Broadcast syndication

Overview

Broadcast syndication is the practice of licensing the broadcast rights of television or radio programs to multiple broadcast stations, as distinct from the licensing of programs to a specific network and its affiliates. It is an important aspect of the television and radio industries in the United States, and guides many of the business and creative decisions that have shaped those industries, but because of differences in the early history of broadcasting internationally, it is also a distinctly American practice, or at least much more important in the United States than in other countries. Broadcast syndication began in the 1930s with radio programming and was one of the many radio industry practices adopted by television.

Syndication encompasses first-run syndication, which is the licensing of programs whose initial run is in syndication (programs not previously aired on networks or local stations); public broadcasting syndication; and off-network syndication, the licensing of programs that have previously aired, typically by networks (also called reruns). Off-network syndication has historically played a major role in the television industry: The sale of syndication rights is a significant source of revenue and represents a way to earn revenue from a program that has already paid its expenses (e.g., through advertising sales in its first run, the sale of international broadcast rights, and other means) and is typically reaching the end of its first-run episodes.

The desire to syndicate a series has guided decision-making in the industry. Traditionally off-network syndication packages are most desirable if they consist of at least one hundred episodes. Because syndicated programs are usually aired more frequently than network programs—every weekday afternoon, for example, or in the block of time between the local news and the start of primetime network programming—shorter runs exhaust themselves quickly. The one hundred episode target has cascading effects. Regardless of the type of syndication, syndicates usually purchase the license for a program based on a per-episode fee. In some cases, a syndication deal may also involve barter time, which is the practice of the station offering the syndicating studio ad time in exchange for the license.

Because most networks do not produce enough original content to fill the day's schedule, a good deal of what is on any given television channel is syndicated content, especially during the day and late at night. This is particularly true for traditional broadcast network affiliates, for whom the network-provided content usually consists of a morning show (e.g., The Today Show, Good Morning America), news programs, primetime programming (8–11 p.m.), nightly news, and often a late-night program, leaving about ten to fifteen hours of programming time available. While some of those hours may be ignored if an affiliate is off the air for several late-night/early morning hours, the remainder are filled with infomercials, syndicated content, and in some cases, content created specifically for that affiliate station (e.g., local news). Furthermore, some stations have no network affiliation (this has historically been true of most UHF over-the-air stations) or are affiliated with a minor network like MyTV, which primarily provides off-network syndicated programs.

Until 1984, syndicated content was usually "bicycled," the industry term for the practice of sending the master copy of a program from station to station, with each station airing it and then passing it to the next station in line. This meant that not all stations aired the episode at the same time, and usually resulted in different stations airing out of order. With many older programs from the Golden Age of Television, the total number of episodes of a show or the order in which they were produced is unknown because bicycling muddied the records. Beginning in 1984, most syndicated content was distributed through satellite broadcasts, the way non-syndicated content is, which enabled more sophisticated syndicated programs that depended on specific episode orders (such as the theme weeks on Jeopardy! and other game shows, two-part episodes of scripted programs, and syndicated news shows like Entertainment Tonight).

The syndication of reruns or international shows is often used in economics as an example of public good theory—a case in which additional profits are reaped at little to no cost. The marginal costs involved are those associated with marketing and the overhead costs of distribution, as well as any royalty payments due to actors and other personnel.

Further Insights

First-run syndicated programs are usually produced specifically for syndication; in some cases they may have originally been intended for a network, but were canceled by that network at some stage of production (perhaps even after airing a partial run). In the early days of television, Ziv Television Programs produced a number of syndicated series, primarily westerns and police/detective shows, including Bat Masterson (1958–1961), Boston Blackie (1951–1953), Highway Patrol (1955–1959), and The Cisco Kid (1950–1956). The most notable syndicated series, distributed by Warner Brothers and sponsored by Kellogg's, was The Adventures of Superman, which aired from 1952–1958.

