My farewell to SYFY - after 15 years at Blastr and Syfy Wire and SciFi Wire...
It's been real. It's been fun. It's been real fun.
It’s the end of an era. At least it is for me.
After 15 years (give or take a month or two) of working on SYFY as a writer, editor and everything in-between at the various incarnations of SYFY WIRE (remember the Blastr.com days?!), my tenure on the brand has come to an end.
That said, I’m relieved to report I still have a job(!!!), and one I enjoy, as my role has effectively just shifted around, and I’m incredibly excited to keep working on cool entertainment things. I know just how blessed I am to be able to say that, especially in an industry where too many of my incredibly talented friends and colleagues can’t at the moment (that said - if you have any open roles and need any recs, I can connect you with the greatest of entertainment journos).
It’s just that with how everything shook out, my connection to SYFY has come to an end with a move to a different role. I can remember it’s been around 15 years since I started because we were expecting my first son (who is 14 1/2 now!?) when I first started reporting for SYFY WIRE (then SciFi Wire, and then Blastr, and then…) as a contract freelance writer under the site’s editor at the time, Scott Edelman. I remain forever indebted to Scott for taking a chance on me all those years ago, when at the time I was just a young, green geek trying to break into the entertainment space while working a day job at a daily newspaper.
It started with a cold e-mail shot in the dark
I had cold e-mailed a bunch of editors trying to land a freelance connection, and Scott was literally the only one who responded and gave me a shot. Luckily, Blastr was also the place I was most wanting to work. I grew up watching Sliders, Invisible Man (that show rocked so hard), Stargate SG-1 and Farscape on the SciFi Channel in high school - along with plenty of re-runs and sci-fi movies as far back as I could remember. I read Blastr daily, and loved the site.
So getting to write for it was a dream come true for a young nerd, especially one looking to earn some extra cash with a baby on the way and break up the monotony of covering town council meetings and municipal budget hearings at my day job. I got to work with incredible colleagues, go thru a rebrand (or three), and work in pretty much every role you could have here along the way - writer, sub-editor, editor, news editor, interim editor and de facto editor. This was also the job that allowed me to attend and cover the conventions I’d always read about and followed the news from online.
Is it a ton of work? Sure. But it’s one of those bucket list kinds of things, y’know?
After a few years, I was reporting and attending SDCC and NYCC regularly, and eventually managing and running SYFY WIRE’s coverage myself, sometimes from a big ol’ battery pack we miraculously powered a half-dozen laptops on one year when the convention center had goofed up the outlets in the press room (seriously, it was like Hanukkah for laptop batteries). I still remember my first year at SDCC, when SYFY WIRE was effectively at its peak.
We had rented out an entire flex work building a couple of blocks from the convention center and literally wrapped it (the ENTIRE BUILDING) with SYFY WIRE logos. We had SYFY WIRE buses ferrying fans from their hotels, complete with fun fan games during the rides. We had live stages, and activations and fan hangout zones at the convention center. Put simply, it was awesome. It was one of many good ol’ days moments (not to start quoting Andy Bernard, but yeah) that is a core memory in my brain.
To SYFY, with love
In hindsight, I realize how rare that moment was, and appreciate it even more now. I’m incredibly proud to have been a part of this place for so long, and the work we’ve been able to do over all these years with these amazing people. I won’t even try to name names, because I know I’ll forget someone. But - they were all great, talented people with a passion for the geeky stuff. That’s what made it great. That’s what made it work.
I’ve always been a SciFi Channel/SYFY fan, and always will. It means so much to this nerd that I had the rare opportunity to play a teeny, tiny part in its legacy. I love the brand. I watched it when it was the SciFi Channel, when it was Scifi, when it was Syfy and (now) when it’s SYFY (The Ark Season 3, coming in 2026!). I really just love the idea that a whole channel and space exists for the things I love, and a place that took the chance to create shows like Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, 12 Monkeys, Warehouse 13, and The Expanse. Shows that are some of my favorites, and would be regardless, because they were awesome. Yes, I also watched way too many of those cheesy SciFi Channel original Saturday night movies, too.
My home office is a testament to the fandom, with old Farscape and Invisible Man mini-posters hanging on one wall and a huge, 30-year-old vintage SciFi Channel network launch poster framed on the other (an eBay find that the algorithm sent my way for like $10 many years ago, yes the algorithm knows me far too well).
But while I was here we really tried to create a space for geeks, by geeks. Everyone did. And they meant it, cheesily. Earnestly. A place for sci-fi fans, and horror fans. Where we could all just revel in the things we love, and get deep into debating our favorite Stargate series (Atlantis, a controversial opinion I know!), or the differences in Battlestar Galactica’s FTL drive and Star Trek’s warp drive. Those were the discussions and story ideas I loved. The types of goofy things you couldn’t really find anywhere else, because who else would actually do them?
Also, for 15 years I had the rare opportunity to have an outlet where I could generally write about whatever geeky opinion, hot take, or silly rabbit hole I wanted to go down. Spider-Man movie theories? Get ‘em. Forgotten SG-1 tales? You bet. I’m really going to miss that, too. But I’m grateful for the time I had it.
Finding cool stuff through the noise
Which brings me full circle to… the place where you’re actually reading this right now. I still freelance at places like Paste Magazine, and thankfully still have my day job in entertainment, but I no longer have a place to just… write about whatever I want on the side. And guys, I really got spoiled to having that for a long time. Hence, making the jump over to Substack. We all need a creative outlet, and this will be mine.
I racked my brain to try and think of what to call it - and though Static on the TV is a bit goofy, it makes a very personal kind of sense to me. When I was a kid, I had an old black and white TV in my bedroom, complete with one of those creaky rabbit ears antenna on the top. No, I’m not THAT old, color TV did exist when I was a child - it was just I got the old tiny, junker black and white ‘set for my bedroom, with the good TV in the living room.
But I still remember the feeling of adjusting those rabbit ear antenna arms to try and get the channel to come in clearly, and watching old movies like Alien or Indiana Jones through the slight, hazy crackle. Or the panicked scramble of trying to get the signal clear to not miss the latest episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or X-Files or Batman Beyond - because that old black and white TV definitely did not have a DVR.
That emotional connection of working to get it right meant something to me as a kid, trying to find something cool through the static and the excitement when you finally did. Hence the name.
Thank you for reading, and if you’ve ever clicked on a SYFY WIRE article, thank you so much for reading that, too.
I have no clue what’s next for SYFY WIRE, but I hope it lives on and continues to do cool, geeky things for years to come. I’m just a little bummed I won’t get to be a part of it, if so. But if it does, I’ll definitely be reading!
But if you enjoyed the kinds of geeky, fun things we’ve done there over the past 15+ years, I hope you’ll read here, too.
"I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Buck, Flash or Arthur frelling Dent. I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas." - John Crichton