Broadcast syndication in the context of MyNetworkTV

Radio broadcasting is the transmission of electromagnetic radiation (radio waves) to receivers over a wide area. Most broadcasts are audio (sound), sometimes with embedded metadata. Listeners require a broadcast radio receiver to receive these signals. "Terrestrial" broadcasts, including AM, FM, and DAB stations, originate from land-based transmitters, whereas "satellite radio" signals originate from a satellite in Earth orbit.

Stations may produce their own programming or be affiliated with a radio network that provides content either through broadcast syndication or by simulcasting, or both. The most common transmission technologies are analog and digital. Analog radio uses one of two modulation methods: amplitude modulation (AM) or frequency modulation (FM). Digital radio stations transmit using one of several digital audio standards, such as DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting), HD Radio, or DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale).

A film distributor is a person responsible for the marketing of a film. The distribution company may be the same as, or different from, the production company. Distribution deals are an important part of financing a film.

The distributor may set the release date of a film and the method by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing; for example, directly to the public either theatrically or for home viewing (DVD, video-on-demand, download, television programs through broadcast syndication etc.). A distributor may do this directly, if the distributor owns the theaters or film distribution networks, or through theatrical exhibitors and other sub-distributors. A limited distributor may deal only with particular products, such as DVDs or Blu-ray, or may act in a particular country or market. The primary distributor will often receive credit in the film's credits, one sheet or other marketing material.

The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that aired intermittently from 1955 to 1996 and briefly returned to social media in 2017. Created by Walt Disney and produced by Walt Disney Productions, the program was first televised for four seasons, from 1955 to 1959, by ABC. This original run featured a regular, but ever-changing cast of mostly child, tween or teen performers. ABC broadcast reruns weekday afternoons during the 1958–1959 season, airing right after American Bandstand. The show was revived three times after its initial 1955–1959 run on ABC, first from 1977 to 1979 for first-run syndication as The New Mickey Mouse Club, then from 1989 to 1996 as The All-New Mickey Mouse Club (also known to fans as MMC from 1993 to 1996) airing on Disney Channel, and again from 2017 to 2018 with the moniker Club Mickey Mouse airing on internet social media.

The character of Mickey Mouse appeared in every show, not only in vintage cartoons originally made for theatrical release, but also in the opening, interstitial, and closing segments made especially for the show. In both the vintage cartoons and new animated segments, Mickey was voiced by his creator Walt Disney, who had previously voiced the character theatrically from Steamboat Willie to Fun and Fancy Free.

In broadcasting, a flagship (also known as a flagship station or key station) is the broadcast station which originates a television network, or a particular radio or television program that plays a key role in the branding of and consumer loyalty to a network or station. This includes both direct network feeds and broadcast syndication, but generally not backhauls. Not all networks or shows have a flagship station, as some originate from a dedicated radio or television studio.

The term derives from the naval custom where the commanding officer of a group of naval ships would fly a distinguishing flag. In common parlance, "flagship" is now used to mean the most important or leading member of a group, hence its various uses in broadcasting. The term flagship station is primarily used in TV and radio in the United States, Canada, and the Philippines (though it is seldomly used), while the term key station (キー局, kī kyoku) is primarily used in TV in Japan (and formerly in the United States).

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., commonly referred to as Sony Pictures and abbreviated as SPE, is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment (theatrical motion pictures, television programs, and recorded videos) through multiple platforms. It was founded in December 18, 1987 as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. from the spinoff of The Coca-Cola Company's Entertainment Business Sector and merger with Tri-Star Pictures, Inc., with Coca-Cola retaining a 49% stake in the resulting entity. The studio was wholly acquired by Sony in 1989 and renamed as SPE in 1991.

Based at the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, California, as one of the "Big Five" major American film studios, it encompasses Sony's motion picture, television production and distribution units. Sony Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Sony's film franchises include The Karate Kid, Ghostbusters, Jumanji, Men in Black, 28 Days Later, Spider-Man, and Sony's Spider-Man Universe.

Soul Train is an American musical variety television show. After airing locally on WCIU-TV in Chicago, Illinois, for a year, the popular series then aired nationally in syndication from October 2, 1971, to March 25, 2006. In its 35-year history, the show primarily featured performances by R&B, soul, and hip hop artists. The series was created by Don Cornelius, who also served as its first and longest-serving host and executive producer.

Production was suspended following the 2005–2006 season, with a rerun package under the moniker The Best of Soul Train airing for two years subsequently. As a nod to Soul Train's longevity, the show's opening sequence during later seasons contained a claim that it was the "longest-running first-run, nationally syndicated program in American television history", with more than 1,100 episodes produced from the show's debut through the 2005–2006 season. Despite the production hiatus, Soul Train held that superlative record until 2016, when Entertainment Tonight surpassed it in completing its 35th season. Among non-news programs, Wheel of Fortune surpassed that mark in 2018.

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., commonly referred to as Sony Pictures and abbreviated as SPE, is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment (theatrical motion pictures, television programs, and recorded videos) through multiple platforms. It was founded on December 18, 1987 as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. from the spinoff of The Coca-Cola Company's Entertainment Business Sector and merger with Tri-Star Pictures, Inc., with Coca-Cola retaining a 49% stake in the resulting entity. The studio was wholly acquired by Sony in 1989 and renamed as SPE in 1991.

Based at the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, California, as one of the "Big Five" major American film studios, it encompasses Sony's motion picture, television production and distribution units. Sony Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Sony's film franchises include The Karate Kid, Ghostbusters, Jumanji, Men in Black, 28 Days Later, Spider-Man, and Sony's Spider-Man Universe.

