Why This Matters Just by continuing to do what it does, broadcast - and specifically syndication - offers a safe, cost-effective ad environment.
On the verge of this year's broadcast upfronts, syndicators are optimistic about their fortunes, and for good reason, as cable loses reach and distribution and digital is increasingly seen as a risky advertising environment.
What is old is new again and more valuable, John O'Hara, executive VP of Warner Bros. Brand Networks, said. Syndication is an offering that's been out there, but like a lot of things, it's become more attractive. We haven't changed what we do; the climate around us has changed, and that changes our value proposition rather dramatically.
Syndication, of course, has its tried-and-true favorites - Dr. Phil, Ellen, Live with Kelly, Judge Judy and so on - but this year it also has several new players in the mix. On the first-run side, three new national contenders are Twentieth Television's Page Six TV, produced by Endemol Shine North America, CBS Television's DailyMailTV, produced by Stage 29 Productions, and Twentieth's Top 30. To show Page Six TV to some 250 advertisers, Twentieth produced a video hosted by the show's cast.
There are also several first-run entries - including Tegna's Daily Blast Live and Scripps' new talker starring Kellie Pickler and Ben Aaron - that will initially be distributed only on stations owned by those groups with hopes of gaining clearances down the road.
Two new off-network series also are coming to syndication: Warner Bros.' Mom, from Chuck Lorre, creator of The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men and Mike & Molly; and Disney-ABC's The Goldbergs, which has been picked up by Tribune and other station groups. Those two new shows join other recent off-net offerings, including this year's newcomer, Twentieth's Last Man Standing.
Last Man Standing has been a hidden gem, Michael Teicher, executive VP of media sales at Twentieth Television, said. It's grown 47% in ratings since its premiere. This is an example of one of those shows that was a bit of a sleeper in prime time and now it's helping both the off-network and network prime time versions. Last Man Standing, starring Tim Allen, airs on Friday nights on ABC.
Easier Struggles
It's not as if syndication doesn't have its own struggles - ratings continue to decline in the highly fragmented viewing environment, and new offerings are increasingly hard to launch. But this has notably been an even tougher year for nonbroadcast distribution platforms. No cable network now can boast reach beyond 75% of the country, and that affects those networks' attractiveness as national advertising platforms. Moreover, the clutter on cable is significant, with advertising pods running long with repetitive ads.
We are of the belief that the broadcast business in many ways is stronger than ever and that reflects in the syndication business as well, Teicher said. We still have full national distribution while none of the leading cable networks are even at 80% and some are in the lower 70s.
The issues around digital platforms, with advertisers being placed next to offensive content and so-called fake news, have been well reported.
We've been helped by the news of the day, O'Hara said. You have a lot of sensitivity on the part of the advertisers out there to all of the things that are going on. This is a year where advertiser confidence and trust has been rocked. In an environment like that, our programming emerges. Because of that, I expect our programming to be in very high demand.
Television also is working hard to offer similar targeted and niche opportunities to advertisers as digital currently offers.
Television has awakened and become more data-focused and that's creating more usable information for advertisers, Teicher said.
What You See Is What You Get
New ways of offering opportunities to advertisers are on the horizon, but syndication can also legitimately make the same sales pitch that's been its bedrock for years: The medium offers national advertisers A placement in short pods that air at the beginning of shows. And syndicated shows tend to be watched day-and-date, not on-demand or on viewers' DVRs.
Our shows are live, the viewership takes place live, said O'Hara. A lot of the off-net fare out there is comfort-food viewing. Advertisers know that with us, they are getting very sizable ratings. There's almost nothing on television that does what The Big Bang Theory still does. What medium out there wouldn't want to be able to say we reached viewers live, we have significant reach and it's a noncluttered environment?
Young viewers - and specifically millennial men - also still tend to tune in to Twentieth's animated sitcoms, including Family Guy and The Cleveland Show. That makes those shows a place to reach viewers who typically spend their time on YouTube and Netflix.
Cable penetration for millennials is now at 65%, Teicher said. When our animation runs, that group is coming to watch us live.
While most look at the economy - the unemployment rate is at record lows while the stock market is at record highs - and expect the upfront to be solid, without a presidential election or Olympics in the mix this year, the final tally might miss the mark of last year's highs. When all the money was counted, 2016's total broadcast and cable take was estimated at $18.6 billion, up 4.5% from 2015 and the highest result in three years.
Broadcast networks and syndication are the only places where you can get to 90%-95% [national] coverage, Debmar-Mercury copresident Mort Marcus said. I would say this fall and probably the next couple of falls, broadcast is a really good place to be.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
28/08/2025
IBC stand 5.F81
Wowza to Reveal Next-Gen Video Streaming Innovations at IBC 2025
Amsterdam, August 28, 2025 Wowza, a leader in video streaming infrastructur...
Why This Matters Just by continuing to do what it does, broadcast - and specifically syndication - offers a safe, cost-effective ad environment.
