100 episodes
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100 episodes is considered to be the general threshold at which point a television series produced for the United States becomes viable for syndication. Although much depends on the length of a show's seasons, this point is usually reached during a prime time series' fifth season.
The 100-episode mark is frequently cited in entertainment industry and popular media as a key number for enabling a series to enter syndication. [1] [2] [3][4] [5] [6][7][8]
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[edit] Successes and exceptions
Syndication is often a profitable enterprise, due to the fact that series can run for decades after they stop production. In this way, many shows that do not gain much profit during their first run will still prove to be viable to the network if they can last 100 episodes.
There are many exceptions to the 100 episode rule. Shows of fewer episodes have become syndication successes. The most notable of these is the original Star Trek series which had only 79 episodes available when it ended in 1969, but subsequently spawned ten movies and five spin-off series. What's Happening!! did much better than in its first run on television, despite only having produced 65 episodes, ending up with a later syndicated reincarnation in the mid-80s, What's Happening Now!!. An extreme example is the spy series The Prisoner which has been successfully syndicated for more than 30 years despite having only 17 episodes produced. Most recently Clueless has been more successful in syndication than during its network run even though only 62 episodes had been produced by the time the series ended in 1999. In 2006, Arrested Development was picked up in syndication by G4 and HDNet, despite it only lasting 53 episodes.
[edit] Lower expectations and disappointments
On the other hand, a 100-episode series may be syndicated, but aired in inconvenient or odd time slots such as early morning, mid-afternoon or late at night, if the show wasn't critically acclaimed during its network run or was a show under the radar and doesn't warrant a prime timeslot; examples include The Parent Hood, Grace Under Fire, My Wife and Kids, and Yes, Dear.
Reaching 100 episodes does not necessarily mean that a series will be picked up for syndication, or that the reruns will be successful. For example, reruns of The Hughleys and Mystery Science Theater 3000, which were both highly successful in their original runs, were taken out of syndication after just one season, although it should be noted that in the case of MST3K, the rights to the parodied movies were lost in many cases, therefore preventing syndication.
There are also cases, such as Mad About You and Newsradio, where a series is expected to do well in syndication but ends up with disappointing ratings and revenue. Reasons include dated references in early seasons, or plotlines in later seasons that fall flat, causing the series to end up being defined by that one plotline or season rather than as a whole, changing the audience's perception.
[edit] Reality television
In particular, reality shows that have reached the 100 episode milestone have found syndication problematic. With the serial episodic nature of the shows, along with the game show elements that come with competitive reality programs, and the "event" nature of first-run reality shows to have unique elements to them to appeal to audiences on their first runs on networks, these factors hamper their attempts to have the programs have a second life in syndication. Previous seasons of The Amazing Race, for example ran on GSN starting in 2005 nightly; however the factor that the winning team at the end of each season was already known and the loss of the unexpected drama within each episode didn't draw many viewers to the second-run episodes, and subsequently by the beginning of 2006, GSN decided to show the repeats only in a late overnight slot. The Real World also failed to generate much audience interest in a three-year syndicated run when offered to local stations, as MTV's tactic to marathon entire seasons of the show often on the network reduced the value of the episodes to be more of a filler than as a series.
Additionally, NBC's Fear Factor was promoted by that network's syndication division as "repeat-proof" when the show was sold into syndication to local broadcast networks and FX in 2004, with some stations showing the program twice a day [9]. After a strong start though, and as NBC began to use Fear Factor to plug weaknesses within its schedule, the ratings for the show's repeats fell, and by the beginning of 2006, FX had stopped airing Fear Factor (though it began to air in mid-morning again in the fall of 2006), and the show's syndicated run ended quietly in mid-September 2006.
