History
The Sci-Fi Channel was devised in 1991 by Mitchell Rubenstein and Laurie Silvers, two entrepreneurs from Boca Raton, who currently own HomeTown Cable in South Florida. In March 1992, the concept was picked up by USA Networks, then a joint venture between Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios. The channel was seen as a natural fit with classic film and television series that both studios had in their vaults, including Rod Serling's Night Gallery (from Universal TV) and Paramount's Star Trek and classic Universal horror films such as Dracula and Frankenstein. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and author Isaac Asimov were among those on the advisory board.
In 1994, Paramount was sold to Viacom, followed by Seagram's purchase of a controlling stake in MCA (of which Universal was a subsidiary) from Matsushita the next year. In 1997, Viacom sold its stake in USA Networks to Universal, who spun off all its television assets to Barry Diller the next year. Three years later, Diller would sell these assets back to Universal, by then a subsidiary of Vivendi SA (at the time known as Vivendi Universal). Vivendi's film, television, and cable TV assets were then merged with General Electric's NBC to form NBC Universal in 2004. A high definition version of the channel launched on October 3, 2007 on DirecTV.
Read more about this topic: Syfy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)