Testing, Ownership Key To Better Syndication

A greater reliance on testing new syndicated shows before launching, and increased investment in syndicated shows on the part of station groups were two of the ideas floated at a NATPE session whose principal subject was “finding new syndication models.”

The full title of the session, held Wednesday at NATPE in Miami, was “Station Group State of the Union: Renewing Shows Vs. Finding New Syndication Models: Which is the Stronger Play?”

It featured a panel consisting of two station-group programming executives (Sean Compton, president, programming and acquisitions, Tribune, and Deborah McDermott, former COO and SVP, Media General); two syndication execs (Mort Marcus, co-president, Debmar-Mercury, and Greg Meidel, president, Twentieth Television); and one representative of a large production company (Vivi Zigler, president, digital, brand and audience development, Endemol Shine North America.

Under questioning by moderator Paige Albiniak of Broadcasting & Cable, the panelists discussed the various reasons why the broadcast syndication business is in the doldrums these days.

The one reason cited most often: The tendency for even some low-rated strips to be renewed for two or three seasons out, creating a gridlocked condition in which local TV’s best time periods become “clogged up” (in the words of Marcus).

As a result, programming lineups on local TV stations become stale, and the business of developing and launching fresh content for syndication is stymied, the panelists said.

“We’ve been saying this for years,” Marcus said. “We don’t understand why the stations will renew so many years on shows that aren’t making it. We need new models.”

Marcus said he would like to see the industry explore moving toward a system in which new syndicated shows get a period of weeks, perhaps 13, to succeed or fail, not unlike network primetime. And if a syndicated show fails, give a new one a chance to replace it, Marcus suggested.

At least that would prevent situations in which shows that obviously are not working will not then stick around under their license agreements for an entire first season, or possibly two, Marcus said.

Citing the early testing Debmar-Mercury did for Wendy Williams, a show that is now one of the sturdiest talk shows in first-run syndication, Marcus said he’s a proponent of advanced testing.

“If you launch a national show, it’s $9 million or $10 million,” Marcus said. “If you do a test, you might lose $1 million or $2 million. That’s why we wanted to do tests at the beginning. We can stomach a $1 million or $2 million loss to try to get a hit show. We can’t stomach a $10 million or $12 million loss, so testing is way better than not testing.”

The topic of high costs associated with launching new first-run syndicated shows was taken up Meidel, whose company’s first-run offering for next fall is the weekday strip Page Six TV. The show advanced to the launch phase after a test on Fox-owned stations last summer. A number of Fox stations subsequently picked it up, giving the show a solid foundation for its launch into national syndication.

But Meidel acknowledged that the price for playing in national syndication doesn’t come cheap. Among the costs he cited that he said were typical for nationally syndicated shows were outlays of $3 million-$5 million annually in promotion costs, and $600,000 a year just to buy national audience data from Nielsen — a necessary but high-priced investment if a syndicator is seeking national advertising.

Despite these costs, though, Meidel said syndicators are spending less than they used to on syndicated launches. “As an industry, I think everybody is more disciplined than we used to be,” Meidel said. “We don’t spend that $45 million on a show like we used to. We’re very cost-efficient. You look for tax credits — a lot of things you can do [to reduce costs].”

Other panelists said new first-run shows might have a better chance of succeeding if station groups have an ownership stake in them. This is one of the reasons why so many large station groups have recently entered the business of developing their own shows (with hopes of possibly syndicating them to others).

One group — Tribune — has found it advantageous to partner with national syndicators as a participating co-producer in the shows they’re being offered. Tribune had one such partnership with Debmar-Mercury in Celebrity Name Game and another with Warner Bros. in Crime Watch Daily.

“It’s like the difference between owning a car and leasing a car,” said Tribune’s Compton. “When you own a piece of the show, you’re more invested in it [and] there’s more passion for it.

For us to have a new deal structure that allows us to be equally invested, I think it’s helped the industry a little bit,” he said.

To read all of TVNewsCheck’s NATPE 2017 coverage, click here.