Bonnie Hammer: She is Sci Fi

By By Porter Anderson CNN.com/Career Editor

By By Porter Anderson CNN.com/Career Editor

"Maybe you're just a magnet for the weird, Bonnie."

Bonnie Hammer pays no attention to the gentle ribbing of a colleague. In fact, in conversation Hammer Hammer has something like that "laser focus" certain White House administrations can only hope for.

"As anyone knows," Hammer is saying, "when a channel is flailing about and has great potential" and the older management group has failed to identify or exploit that potential, "it's easy to look real good."

Lots of modesty there. But the irony you get in a talk with the Sci Fi Channel's executive vice president and general manager is that even the modesty comes out with the same bite as the slogan she's made so popular. You know how the line "I am Sci Fi" is voiced over or spoken by actors with that sharp finish to it on the network's "bumps" and promos. Sort of like the full sentence is "I am Sci Fi and I'm going to eat your left arm now because I'm a good-looking mutant from Alpha Centauri, so please stand by."

Bonnie Hammer, as friendly as she is, has that same precision going for her. You're just kind of glad she's from Westport, Connecticut, not Alpha Centauri.

"We'd all been talking about how we could make the channel more accessible," she says. It was 1999 and she'd been named by Sci Fi's parent USA Networks to "unlock the value" of the Sci Fi cable network. "We didn't want to do the usual suspects," she says, "like William Shatner or Roger Corman. What we did know was that through on-air talent or otherwise, we wanted to know how we could open up the channel to make people see how it relates to them."

In 1998, as the network's programming manager, Hammer had overseen the launch of its first full night of original programming, "Sci Fi Prime," as they call it. At the beginning of this year, she'd launch a second night of all-original work. But between those launches, a lot of design and conceptualization was going on.

"The execution and name of the campaign," she says, "came out of the marketing group," which at the time was headed by Josh Greenberg. He now has gone on to lead what Sci Fi press releases this past summer called a "secret programming laboratory" in Los Angeles -- a production wing for the network. One conceptual hurdle was the idea that an all-sci fi network was going to do horror programming, as well.

See related sites about CAREER

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.