Are Syfy Execs the worst in the business?

Sharktopus was great.

I know I'm not losing any sleep over this.

SyFy should get the rights to classic Doctor Who episodes.

Almost none of the Syfy "Originals" are original to Syfy. That is, they don't make their own crap; they buy existing crap that couldn't be sold anywhere else.

If it were a 4-5 star movie, it would have had a theatrical release or at least a much higher-profile TV slot.

They wouldn't be showing these movies if people weren't watching them. They must be making money or they woudn't be on the air. So, I guess they aren't the worst.

I suspect they buy them for about twenty bucks, and make fifty on the advertising...

Rob Helmerichs said:

I suspect they buy them for about twenty bucks, and make fifty on the advertising...

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They probably have a deal with a film school that SyFy gets all of the students final projects for a donation to the school. Anyone know of a school with a SyFy wing to the library?

There has been some OK stuff like River of Souls etc. Some of their early movies were OK.

sieglinde said:

There has been some OK stuff like River of Souls etc. Some of their early movies were OK.

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You mean the Babylon 5 movie? That was TNT...

They could still be angry over Vince McMahon teasing a few months ago that John Cena was "drafted" by Syfy's WWE SmackDown and was going to start appearing on that show, only for him to be "drafted back" to USA's WWE Raw about two hours later...

Barmat said:

You would think they would have made a better direct to cable movie by now. I don't think they've ever shown a 4-5 star original movie. I seems the best they can come up with is low grade B movie fluff. The old saying is " An infinite number of monkeys with typewriters could write a masterpiece." . Well the Syfy monkeys can't seem to write one truly great original Sci-fi movie. Thoughts?

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Rob Helmerichs said:

Almost none of the Syfy "Originals" are original to Syfy. That is, they don't make their own crap; they buy existing crap that couldn't be sold anywhere else.

If it were a 4-5 star movie, it would have had a theatrical release or at least a much higher-profile TV slot.

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What Rob said. Syfy doesn't actually make any of their movies. Whether the movies are made based on spec and licensed by Syfy, or whether they're only made because the producers have a pre-existing agreement with Syfy, that probably varies with each project. You can follow Syfy's Craig Engler on Twitter (@Syfy) and he often does Q&A sessions where he'll answer questions that are tweeted to him. If you're interested, I'm sure he'd be happy to answer a question about that stuff (if he hasn't already).

Edit: Here's one question he answered a few days ago:

Q) @JosephGracey does syfy make their own shows like the bbc do with all of their shows or do you license them all from studios? A) License

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Excluding the ones from Fox?

Yes.

DougF said:

They wouldn't be showing these movies if people weren't watching them.....

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Wrong.

Here's an article from Wired magazine that provides some info on the origins and reasons of SyFy's 'original' movies.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/scifi.html

Bierboy said:

Wrong.

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Huh?

They must be getting some viewers. Enough to sell advertisting to offset the (likely small) cost of showing them.

DougF said:

Huh?

They must be getting some viewers. Enough to sell advertisting to offset the (likely small) cost of showing them.

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The business model/economics for SyFy is totally different than for the major networks. They consistently air crap that isn't watched by anyone because it's dirt cheap to produce. Of course they have SOME viewers....but a mere fraction of what is required on the major networks to keep a show going...thus you see the crap that SyFy cranks out and keeps airing despite abysmal viewership.

Bierboy said:

The business model/economics for SyFy is totally different than for the major networks. They consistently air crap that isn't watched by anyone because it's dirt cheap to produce. Of course they have SOME viewers....but a mere fraction of what is required on the major networks to keep a show going...thus you see the crap that SyFy cranks out and keeps airing despite abysmal viewership.

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Of course. My point was that there are *some* people watching these things or they wouldn't be on the air.

Jeeters said:

Here's an article from Wired magazine that provides some info on the origins and reasons of SyFy's 'original' movies.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/scifi.html

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So that's what they were doing seven years ago, how about today. I would think they would get better ratings with high brow thinking mans sci-fi. They must have made a boat load of money from BSG.

It just amazes me they turn out turd after turd. You would think with the law of averages they would do something amazing once in a while. It almost seems they request an aweful movie from the production companies. I can say with out a doubt, syfy has the worst sci-fi original movies I've ever seen.

I would think budgets have little to no relationship to how good something is. It has more to do with the judgement of talent by the executives.