If I Controlled The Scifi Channel

honestly your best bet is as follows

1. do nights based on themes. Make one night trek night, an alien night, a conspiracy night, one night urban fantasy night, etc.

2. show the old stuff side with side with new stuff. See how much you can get cheaply. I'd love to see alien nation run back on side to side with farscape.

3. get into a deal with rifftrax so they can have a night where they can overlay their jokes on a movie. They do this every Saturday.

4. create the scifi equivalent of "shark week" and have a particular theme based on season. Have one each quarter to push stuff.

examples include

i. Circuits of Spring: Robots and other wondrous devices.
ii. Superhero summer.
iii. Distopian fall: post apocalypse week.
iv. Christmas scifi :p.

5. add a show not unlike "prophets of science fiction" that shows the real life effect of great imagineers in any particular medium.

6. bring back children's cartoons on Saturdays, but show the older science fiction.

7. If you absolutely must have a reality show, make it a scifi reality show:
my base concept is "captain proton and the heroes of the future" - basically a reality show where you have to dress in spandex and mug for the camera in a way that would make flash gordon proud ;p.

it would be hosted by Brian Blessed :p.

8. create a scifi "soap" for the morning and/or afternoon, so you don't keep repeating the same stuff 4-5 times a day  ;). These could possibly be the winners from the reality show and if they suck, they get booted and replaced by the next candidates :p.

they can then pull on this pool of relative names to create real scifi ;).

tentative title "up your asteroid.'

9. make a morning show with a scifi feel. I recommend some sort of scifi cooking show just to break up the tedium. :p

10. freely offer to shill the hell out of any and all new scifi movies for free, with the veiled threat that if bad they will be hosted by mike and/or joel and the boys/girls if they suck :D

This will give stuff the advertising they need (such as john carter, serenity).

11. this also includes a "make a better trailer" tutorial where you show fan made ads that are awesome.

12. I want nerd wars: a show where you get a great and lively debate over the scifi issues of the day :p.
this could potentially turn into jerry springer, but if it does, make it awesome :cool:

13. give web support to scifi related stuff that you can put on occasionally for the "muggles" :D