FanSided spoke to SYFY WIRE’s Editor-in-Chief Adam Swiderski about life in digital media and his 2018 New York Comic Con live stage experience.
Those who attended this year’s New York Comic Con can attest to the immense crowd that formed around SYFY WIRE’s live stage. FanSided had an opportunity to catch up with editor-in-chief Adam Swiderski about the evolution SYFY WIRE has taken throughout the years, and what it’s like to compete in the digital medium.
Swiderski is an accomplished digital journalism veteran, going back to his days at the popular UGO.com starting in 1999. He also manages to be part of two bands in addition to his work on SYFY WIRE — the definition of a person who believes in making his dreams come true and doing it all.
Watch FanSided’s interview with SYFY WIRE’s Editor-in-Chief Adam Swiderski or read a transcript of the conversation below.
FanSided.com (Nir Regev): SYFY WIRE has gone through a whole redesign in the last year. You want to talk about the changes and the evolution of the website?
Adam Swiderski: Absolutely! SYFY WIRE has a very long history, dating back to when it was spelled Sci-Fi Wire with the network many years ago. When the network rebranded in 2009, it was spun off into a separate blog called Blastr. It kind of maintained that identity for several years. Up until last year, when the network rebranded again and increased its push into the genre space, into the space where fans are.
Blastr was already speaking with the voice of the fan at that time. It seemed like a very natural thing to kind of bring it back into the overall ecosystem, rename it SYFY WIRE and really push it to be a full service media organization.
Do you feel it’s difficult these days for an imprint to gain popularity in the digital space because there are just so many options? It seems so hard to grab someone’s attention.
It is a very crowded space but I think the thing is it’s just about the content. If you have the content, if you have good exclusive pieces and compelling videos and all kinds of podcasts like we do, people will find it. I think that’s the most important thing. Yeah, it is hard to build brand loyalty and things like that. But I think that people will respond if the content is there.
You’ve been doing though Who Won the Week podcast for quite a while. What do you attribute to its massive popularity?
Well I mean, first of all it’s just the things we cover have just increasingly been more and more popular over the years. A few years ago, if you’d asked me if the superhero movie bubble, for example, was going to burst at some point, I would have said probably! You know, in the next few years people are going to fatigue on it. And it just continues to explode! I mean Marvel is the most dominant brand in movies right now. I think that that’s a big part of it, that genre entertainment just continues to grow in popularity.
Also, people are hungry for context and connective tissue that kind of binds all of the things that are happening now, to what’s happened before, and kind of getting a greater understanding of the overall ecosystem. All this stuff is taking place in and I think that’s a service that we provide with that podcast.
I took a bit of a look at your live stage at New York Comic Con, what was the experience like? All those adoring fans!
(Laughs) Well I don’t know if they were adoring fans but it was pretty mobbed the entire time! It was great! I mean honestly, first of all seeing that response was very gratifying and helps us feel like what we’re doing is something that fans are appreciating. New York Comic Con was the culmination of a year of doing these kinds of live stage shows. We started at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle and then did C2E2 in Chicago. It was just a really great progression because Emerald City is a bit of a smaller convention, a little more intimate, and we kind of built up and New York Comic Con was the pinnacle of that. I mean the talent that we had on stage was amazing and the fan response was just really, really great.
It was very cool! Especially, for example, we had Jodie Whittaker on Sunday which was the day that the Doctor Who season was premiering. We had people camping the stage for her for most of the day, and the response when she came out was just absolutely unbelievable! It was a fantastic experience! It felt like a really great way to connect what we do with fans in a live environment.
Having Jodie Whittaker up there on stage, how do you feel about the Thirteenth Doctor?
I think it’s great. The tagline that people have been putting out there, “It’s about time,” obviously that ties into the time travel element of Doctor Who but I 100 percent agree! I think it was about time for a woman to step into the role and from what I’ve seen of her, she’s great! I mean she kind of had to be because it’s just so much pressure with that being the case of her being the first female doctor. But the good news is at least based on the first episode, she nails it! So I’m super psyched!
I think that there was a little resistance at first from certain quarters but I think that overall the fandom is really psyched. I mean the ratings for the first episode reflected that, they were huge. People were really excited to see this step and I’m excited to see where it goes!
I saw you do a little guitar playing in your spare time! Do you have a band going?
I do! I’m in two bands actually. One I play guitar and sing that’s called Super Major, and you can find us at SuperMajorMusic.com, and then I play drums in a band called Deacon Bishop Revival. That’s DeaconBishopRevival.com, check us out!
Is that something you started off in your teenage years or when you were a kid?
