Short answers, pulled from the story.
Syfy launched on the 24th of September, 1992. The first program aired on the network was the film Star Wars. The launch party was held at the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan, with Leonard Nimoy serving as master of ceremonies.
The Sci-Fi Channel was conceived in 1989 by Mitchell Rubenstein and Laurie Silvers, communications attorneys and cable television entrepreneurs based in Boca Raton, Florida. They sold the channel to USA Networks in 1992 and became vice-chairs of that company.
NBCUniversal announced the rebrand on the 16th of March, 2009, citing the fact that the generic term "sci fi" could not be trademarked because it names a genre. The sensational spelling "Syfy" could be trademark-protected, making it easier to market on goods and services. The new name took effect on the 7th of July, 2009.
Stephen Colbert mocked the rebrand on The Colbert Report by giving the channel a "Tip of the Hat" for "spelling the name the way it's pronounced" and claiming the change advanced his "long fought battle against the insidious soft C."
The Sci Fiction section, edited by Ellen Datlow and active from 2000 to 2005, earned multiple major genre awards. Datlow won a 2005 Hugo Award for her editorial work. The stories published there won a World Fantasy Award, the first Theodore Sturgeon Award for online fiction, and four Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction Writers of America, including the first Nebula for original online fiction.
Syfy is owned by Versant, a company formed on the 6th of May 2025, when Comcast spun off its cable properties including Syfy to shareholders. Comcast had purchased NBCUniversal in 2010 and had itself been one of the original cable operators to carry the channel at its 1992 launch.