Thoughts on Syfy's Blastr

When Syfy rebranded themselves away from Sci-Fi Channel, they also rebranded their Sci-Fi Wire news feed, which is now called blastr. I guess they wanted to send a huge "eff you" to people who care about grammar and spelling.

I've been following blastr since before the change of name, and when it was rebranded, the content basically stayed exactly the same, which I suppose is a good thing. It mostly features daily news about sci-fi films, comics, television, and occasionally books. Since it's run by Syfy, it is pretty heavily biased toward their own programming, but they do cover anything that falls under the umbrella of the science fiction/fantasy/horror genres.

If you want the latest news on upcoming sci-fi projects, especially films and TV, then blastr is perfect to you. They do feed into the annoying trend of posting a billion spoilers months and months before these forms of media are released to the public, so do keep that in mind. Given the amount of spoilers, gossip and sometimes unfounded conjecture they like to post, I appreciate that they aren't hesitant to let their readers know when they're way off base.

The main criticism that I have of blastr is that they mostly cater to a readership that they believe is predominantly 18-34 year old males. It has been a huge (incorrect) stereotype for decades that sci-fi fans are almost all young males. I don't feel that any of blastr's content really speaks to women; as a matter of fact, they tend to post a lot off "geek eye candy." After a while, seeing girls in Leia's slave bikini or dressed as a slutty astronaut gets a little old. I wouldn't ever blame blastr, or the Syfy network for that matter, for perpetuating this stereotype, but I would be tickled pink if their rhetoric trended a little more gender-neutral.

Obviously, this isn't enough to make me give up on blastr completely. I check the app on my iPhone almost every day. They have seemed to fixed the massive bugs that the app previously had, so while a few months ago content didn't load more often than it did, now the app runs slowly but smoothly.

All in all, if you're a sci-fi junkie and particularly a fan of sci-fi TV and movies, then blastr is definitely worth a look-see. Go to blastr by Syfy now!