You know, I kind of picked up the guitar when I was a teenager and then I really kind of got serious about it after 9/11 in a weird way. I’d been kicking around the idea of being in a band for a lot of years and procrastinating and put it off and there was something about that moment… That really catalyzed a certain amount of “time to get to work if you really want to do this!” So, that’s when I dove into it. I’ve been playing in bands in New York City since 2001.
What attracted you to come onboard at SYFY?
Oh well, I mean I’ve been working in digital media even longer. I started as a videogame journalist in 1998. I’m really dating myself here (laughs). But yeah so I’ve been in digital media for 20 years and I used to work for a site called UGO.com, which started out as Unified Gamers Online.
I used to read that often!
Oh wow, I was at UGO for nine years, from 1999 to 2008. Then I jumped onboard with SYFY but I was primarily working on their IP websites for their shows and things like that. I would sub for the Editor for Blastr when the Editor at the time for Blastr couldn’t be there. Those were the times I really loved because it was like I loved that stuff!
I love science fiction, horror, entertainment, across a whole bunch of different media, and just getting to play in that pool was great. And so when the opportunity came to apply for the position of editor-in-chief for the site, I jumped at it!
I saw the FX as doing something new now where they bring in the show’s writers to blog about their experience like for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I was wondering if SYFY is planning to do something similar with their IP? Like a guest blog for the Wynonna Earp show writers.
Well, we do we have some crossover. I mean we are an editorially independent organization but the good news is that a lot of the shows that SYFY is doing now are shows that we would want to cover, regardless, of what network they’re on. For example, we did a episodic podcast about The Expanse when that was on the network that was pretty successful called The Churn and we’re doing one for Wynonna Earp now and we’re going to do probably one for Deadly Class, which is an upcoming show from SYFY. So, where it makes sense we will absolutely do as much coverage as we can on some of these properties.
I think the podcast thing is a big area where we’re going into that with the SYFY shows. It gives us the opportunity to talk to the creators and the people behind the shows. And again, kind of bridge the gap between fan and creator, in a way that I think people are really responding to.
Did you get to visit Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) at the E! People’s Choice Awards Food Truck at New York Comic Con?
(Laughs) I did not! I was incredibly busy with the live stage and also helping out with our on-air segments that we were filming. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t actually see the uptown side of the convention center at all (laughs). I was just in that one hall for most of the time but I heard great things!
What about the E! People’s Choice Awards vote, who did you vote for?
Wynonna Earp or The Expanse?
Oh I hadn’t seen that! I’m sorry I didn’t vote but everyone should vote!
I don’t know if Wynonna/Melanie will be happy about that!
Yeah, I know, I feel bad now! (laughs) I missed out.
Where do you see SYFY WIRE one year from now? What do you think is going to be the eventual evolution of the site and medium?
Yeah I mean I think, we’re really, really leaning into a lot of our video opportunities. We’ve been doing a lot more with that now, in addition to your typical video interviews and stuff like that. We’ve expanded into doing almost mini-documentaries. We did one about Image Comics, that was really well received.
The video side is certainly developing. Especially, kind of where we can cross over the digital web side of SYFY WIRE with the on air offerings that SYFY is putting up. I don’t know yet exactly what form that’s going to take but that is a priority for the network I think. To bring the SYFY WIRE experience more both online and to the the on-air audience.
I mean just expanding as much as we can. We want to expand our podcast network, bigger stories that are more in-depth. Anything that we can do to bridge that gap between the fans who are consuming this content and the people who are making it, and kind of putting it all in context.
I mean we’re running pretty full steam as it is but it can only go up from here.
The Walking Dead has that mobile game now, The Walking Dead: Our World. Do you want to have that kind of audience participation from active SYFY shows to visit the site in-between?
My purview is a little off to the side of that, I think that would be more on the IP side and the like. We do have certain experiences like that I know for The Magicians. We’re more about coverage, in-depth explorations, and fan experience but I know there is a lot of that stuff in the works at SYFY. I know we have some VR and AR in our initiatives in the works around certain shows as well.
If you had to describe SYFY WIRE to people who never jumped on board the site before, what would you say?
I would say that we are your super geeky friend who is easy to talk to about this stuff. I think that’s kind of encapsulating it because we are inclusive, we big tent, we want everybody to be part of this. We are there to help when it’s like, “I’ve just seen Black Panther and I really want to get into this Marvel Universe. What’s this all about?” We are there to bring you, “What are your central stories? What do you need to know about the film? What’s next after that?” I think that’s a big part of what I want to do with SYFY WIRE.
Next. Watch: Jodie Whittaker talk Doctor Who at NYCC. dark
Follow SYFY WIRE’s Editor-in-Chief Adam Swiderski and SYFY WIRE on Twitter. Check out SYFY WIRE’s popular Who Won the Week podcast, now up to 150 episodes with more on the way!