In the late 1950s, network programming had accumulated enough episodes to begin airing reruns, which reduced the demand for first-run syndicated programming. When the syndication market recovered, programming consisted primarily of game shows, variety shows, and talk shows—shows that served a different niche than the reruns of off-network syndication. One of the most popular talk shows was the Merv Griffin Show, which went through various periods as both a network series and a first-run syndicated show: originating on NBC in 1962, it was canceled after a few months before being revived in first-run syndication from 1965 to 1969, airing on CBS from 1969 to 1972, and then returning to first-run syndication from 1972 until 1986. Griffin's conversational interview style, which lent itself well to long-form interviews of thirty minutes or more, rather than the briefer, fluffier five-minute interview segments that were and remain the common standard. All told, 4,855 episodes were produced. The show's success gave Griffin's production company, Merv Griffin Enterprises, considerable clout, and from 1964 to 1994 it was a major force in syndicated television, producing both the original Jeopardy! game show and its 1980s revival hosted by Alex Trebek, the Wheel of Fortune game show, lesser known game shows Let's Play Post Office, Super Jeopardy, and Headline Chasers, and the long-running dance series Dance Fever.

In 1971, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rulings changed the amount of affiliate programming permitted by networks, which among other things freed up the 7–8 p.m. hour. This helped drive the demand for syndicated content, from the aforementioned game shows to magazine news shows to sitcoms and dramatic series. More foreign series—usually Canadian or British—were imported to the United States as syndicated series, such as the Canadian western Dusty's Trail or Gerry Anderson's British science fiction shows like Space: 1999.

Children's programming was a popular genre for syndication. Foreign animation could be re-dubbed in English as with many Japanese series (Shogun Warriors, Star Blazers, and others) or the Spanish series Dogtanian and the Three Musketeers. The most popular syndicated show in the 1970s was The Muppet Show, a comedy variety series by puppeteer Jim Henson, who had been a frequent guest on the Ed Sullivan Show and other variety shows, and who had provided and developed a number of the puppets used on the public broadcast Sesame Street series.

The 1980s saw a rise in first-run syndicated comedy, typically shows that were picked up by syndicates after being canceled by their networks: Mama's Family, Charles in Charge, Silver Spoons, WKRP in Cincinnati, Punky Brewster, and Webster were some of the most popular examples. An increase in first-run syndicated dramas was ushered in by the 1987 debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a sequel to the 1960s CBS series which, while not very successful in its initial airing, had been popular in off-network syndication and spawned a series of movies. In the mid-90s, about two dozen hour-long shows were in first-run syndication, including the Star Trek spinoff Deep Space Nine, Baywatch, and the fantasy series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its spinoff Xena: Warrior Princess. Around the turn of the century, the syndicated drama boom had dwindled, in part due to a shrinking syndication market as new broadcast networks like UPN and The WB emerged.

Issues

Off-network syndication can reap significant revenue for the owners of the syndicated shows, generally a studio rather than the original network, though the network and studio may be owned by the same parent company. One of the biggest success stories is Seinfeld. As popular and profitable as the show was in its first airing, the syndication fees it generated were in the billions, with co-creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David each earning about half a billion dollars in its first fifteen years of reruns. Seinfeld is also a good example of the way that streaming rights are overtaking syndication sales in importance. The streaming service Hulu in 2015 acquired the Seinfeld streaming rights for $1 million per episode.

The desired target of one hundred episodes of a program (or sixty-five episodes for an animated series) in order to yield the best off-network syndication sale has numerous impacts on the television industry. One of the most critically acclaimed sitcoms of the twenty-first century was Sony's Community, which initially aired on NBC. Ratings were never especially high, but it aired during a period in NBC's history when it had few high-rated shows, and an atmosphere of depressed expectations led to a number of programs being renewed for multiple seasons despite ratings that would have led to cancellation five or ten years earlier. Chuck and Friday Night Lights, were able to secure unique deals to make up for their low ratings—Chuck took on a corporate sponsor (Subway) and incorporated sandwich product placement into episodes, while Friday Night Lights was broadcast in advance by DirecTV in exchange for that satellite service paying for part of NBC's costs.

