agentorange [General News 01.11.12]



2011 was Syfy's most watched year to date and they owe it all to the popularity of reality TV. So, big surprise, they want more reality TV and have named three new Vice Presidents of Alternative Programming (ie. "Reality TV"): Robyn Lattaker-Johnson, Wayne Sampson and Colin Whelan.


In making the announcement, SVP, Alternative Programming Tim Krubsack said: "... we will be launching a record number of unscripted series in 2012. With their diverse experiences, creative sensibilities and stellar accomplishments, these five very gifted executives will play a key role in shaping that programming expansion and the continuing growth of the Syfy brand."


The Trio will oversee Syfy’s current slate of reality series, including Face Off, Ghost Hunters, Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, Haunted Collector, Paranormal Witness, and the upcoming Monster Man, Dream Machines and Total Blackout, as well as developing new unscripted projects.

Obvious concerns are that scifi fans could wind up with another A&E on their hands - a network that once-upon-a-time championed high quality niche programming quickly turned into a trash factory.

What do you guys think? Will reality TV ever die?

Lenny (4 months ago) Reply

Don't care for the others but I love Face Off. Like most of us around here I much prefer Pracatical makeup effects. So this is a fun insight to that process.

Noname (4 months ago) Reply

What do you guys think? Will reality TV ever die?
Yeah, When TV dies. And it can't come soon enough.

Bogsnapper (4 months ago) Reply

So this is where eurakas budget is going

GRY (4 months ago) Reply

Trash sells, literally, look at the other networks with their scavenging and pawn shows. TV land are full of lemming like executives who endless copy each other. Very few original ideas are born and when one does come along soon like roaches, there are dozens more the next season.

It's already too late for SyFy, they've killed off as many of their true scripted series as they can in order to make room for this reality TV crap. They've alienated their true fanbase and have been doing so for the past decade, with less and less relevant programming. Putting on wrestling was simply to test the waters, and indeed the execs found the waters brimming with potential. But then sewage laden water also brims with potential if you're trying to attract the growth of single celled organisms like algae.

In SyFy's case they've attracted the single brain celled viewers in droves and turned away viewers with a higher level of intelligence. Look at the terrible movies they put out, it's almost as if they deliberately want to decimate their viewbase so they can make a case for switching formats.

Killing off the SG series, Eureka, Sanctuary and many other promising series over the past decade really does show the mentality of these executives. It's all about $$$, not entertainment value which matters and it's why junk TV(reality TV) sells, it has the lowest profit/cost ratio and is literally killing the acting genre because you don't need real actor, only some stooges who can act out(think Jersey Shore).

Most typical TV viewers are morons and don't have much in the way of taste anyways. It used to be that SciFi(the predecessor network to this train wreck called SyFy) wanted to attract an audience of much higher intelligence who preferred quality TV shows and not the mindless fluff of today. It worked but the profit/cost ration was much lower and execs don't care about quality, only quantity.

SyFy isn't slowly going the way of A&E, they've already gone there and are attempting to race A&E to the bottom of the barrel!, along with TLC and possibly the History Channel(less history, more junk shows!)
As a matter of fact the reality TV cancer has spread to almost every specialty cable channel except the religion oriented ones.

As one commenter said, Reality TV will die when TV does, and TV is becoming less and less relevant in an Internet connected world with direct media and other forms of marketing. The modern TV execs will sell anything as long as it can pull in the numbers and they make their bonuses for that season.

I very much believe NBCUniversal will fold SyFy soon and rebrand it. Anyone remember the The Nashville Network and what it turned into?(A: Spike TV with such intellectual hits as 1000 ways to Die and the MMA)

TV rots the brain anyways, why not watch what you want on the Internet and support the producers and artists by buying their content directly...

Bobloblaw (4 months ago) Reply

SyFy has pretty much said that SciFi is not what they do.

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