Sci Fi Fire Sale: Get Your Toasters While They're Hot

Things are tough for everyone in big media these days (ahem), but the NBC Universal-owned cable network Sci Fi Channel is getting creative in its plan to help its corporate parent cut costs by $500 million next year.

Sci Fi is throwing an auction in Pasadena, California, where props from its hit drama Battlestar Galactica will be sold off to the highest bidder, the email newsletter Cynopsis reported Friday.

Always wanted a Colonial One Captain's pin? Jonesing for a Cylon War-era flight suit? Can't live without transfer orders from the Battlestar Pegasus? All this and more will be on sale at the Pasadena Convention Center the weekend of January 17, followed by an eBay sale starting Jan. 20.

It makes sense for Sci Fi to sell off its props now that the show has wrapped production, since Battlestar fans have a near religious connection to the show, what with its ingenious combination of Joseph Campbell-Power of Myth imagery, a cast full of hotties, and really cool special effects.

The value to Sci Fi is real, something the network probably got a sense of this summer, when it gave away promotional swag at the San Diego science fiction and fan convention Comic Con.

The must-have item at Comic Con was a Battlestar Galactica toaster (this has meaning to fans of the show, since the evil robot master race, the Cylons, are derisively called toasters by the humans of the Colonial Fleet). Today on eBay, the toasters were selling for more than $300.

Why should a couple production assistants who nicked items from the prop table be the only ones to make a few quick bucks? Sci Fi wants it take, too. Of course, Sci Fi is apparently donating "a portion" of the proceeds to the United Way.

No word on where the rest of the take is going, but it's fun to imagine NBCU C.E.O. Jeff Zucker with a coffee can outside his office at 30 Rock, where Sci Fi Channel President Dave Howe can discreetly stuff the cable network's cut.

One place the Galactica cash is definitely not going is NBC News' Washington, D.C. bureau. On Thursday bureau chief Mark Whitaker begged staffers to take NBCU's most recent buyout package, or further heads will roll, Fishbowl DC reported.

For those jobs to be saved, NBCU is going to have to sell a lot more stuff. A couple of Deal or No Deal suitcases, maybe? Some clothes from the last season of Project Runway? Even that probably won't be enough.

by Christopher Lisotta