• by Mitch Oscar , Op-Ed Contributor, July 3, 2007

Liberation day is upon us, so I thought that I would air a pet query -- an insignificant one, I admit, given that advertisers are in the throes of spending billions of dollars in the TV upfront and perpetuating the heated communal divisiveness over the value of commercial ratings and DVR playback -- but one that has been bothering me for years: TV syndication as a viable, standalone category represented by a separate division within major media corporations.

When I started my career as a national media buyer in the mid-'70s, syndication was primarily comprised of older black-and-white series - "I Love Lucy" fare -- and generally cleared in 60% of the country. In the late '70's Al Masini helped develop Operation Primetime, rallying the independent TV stations to create quarterly original made-for-TV movies. In the early '80's, the media community was introduced to original series from genres underrepresented by the broadcast networks i.e., "Fame," "Solid Gold," "Hee-Haw," "Hercules," "Xena: Warrior Princess," "Star Trek" spin-offs, "Voltron," "He-man/She-ra," "Wheel of Fortune," "Entertainment Tonight" and young-adult-skewing movies. Program clearances hit 80+% of the U.S., and syndicated programming was considered an important component of most advertisers' TV schedule.

In the mid-'90s, the Primetime Access Rule, an FCC mandate established in 1970 to encourage creation of original programming from sources other than the network broadcasters to air in the prime access time period (7-8pm), and the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, another mandate established to limit the number of programs produced by the broadcast networks for their schedules and to thereby encourage the nurturing of independent producers, were retired (1996+). Since the turn of the century, the syndication companies have not had much success launching original live action, dramatic or comedic fare.

My question:

So why is it that the studios, which own the broadcast networks and the TV syndication companies, and in the mid-'90s were part of the frenzied ingestion of media companies by other media entities, and shortly thereafter got rid of overlapping staff, and saved hundred of millions, which augmented the bottom line, haven't figured out that they can close down their syndication units and migrate the programming, sales, distribution and trafficking functions to other divisions within their holding companies? This "economies of scale" and eliminating service redundancy approach would save money and not significantly burden sibling divisions. As an example: Why couldn't the inventory from syndicated daytime talk shows, magazines, and reality programming be folded into a network sales daytime group, with a trafficking department handling commercial traffic, and accounting department sitting on top of contractual obligations?

Presently syndicators claim $3 billion to $4 billion in revenue annually and are focusing their original programming endeavors on light entertainment magazines, reality and talk shows. In my opinion, this is a sector that has lost its distinction and purpose and could be easily absorbed by siblings. Yet, it is not. I wonder why.