re hearing. I mean I think the the points I would make is that none of us particularly like change; none of us like the idea of a new name.

 I mean a lot of new names out there were not particularly well received when they were announced. I mean, Nintendo Wii was not exactly great and Tivo and all the rest of those names. I think the reason that we wanted to do this conference call today is because the thing that - the thing that I want to say directly and I think I want to really reinforce and really emphasize and the thing that disturbs me most about some of the comments, but if I’m honest didn’t really surprise me, is that this is not about abandoning our past, this is not about alienating our existing core viewers because frankly we are still the sci-fi fantasy channel and we’ll continue to be so.

 And this is absolutely about embracing our heritage and embracing our future and figuring out how we can bring even more people into the camp. And the the thing that I think disturbs us most was people as we expected saying well this is just another opportunity to put more ECW on our air or this is another opportunity to do even more reality. That isn’t true. And recent announcements we picked up Caprica, we’re bringing in Caprica and it’ll launch in the New Year. We picked up Stargate Universe the next exciting chapter of the longest running space opera I think in TV history.

 You know, this isn’t about retrenching, this is about absolutely embracing the totality of not just our core audience but actually a new audience in the future. And actually the other point I would make is when we - which was actually very entertaining is when - of course when we announced that we were reimagining Battlestar Galactica that was not greeted with delight by the fans. And we get that.

MediaBlvd> Yeah, yeah, I definitely understand that. But that being said doesn’t change give you an opportunity to embrace different things or some of the things you mentioned more fully or do you really see it just as  a continuation of your core and kind of expanding there.

Dave Howe> I think what it does do and actually in all that testing we were sort of surprised and actually it confirmed what we wanted to do here just this new name makes more sense of our existing range of programming. It makes more sense if you put this brand on a Ghost Hunters or a Destination Truth or Eureka because it doesn’t scream so loudly the science fiction genre it makes more sense for me a program range perspective.

 So we were very excited to hear that. So we do think it sort of gives us the best of both worlds. It gives us - it keeps our heritage and it enables us to broaden and become more inclusive and create a sense that this is a unique brand name that you can expect a broader range of what we’re calling imagination-based entertainment which is going to be everything from Caprica and Stargate Universe to Warehouse 13 to Eureka to the kind of broad fun human relatable aspect of the genre that we really want to embrace.

MediaBlvd> And just since you mentioned Caprica a couple of times, hopefully I can ask - just kind of a more or broader question not about the specific topic here today but can you tell me - what was behind the network’s decision or if it was the network to release Caprica on DVD - to release the miniseries or the movie?

Dave Howe> I think it to some extent is an experiment for us; we haven’t done this before. And I actually don’t believe any other cable network has done this before. I think our audience in particular and you will get this and perhaps all of you will get this is we have a very techno-savvy pre-early adopter audience that is going to be streaming shows, that is going to be downloading shows that really is locked into that kind of 24/7 on demand digital world.

 And it seemed like a valid experiment for us knowing that we’re not going to actually launch the weekly series until the New Year because obviously we have to go into production and write the 13 episode script and shoot it and post-produce it etcetera. It seemed like an opportunity for us to get the DVD out there early and also get it up on iTunes so that people can kind of watch it, think about it pass it onto the friends, tell their family.

 And there’s the potential if we get this right for there to be nine months of early momentum leading up to the launch of the series in early next year. And that’s kind of a pre-marketing window for us. So it’s a grand experiment but we’re very optimistic that it’ll do what we want it to do which is actually introduce a bigger and broader audience to Caprica when it launches.

MediaBlvd> Okay great. Thank you, and we’ll try and give you some of that early momentum there.

Dave Howe> Thank you.