In Community's case, ratings continued to suffer. When NBC cancelled the series after five seasons, only ninety-seven episodes had aired. This created a dilemma for Sony, the studio that created the show and would be shopping it around for syndication. The desire to hit the one hundred-episode mark influenced the studio's decision to sell a sixth season of the series to the virtually untested streaming service Yahoo Screen for a final thirteen episodes (about half of a traditional sitcom season).

Off-network syndication sometimes includes changes to the episodes as broadcast. In some cases these changes are cosmetic; for various reasons, a different edit of the show may be used, or an error may be corrected, or dialogue may be re-looped. In other cases, the changes are driven by financial concerns. Over the history of broadcast television, the standard length of an episode of television, whether half-hour or hour, has been significantly reduced in order to make room for more commercials. The result is that a sitcom episode that may have originally been 25 or 26 minutes has to be made to fit into as little as 18 or 19 minutes of air time. Scenes are often shortened or removed as a result, and in some cases, shows may also be literally sped up, with the dialogue digitally edited in order to correct the pitch. This is another area that has had an impact on streaming. When Netflix acquired the streaming rights to Friends (which had earned about $1 billion in its first round of broadcast syndication), it advertised that the episodes were uncut and unaltered.

Since the 1990s, a variety of developments in television have had an impact on the syndication landscape, especially with regards to off-network syndication. Though cable television is as old as broadcast television, with commercial services becoming popular beginning in 1972, it was not until demand for Internet service rose that the modern cable landscape was put into place. Cable companies were well-positioned to provide high-speed internet service, more easily and affordably than telephone service providers; bundling cable television and Internet subscriptions together was one of the factors that drove the popularity of set-top digital cable boxes, which allowed subscribers to access many, many more channels than they could before. Where a typical cable subscriber in 1990 may have had thirty channels, a subscriber in 2010 could easily have had hundreds, even without subscribing to the most expansive tier. The number of channels necessarily increased the number of shows, as networks not known for original scripted television, like FX and AMC, found hits in The Shield and Mad Men, leading to what FX executive John Landgraf called Peak TV (a reference to the historically unprecedented number of original scripted series on television: nearly five hundred in 2017).

On the one hand, the number of channels increased the amount of television "real estate," which was a source of demand for reruns. On the other, this Balkanized television landscape resulted in permanent changes to viewership patterns. The most popular TV programs in the 2020s achieve ratings that would barely be considered a success by 1980s standards. Because viewers have more choices, their interest is spread out over more shows. This makes it difficult to justify the advertising prices that were commanded by shows like Seinfeld and Friends—which in turn underscored the importance of syndicating a show as an additional revenue stream.

The removal of the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules in 1995 incentivized stations to broadcast cheaper programs whenever possible. This contributed to the rise of unscripted entertainment programs or "reality TV," which found its first true successes with Big Brother, The Amazing Race, and Survivor, after MTV and PBS had paved the way with "real life" series in the 1980s and 1990s. Because of the lower production values and differences in the costs of "writing" and "performing" compared with scripted series, reality shows are a very low-risk proposition: If they perform poorly in the ratings, little money was lost. As a result, while syndicated reruns did fill much of that newly expanded TV landscape, just as much of it was filled with reality shows.

Finally, the prevalence of high-speed internet access, which cable companies themselves had helped introduce, provided new opportunities for television and movie distribution in the form of streaming services. Originally intended to stream content sourced from elsewhere—movies and television reruns—services like Netflix, Hulu, the brief-lived Yahoo Screen, and others also began producing original content. By the 2020s, the content model for streaming services was a combination of low-cost reruns, high-interest reruns (Friends on Netflix, Seinfeld and ER on Hulu), and original content. While providing a new outlet for "syndicated" programming, this also reduced interest in traditional syndicated programming on television, which lacks the advantages of being commercial-free, uncut, and available on demand.

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