Syndication: The Sweetest Plum With Found Footage Fest
Added 2025-11-05 05:00:02 +0000 UTCSeptember 19, 1994: a day that will live in... Wait, what's the opposite of infamy? 31 years ago, the lives of Simpsons fans changed forever when their favorite show went from a weekly thing to a twice-daily thing thanks to the power of syndication. In this week's format-breaking podcast, we take a look at the programming package that made a certain era of The Simpsons a second language for TV-addicted latchkey kids.
Our guests: Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher from Found Footage Fest
Comments
I'm getting to this one a little late, but having worked in local TV for over a decade, I've got a lot to say. First, the show starting syndication in about 140 markets out of a total of 210 in the US is pretty good. Some of the smaller stations probably couldn't afford the show, and some markets (like #210 Glendive, Montana and its fewer than 4,000 TV households) didn't even have a Fox affiliate for them to self-deal to. Next, on the topic of the syndicator holding on to some ad slots for themselves, that's standard practice. Higher profile shows can throw their weight around and hang on to more ad slots to sell themselves. On the other hand, we kept Entertainment Tonight longer than its ratings would justify because it gave local stations more ad breaks than anything else we could replace it with (probably because it's just marketing for new movies and shows funded by the studios anyway). And those ad slots can ad up. Depending on the market, timeslot, and how popular the show is, 30 second ads can go for hundreds of dollars each. A few ad slots a show, five days a week, can bring in tens of thousands of dollars per advertising quarter. Side note, the slot Homer's Mr. Plow ad aired in would probably go for about $4 on our station. Now, we don't sell one-off $4 ads, but when the advertiser buys an ad in that slot, every day for the quarter, it averages out that cheap. And one last little side thing, it's kind of funny you mentioned the Police Academy cartoon as an example of weird licensed cartoons here, because it's airing in syndication right now on MeTV Toons! They've also got the Beetlejuice animated series, BOTH Alf animated shows, The Mask, the Mister T cartoon, and a bunch of other weird also-rans. Sorry, no Bonkers though.
Echo Cimarron
2025-11-15 00:27:59 +0000 UTCI remember WNOL in New Orleans showing back to back episodes with another one at 10:30. Part of the reason why I was rewatching the season 1 DVD as a kid was because those episodes were never shown. For reference, i started watching the Simpsons on WNOL around 2000ish.
Matthew Bourgeois
2025-11-13 03:31:09 +0000 UTCI find press release kits really interesting. I recently picked one up from Mask of the Phantasm which had two lengthy pieces of ad copy and lists of the people who worked on it and a few black and white photo prints of scenes from the movie. Was very reasonably priced but they can get very expensive, depending on the movie. I wouldn't think pres kits would be made specifically for syndication of an existing show, but I guess a network would need to have something to use to promote it. There must be so many of those kits out there, given how widely syndicated the Simpsons was/is. Very cool thing to bring up!
Jonathon
2025-11-11 19:54:04 +0000 UTC
