Paid Syndication

It started with just a local talk show in New York. You had this long-haired guy with a rich Corinthian leather voice. He talked about the things nobody else would talk about. Why some people are less sensitive to body smells than others. How divorces go down. How some guys...don't. Or won't. And how it feels to sit on a turned-sideways speaker while the host is humming in a deeep barritone voice.

The show was a hit. It only played on one station though, and then a neighboring radio company heard about it and wanted to simply get a copy of that show delivered to them at the same time the original New York show was airing. Since there was almost zero marginal cost in licensing the right to air that one-hour show to the neighboring station, and since there was virtually no competition from them, the deal was easy.

It was a hit in that second city as well. And then along came a 3rd and 4th and 5th and 212th. And soon, all of America was covered with this syndicated radio talk show, which had the same costs to produce of about $500 for a one-hour show, only now instead of being heard by 50,000, it was heard by some 15 million. Lots of ears on the show with 212 markets paying syndication fees for the right to air and re-air that same identical content.

That's how paid syndication works. Enormously profitable when it works. And yes, that was Howard's story. Ba ba freakin' booey.