A chat with the exec VP of programming
Syfy (formerly the Sci Fi Channel) recently announced that it is getting into the fairy tale business. Starting with Beauty and the Beasts: A Dark Tale on February 27, their popular Saturday night movie offerings will include familiar stories with a Syfy spin. Down the road viewers can expect new renderings of Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, Sinbad and more.
While not everyone in the horror community embraces Syfy movies, Thomas Vitale, the Executive Vice President of Programming and Original Movies, states that they consistently attempt to put out a product that fans of the channel like and want more of. Ratings suggest that they are doing something right.
Vitale was kind enough to talk to Shock Till You Drop about what makes Syfy movies work, how the network views itself in the overall horror universe, misconceptions about what they do and much more.
Shock Till You Drop: What are the most important elements of a Syfy Channel movie? What makes them work?
Thomas Vitale: First of all, we have done a lot of them for many years. I think we have learned from experience as well as from our viewers and what they like and what they haven’t liked. When a movie gets a good rating, we tear it apart on a minute-by-minute basis, looking at what viewers like and don’t like. Conversely, there are movies that don’t get good ratings. We tear those apart too and figure out why it didn’t work. We have to be really critical of ourselves to make the next movies better.
When we sit down with a producer, we talk about our rules and all the things that have worked and haven’t worked. To give an example, for the most part, zombie movies have not gotten ratings for us. We’ve done some originals and also have acquired some. They are a mainstay of the horror genre, but on Syfy on Saturday nights, aside from the Resident Evil movies we have not had success with theatrical, independent or original zombie movies. So we listen to our viewers and there will not be any zombie movies on Saturday nights on Syfy.
On the other hand, mythical creatures and larger-than-life characters, ones audiences are familiar with, have worked great. We seek out new ideas from producers and writers that are in the vein of familiar tales. Those work best when we take them and turn them on their head, give them our own unique spin. One of the things that led us to this idea of re-imagining fairy tales is that they are familiar to the audience, but, here is a new take or the story behind the story. Doing it this way gives the viewer something fresh and something proven.
Shock: How does the channel see itself in the overall horror/sci-fi universe these days?
Vitale: The movies are one part of what Syfy does. The channel has such a variety of programming. There are great scripted dramas and reality shows and theatrical movies in many subgenres. The array of programming makes it exciting to work at Syfy. It makes us sort of unique. Not many channels have acquired theatrical movies, acquired scripted series, original scripted series, unscripted reality shows and original movies. We have almost everything you can find on television other than news.
The action/sci-fi/horror/creature movies that we show on Saturday nights, those are a classic part of a beloved genre. That goes back to the monster movies of the 1930s and then in the ’40s and ’50s the post-World War II creature features. Of course Roger Corman is one of the fathers of the type of movie we do, and we love those movies. We are fans of those movies. It’s a real joy for us to be part of this and to work with Roger Corman. It is exciting to sit in a room with him and brainstorm ideas.
We have been doing these movies for nearly a decade so viewers are voting with their remote. We get millions of viewers a week for the premiere movies and they also repeat well. So by watching the movies and then buying them later on DVD, the viewers are telling us that they like what we are doing.
Shock: In the beginning were the original movies sort of an experiment for the channel?
Vitale: At the start we were airing more traditional science fiction movies as well as movies we would buy from the independent marketplace. Then we decided to work with some of these independent companies and see if they could do something more tailored to the viewers we felt were coming to the Syfy Channel. The first couple were experiments. We did research, we did focus groups, we talked to the audience. We altered and we changed and we made a couple more. We figured out what as working and what wasn’t. That was one of the exciting things about working for a relatively new cable channel. We tried a lot of different things and found what works for our audience.
Now we have gone from a channel distributed in less than 10 million households to over 96 million households. We are a top 5 cable channel in the key demographics. Some people think that Syfy is a niche network but that is not true. We are a major player, so when we say these movies are getting big audiences, they are big audiences for a big network. We will try to keep staying ahead of things. You can’t keep delivering the same meal week in and week out. We will continue to meet with writers and producers and try new things.
Shock: I think there are misconceptions about the channel and the original movies. The horror community tends to look down at them. What do you think some of the misconceptions are about the channel and the movies you air?
Vitale: Obviously a lot of people on the Web say different things about these movies. I saw someone write, and I can’t remember where, that if it wasn’t for the movies that Syfy delivers, these movies might not exist right now. I grew up on movies like this, and if we weren’t making them, I don’t know if this style of horror and creature feature would be out in the marketplace right now. Going back to the days of Corman and before him, these movies were seen in theaters. That doesn’t exist anymore. The big horror movies exist, like The Wolfman remake. The small independent genre movie in theaters does not exist anymore. Where does it go? To cable. That’s where they are being made. We like that we have been able to step up and fill that need with these movies.
Earlier last summer I was sitting on the subway reading a script to one of these movies, making notes or whatever, and a college student asked me if I was reading what he thought I was reading. When I answered yes he asked me why I had it and I told him I work at Syfy. I asked him if he watched them and he excitedly said that he and his friends have watched them since they were kids. They started asking me questions about them. I mean, they grew up with these movies and they were so excited to talk about them.
Part of the fun of the Web is chatting about the movies. We do take what people are saying about the movies seriously, and you do see some negative comments online about them. We do care and we try to make adjustments. Viewer feedback is important though and we respect it all. But I think there are just as many people who love the movies and that’s proven by the millions of people who watch them each time they premiere.
I think most of our viewers understand that these Saturday movies are about escapist entertainment. That is one of the reasons they air on Saturday nights. Different nights of the week are ripe for different types of programming. Saturday nights are clearly the nights for escapist television and escapist entertainment.
Source: Paul Doro
