18 Facts About Television syndication

Broadcast syndication is the practice of leasing the right to broadcasting television shows and radio programs to multiple television stations and radio stations, without going through a broadcast network.

Since the early 2000s, some programs being proposed for national distribution in first-run Television syndication have been test marketed on a selected number of or all stations owned by certain major station group, allowing the distributor to determine whether a national roll-out is feasible based on the ratings accrued in the selected markets where the program is being aired.

However, licensing a program for Television syndication actually resulted in the increased popularity for shows that remained in production.

In 1987, The Walt Disney Company tried its luck at Television syndication; DuckTales premiered that September and would eventually last for 100 episodes.

Syndication remains a method of choice for distributing children's programming, although this has gradually shifted to only produce programs to satisfy the federally mandated "regulations on children's television programming in the United States" rule imposed in the late 1990s as part of an amendment to the Children's Television Act of 1990 that requires stations to air three hours of educational children's programs every week, regardless of the station's format.

Related searches

Between 2003 and 2007, no new game shows debuted in Television syndication, marking four consecutive seasons where no new shows with that genre debuted, a Television syndication first.

Typically, this means that enough episodes must exist to allow for continual strip Television syndication to take place over the course of several months, without episodes being repeated.

American Public Television syndication is the largest of these, nearly matched by the National Educational Telecommunications Association.

In 1993, Universal Television syndication became one of the first studios to cash in on the cable trend, first selling repeats of Major Dad to USA Network in 1993 for $600,000 per episode, the first time a network program was exclusively sold to a cable network for its first run rights.

An example of Television syndication using this method was RadiOzark Enterprises, Inc based in Springfield, Missouri, co-owned with KWTO.

Television syndication later produced country music programs starring among others, Smiley Burnette, George Morgan, Bill Ring and Tennessee Ernie Ford, and more than 1,200 US and Canadian stations aired the programs.

In contrast to conservative talk radio, which has predominantly been driven by Television syndication, progressive talk radio has almost always been a network-driven model.

International Television syndication has sustained a growing of prosperity and monetary value amongst the distributors who sell to them.

However, an alternate form of first-run Television syndication was performed by some domestic broadcasters: as the Canadian rights to US primetime series were often acquired by individual station groups, they would in turn resell local rights for those programs to stations in areas where they did not operate.

Since the late 1990s, as most stations have been consolidated into national networks consisting almost entirely of owned-and-operated stations and with full-day network schedules, both types of Television syndication have largely disappeared from the Canadian broadcast landscape.

One Television syndication service remains in Canada, Yes TV, which serves the few remaining independent stations in the country with mostly American programs.

Programs that offer regionally specific content while providing the economic benefits of Television syndication can be especially appealing to potential affiliates.

Regional Television syndication can be more attractive to area advertisers who share a common regional trading area versus assembling a radio network of stations that hopscotch across the United States.