My Dumb Entertainment Moves Five

This is a fairly subjective topic for my fives. I wouldn't say these are the dumbest moves in music, movies, or television, but in my humble opinion they are five among many dumb moves that happen to stand out:

1) SciFi Network changes to SyFy:
What? One great thing about the Science Fiction network, abbreviated logically “Sci Fi”, was how they had that ad campaign in which every letter of the abbreviation vanished except the two in the middle, leaving “if”. Conceptually, that's what it should be, although I realize outside of the one or two series I've watched, it's become a melange of reality television and bad, bad made for SciFi movies. So I can understand wanting to expand the definition of what they represent to more than just science fiction, since they weren't focusing on that anyway. But for an intelligent audience consisting primarily of, let's be honest, geeks, a grammatical aberration like “SyFy” is just silly and offensive, especially in Poland where syfy has a genuinely offensive meaning. Yikes. Even the new tagline “Imagine Greater” is clunky, cumbersome compared to “if”. Within the tagline is the word “Imagine”, and perhaps they should have expanded on that to encompass fantasy, supernatural, and other series that appeal to their audience instead of making up a bad phonetic spelling of their existing name. Dumb.

2) KRock switches to talk radio:
In the year 2005, New York's number one rock station feared the loss of morning shock jock Howard Stern to satellite radio. Their solution was to change their format to talk radio, as the short-lived FREE FM. David Lee Roth headlined the new morning show, proving that he was better off singing behind a mike rather than talking. He was the worst. Eventually, he was replaced by Opie and Anthony, and the remaining talk shows throughout the day were replaced with rock music, which is what KRock listeners wanted to hear in the first place. Dumb.

3) CW puts Reaper on against American Idol.:
Reaper is the story of a young slacker who works in a Home Depot analogue and just enjoys having beers with his knucklehead buddies and spending time with the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, for some reason his parents made a deal with the devil before he was born, and sold his soul. He meets the devil, played with devious charm by Ray Wise, and learns on his 18th birthday about the deal. As a result, he's obligated to capture souls that have escaped from hell, using a different vessel to do so each week. In the beginning, as with many shows of this supernatural or fantastic genre, it followed a basic formula, but eventually expanded upon the characters and the mythology. Lighter than Supernatural, some have made comparisons to Chuck, though I'd liken it more to the early seasons of Buffy. It's fun and unique, though certainly not likely to draw in a mainstream audience. The network granted it a second season, resurrecting it a few weeks ago in the middle of the television season. Tuesday night at 8 PM is Buffy's original slot(that's what she said--sorry), but pitting it against American Idol is setting it up for massive failure. I could care less about AI, and never really did, but millions of Americans feel differently. Reaper might have made a good companion for Supernatural next year before Smallville was renewed, but will probably be gone after this season to make room for another teen soap or reality show. Dumb.

4) KRock switches to Now FM:
Here's an idea; your rock station isn't bringing in the numbers you want. You already tried switching to talk radio, so this time you'll fire Opie and Anthony, who had better ratings than their predecessor, and switch to a pop dance format to compete with Z100 and a half dozen other similar stations in New York. It's not like anyone in New York needs to hear Metallica, Pearl Jam, or any other rock music, right? DUMB.

5) FOX cancels Firefly, Family Guy, Futurama, Drive, The Inside, Harsh Realm, The Visitor, Sliders, Tru Calling....:
Repeatedly Dumb. ‘nuff said.