Syndication: What it is and why it’s used

This is my 100th post of this blog. I decided to do something that related to the theme of 100 in television by posting about syndication. I use terms in this blog that I'm not sure that everyone actually knows about even though I talk about it a lot. For instance, I was talking with my aunt and uncle who are living most of the year in Ghana about the regions of DVDs and they had no idea what I was talking about. I shouldn't assume that everyone knows terms that I use, so here's one about syndication. Also, you'll notice that this weekly posts are now on Saturdays instead of Fridays. I was posting on Fridays until another roll of a Survivor episode would post something on a different day. Saturdays, like Fridays, was an open day of the week for me to post in this blog. Since the month is over, there will be no more Friday updates unless it somehow becomes occupied with more Good Wife things to post about. You will be seeing Saturday posts until at least sometime next month, depending on if I start posting on a regular day of the week or not. Sorry for the long introduction. Now on to the blog post!

If you ever see me talk about syndication, you might not know what it is. Then again, you might know enough about it to get the gist of it. Basically, there are various purposes that syndication has so I might as well tell you about them.

A lot of what syndication is and means is basically getting reruns of previously aired primetime shows. Now these primetime shows are sometimes still on the air producing new episodes and other times these primetime shows have ended. Syndication can basically keep shows that have ended production on the airwaves forever. That’s the theory, at least, although a lot of shows don’t stay in syndication forever. One of the problems with syndication is that shows are always edited in some way. Typically the edits are minor, although a person like me who has seen both versions typically always notices these edits. In fact, a big compliant regards Saturday Night Live which losses about 30 minutes worth of sketches in syndication. That show goes from its original running time of 90 minutes to just 60 minutes in reruns. Most shows, or at least sitcoms, lose at least an overall minute when they are edited for syndication.

There are some shows that exist exclusively in syndication. Those are typically talk shows or game shows. They air on various networks at various times throughout the day, except primetime and times that would conflict with other shows. Typically, daytime hours and late night hours (remembering that late night on TV is considered everything after primetime and before daytime) are the only times that you’d see syndicated shows on.

I’m not sure what else there is to say regarding syndication. Just remember that if it is a drama or a sitcom, you will never see new episodes in syndication. You might see episodes that you haven’t seen before or episodes not previously in syndication before such as the most recently aired seasons of shows. I will admit that sometimes syndication can be annoying as it can just skip around from episodes from season to season and not air in any logical order. Typically, the air in the right order from beginning to end (or the end of the most recently syndicated season at least) and then repeat the order, but various things can mess this up. That’s my main problem with it at least. If you can buy shows on DVD, that’s problem the better option anyways. Just hope that your DVDs are the complete season or they might not have the original versions of the episode and instead just be the syndicated versions of the episodes you want and not the full version. I'm not sure if most people know or care about this.