How many episodes till syndication

If you love TV, you've probably heard the term before: syndication. But what is television syndication, exactly? Simply put, syndicated shows are either "first-run," meaning they are "free agents" that are not owned by any particular network like Star Trek: The Next Generation , or they're "second-run," meaning they used to belong to a network like NBC and Seinfeld but they now air elsewhere these are reruns, essentially.

Once the pieces are in place, make a deal with the network that if the first 10 episodes do well in the ratings, 90 more episodes will be ordered, allowing the show to have enough episodes to sell into syndication. A Season 2 episode will air the night after a Season 5 finale, for example, and there's seemingly no method to the madness.

Older, multi-camera sitcoms with more "self-contained" storytelling could get away with this, but The Office? The reality via Slate is that it's in the station's best interest to mix things up, for a number of reasons:. Despite the increasing popularity of on-demand streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, syndicated, over-the-air TV is still extraordinarily popular among viewers Wheel of Fortune and Judge Judy dominate the ratings and TV syndication statistics show they're highly profitable to the studios and talent involved let's just say the titular 2 Broke Girls aren't broke anymore!

The shows that make the most in syndication, in fact, are also very popular online see The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family , proving that it's the content that matters most, not the delivery system.

Here are some must-read TV syndication facts and stats to get you ready for your next round of channel surfing! Photo: NBC. Not bad for a "show about nothing" that the president of NBC thought was "too New York" and "too Jewish" when he agreed to a measly four-episode run back in Most contemporary sitcoms run around 21 or 22 minutes, with about eight minutes left over for ads.

Older sitcoms like Seinfeld , however, originally ran for 25 minutes with only five minutes for commercials. So how does a network like TBS handle this potential loss of revenue when they air syndicated Seinfeld reruns?

They speed up the show! It may sound crazy, but the episodes you see on TBS are actually several minutes shorter to free up room for ad space. They're subtle, but the cuts are there. So much for timing being the key to comedy Photo: CBS. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz made reruns commonplace, and without reruns, there would be no syndication. The I Love Lucy duo made a deal with CBS in to produce the show on higher-quality film instead of the industry-standard blurry kinescope, allowing for decent looking reruns down-the-road kinescope's quality wasn't up to snuff for repeated viewings.

There's big money to be made in syndication - especially for 2 Broke Girls. Major Dad Made Syndication History.

The military family sitcom aired on the USA Network instead of the more traditional route of being sold to local broadcast stations for syndication.

Photo: FX. What's wrong with this model? Syndication of entertainment programs has been around since the s, when syndicated radio shows were being distributed throughout the United States. These first radio programs were distributed on transcription disks similar to old LPs, but with higher audio quality for broadcast. This format was eventually replaced by phonograph records, then tape recordings, cassettes and CDs, and while the practice of buying and selling radio shows is ongoing, today they are likely to be downloaded.

A cultural phenomenon at the start of the Great Depression, the 15 minute show aired six nights each week and boasted upwards of 40 million listeners. Throughout the s, syndicated radio shows remained popular due in no small part to programs such as The Adventures of Superman , which ran through The ad campaign was so popular that Ziv was able to transform it into a full-fledged, 15 minute, five-day each week radio program, which he soon syndicated across the South and Midwest.

Realizing he had found a new market, within a decade Ziv had built a successful syndication company, selling shows such as Favorite Story and Bold Venture , this last starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, to stations across North America.

There are, however, cases where network affiliates have refused to air a network show. Sometimes, this is due to concerns about offensive content, pressure from local Moral Guardians , or if a local station had a prior commitment to airing an event that was to serve its local audience, called preempting such as airing of a local parade or a local political debate note in the event of the latter, sometimes the preemted show will run later in the day on that station.

However, it's usually because they feel that the network program simply isn't getting any good ratings, and that syndicated, or even local, programming airing instead is more profitable. An example of this would be when many NBC stations considered pulling The Jay Leno Show when its poor ratings started dragging down their nightly newscasts. It goes without saying that this tends to be a very bad omen for a network show's future. Network television also generally has the schedule consistent at the same time each week although you never know sometimes.

Syndicated shows, meanwhile, are scheduled by each individual station as they wish. Usually, they follow a pattern when it comes to scheduling, but time slot shifts are common, and shows may be cut down to make room for more commercials.

Syndication can be done on a "cash" or "barter" basis. When done on a "cash" basis, the airing station pays for the rights to the show, owns all the airtime, and controls which episodes are shown. On a "barter" basis, the episode is given to the station for free in exchange for controlling a portion of the airtime; barter contracts often control which episodes are aired as well newer episodes are thought to draw better ratings, so the studio is ostensibly protecting its investment in the airtime by restricting which episodes are aired.

On either basis, the episode may be cut or compressed to allow for more commercials; this frequently occurs at the "bumper" points. Syndication offers more creative freedom and less censorship than airing a show on a network.

Without a network to answer to, syndicated shows have a general sense of Protection from Editors in the same sense of independent films having more freedom from studio interference, not in terms of not being Edited for Syndication , making the format appealing for the types of shows that usually wouldn't last long on a network Speculative Fiction and action-heavy shows in particular seem to be attracted to syndication.

In addition, you don't have to deal with an organized Standards and Practices department, as most individual stations don't have such a thing. The only censorship you face is from the FCC, and any campaign by Moral Guardians to get your show yanked from the air or bowdlerised would have to not only influence dozens, if not hundreds, of TV stations instead of just targeting the network, but would have to defame the show so badly that another station isn't interested in picking it up instead.

So if syndication is so great, then why do so many TV producers go to the networks? Because syndication is the hard way to keep a show running. Contracts have to be negotiated with each TV station, instead of a single network.

And as stated above, there's no telling when they're going to schedule your show, when they're going to pre-empt it for local sports or Yet Another Baby Panda , or how much they're going to cut in order to run commercials. Syndicated shows also don't have the luxury of the networks' advertising departments, which means that the producers carry a much greater burden for promoting their shows.