SCI FI Channel, the NBC-owned television station dedicated to fantastic entertainment, has generated an enormous amount of Internet chatter in the 16 years that it has been on the air. Part of that has been due to the enthusiasm with which science fiction fans embraced the Web as a medium for expressing their views. It also has much to do with the string of popular series that SCI FI has been associated with, including Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. All of these shows have attracted an active online fan base. The decision to air Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) on the station was less well received by many SCI FI viewers, though.

A more recent debate has arisen around the rebranding of the channel, which was announced earlier this year. This includes a change to the name, which will become Syfy on July 7. NBC explained the decision in a recent press release by saying, "the new brand broadens perceptions and embraces a wider and more diverse range of imagination-based entertainment including fantasy, paranormal, reality, mystery, action and adventure, as well as science fiction."

Not everyone has been convinced, though. Some opposition has come from readers of the website SyFy Portal, which recently changed its name. An unnamed staff writer for that site has said that the change was made "indirectly" because of the SCI FI Channel rebranding, although it had earlier been explained as "nothing more than a marketing move". It has since been revealed that SyFy Portal changed its name after the "brand" was sold to another entity. Other critics of SCI FI Channel argue that the rebranding is unnecessary because SCI FI and Syfy say essentially the same thing.

These and other issues were put to SCI FI Channel president Dave Howe in a recent conference call. In responding to them, Howe discussed the rebranding and gave an account of the process that led to the choice of Syfy as the new name. He also addressed the SyFy Portal controversy, talked about plans for Syfy's future and explained the decision to release the pilot movie for Caprica, the spin-off from Battlestar Galactica, on DVD before the series begins on Syfy next year.

Question: What I'm seeing out in the fan sites and on the Internet is [talk about] the origin of the name Syfy. 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 SCI FI 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 ... 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. 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 - once we settled on Syfy it became apparent to us that SyFy Portal existed. We haven't not commented on that directly.

Question: It seems like the last few years or the last two or three years SCI FI has really gone beyond I would call hardcore sci-fi. You've expanded into the reality shows and ... the wrestling stuff. 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 SCI FI rather than coming up with something that embraces 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. I've been at SCI FI for eight years [and] I've been in the TV business [as] 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. 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. To your point about SyFy Portal, 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, you know, that name was taken in relation to SyFy Portal, syfy.com was available and we secured that very early on this process.

Question: Speaking to the letter that Mitch Rubenstein [a founder and former President of SCI FI Channel] wrote today about Isaac Asimov approving the name SCI FI Channel before it launched, do you think that if they were around today they would approve of the change from SCI FI Channel to Syfy?

Dave Howe: I honestly suspect not. I mean, I wasn't around...In fact I wasn't even aware of the genesis of the network and the name, etcetera. But I think when I read that ... the thing that struck me most about it is I suspect if we took them through the rationale as to why we were changing, they would probably get it because if you read that piece it kind of says that when it launched it was launched as the science fiction channel exclusively. And that it was primarily about space, about technology and the future and essentially Star Trek. And I think that is something that we in no shape or form want to get away from. But I think what we want to do is move to a position where we can earn the broad sci-fi fantasy landscape and include in there fantasy and paranormal and supernatural and superhero and some of those speculative action and adventure [things]. I think that's absolutely the object of this exercise. So it's about how do we embrace the broader sci-fi fantasy landscape as opposed to how do we escape from our past? That isn't the object of this exercise.

Question: I'm curious if you have any other comments about the letter that was released today besides what the past members who are no longer with us would think. Are there any more comments you have after reading that?

Dave Howe: No, I mean, I just kind of made the point. If you look at the range and diversity of our programming on air, we still have Star Trek on air, we still have Battlestar Galactica and Stargate Atlantis, soon to become Stargate Universe. But alongside that there's Eureka, we're launching Warehouse 13, somebody earlier mentioned Chase, Estate of Panic, Who Wants to be a Superhero. We have a very broad range of content and the challenge that we have is if you talk to consumers who don't watch our channel, the expectation and the anticipation around when they do surf up the dials to SCI FI is that all they'll find there is Star Trek. And clearly that isn't something from a branding perspective and from a future perspective that enables us to do what we want to do, which is becoming inclusive and bringing more people in who we know will enjoy a broader range of shows. And hopefully we can kind of cross-sell and cross-promote and cross-convert to other shows once they come to us. But the challenge for us is if they don't think that space opera is for them, then they're not going to come.

Question: I have seen some negative comments about the name change, some kind of nasty, some actually pretty positive about it. Are you tracking or is somebody at the network tracking your core fan base response and looking at how people are taking it?

Dave Howe: Yes we are tracking it. And, you know, we're reading all of the message boards and Twitter and we've got people basically monitoring it all. I get a summary of what people are saying and I'm not surprised at all by the comments that we're hearing. The point I would make is that none of us particularly likes change; none of us likes the idea of a new name. I mean a lot of new names out there were not particularly well received when they were announced. 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 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. This is absolutely about embracing our heritage and embracing our future and figuring out how we can bring even more people into the camp. Thing that I think disturbs us most was people 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, you know, 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. 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 announced that we were reimagining Battlestar Galactica that was not greeted with delight by the fans. And we get that.

Question: 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 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 – [is] 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 from a program range perspective. So we were very excited to hear that. So, you know, we do think it sort of gives us the best of both worlds. 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.