WGN America was an American subscription television network that operated from November 9th 1978 to February 28th 2021. The service was originally uplinked to satellite by United Video Inc. as a national feed of Chicago independent station WGN-TV, making the station's programming available to cable and satellite providers throughout the United States as the second nationally distributed "superstation" (after Atlanta station WTCG, now operating as the cable-originated TBS, which had become a national service almost two years earlier).

It maintained a nearly identical program schedule as the Chicago station, airing a variety of programming including films, syndicated series, programs intended for local broadcast in the Chicago market (including local newscasts, public affairs shows and children's programs), and sports (including Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball, Chicago Bulls basketball, and regional collegiate events). By the 1990s, the WGN superstation feed began substituting some syndicated programs (and starting in 1996, selected sporting events) in accordance with syndication exclusivity rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in January 1990 to reduce programming duplication between local and out-of-market television stations carried by local cable systems, and served as the national carrier of The WB (part-owned by WGN-TV founding owner Tribune Broadcasting, which would acquire the national feed from United Video in 2001) during the latter half of the decade.

Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets; about 114,200,000 American households owned at least one television set each in August 2013. Most households have more than one set. The percentage of households owning at least one television set peaked at 98.4%, in the 1996–1997 season. In 1948, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one television; in 1955, 75 percent did. In 1992, 60 percent of all U.S. households had cable television subscriptions. However, this number has fallen to 40% in 2024.

As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and most distributed in the world, and programs produced specifically for American networks are the most widely syndicated internationally. Because of a surge in the number and popularity of critically acclaimed television series in the 2000s and the 2010s, many critics have said that American television has entered a modern golden age; whether that golden age has ended or is ongoing in the early 2020s is disputed.

I Love Lucy is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, with 180 half-hour episodes across six seasons. The series starred Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, along with Vivian Vance and William Frawley, and follows the life of Lucy Ricardo (Ball), a young, middle-class housewife living in New York City, who often concocts plans with her best friends and landlords, Ethel and Fred Mertz (Vance and Frawley), to appear alongside her bandleader husband, Ricky Ricardo (Arnaz), in his nightclub. Lucy is depicted trying numerous schemes to mingle with and be a part of show business. After the series ended in 1957, a modified version of the show continued for three more seasons, with 13 one-hour specials, which ran from 1957 to 1960. It was first known as The Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show, and later, in reruns, as The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour.

I Love Lucy became the most-watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons and it was the first to end its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings. As of 2011, episodes of the show have been syndicated in dozens of languages across the world and remain popular with an American audience of 40 million each year. A colorized version of its Christmas episode attracted more than eight million viewers when CBS aired it in prime time in 2013, 62 years after the show premiered.

Fox Sports Networks (FSN), formerly known as Fox Sports Net, was the collective name for a group of regional sports channels in the United States. Formed in 1996 by News Corporation, the networks were acquired by the Walt Disney Company on March 20, 2019, following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox. A condition of that acquisition imposed by the U.S. Department of Justice required Disney to sell the regional networks by June 18, 2019, ninety days after the completion of its acquisition. Disney subsequently agreed to sell the networks (excluding the YES Network, being reacquired by Yankee Global Enterprises) to Sinclair; the transaction was completed on August 22, 2019. The networks continued to use the Fox Sports name only under a transitional license agreement while rebranding options were explored. A rebranding cross-partnership with Bally's Corporation took effect on March 31, 2021, and the networks were rebranded as Bally Sports, ending the Fox Sports Networks branding after 25 years.

Each of the channels in the group carried regional broadcasts of sporting events from various professional, collegiate and high school sports teams (with broadcasts typically exclusive to each individual channel, although some were shown on multiple FSN channels or syndicated to a local broadcast station within a particular team's designated market area), along with regional and national sports discussion, documentary and analysis programs.

Freeform (formally Fox Family from 1998 to 2001, and ABC Family up until 2016) is an American basic cable channel owned and operated by ABC Family Worldwide, a subsidiary of the Disney Entertainment business segment and division of The Walt Disney Company. Freeform primarily broadcasts programming geared towards young adults—with some skewing toward young women—in the 18–34 age range, a target demographic designated by the channel as "becomers". Its programming includes contemporary off-network syndicated reruns and original series, feature films, and made-for-TV original movies. Movies are also shown during seasonal programming blocks, like 31 Nights of Halloween, 30 Days of Disney, and 25 Days of Christmas.

Since the network was launched on April 29, 1977, it has undergone various changes to its programming format and naming under 4 different owners. The network was originally founded as a religious channel, the CBN Satellite Service—an extension of televangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. It evolved into a family-focused entertainment network in 1981. It was spun off into a for-profit company known as International Family Entertainment (IFE) in 1990, eventually becoming known as The Family Channel. As a condition of the spin-off, the channel was contractually required to maintain airings of The 700 Club and an annual telethon the last Sunday in January; these conditions have applied to all future owners of the channel.

Film distribution, also called film exhibition or film distribution and exhibition, is the process of making a film available for viewing to an audience. This is normally the task of a professional film distributor, who would determine the marketing and release strategy for the film, the media by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing and other matters. The film may be exhibited directly to the public either through a movie theater, physical media (DVD, Blu-ray), digital download/transactional video on demand (VOD) (sale or rental), subscription VOD (e.g. Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix) or television programs through broadcast syndication. For commercial projects, film distribution is usually accompanied by film promotion.

Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution (DMED), formerly Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International (DTCI), was a business segment of the Walt Disney Company that operated from March 14, 2018 until the establishment of its successor, Disney Entertainment on February 8, 2023. It consisted of Disney Streaming (previously known as BAMTech and Disney Streaming Services) and Disney International Operations (which is now split up). Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution's fate was a success as of to when Disney-ABC Domestic Television still held up business

On October 12, 2020, former CEO Bob Chapek initiated a reorganization of Disney's media and entertainment divisions, which included a dissolution of DTCI and a split of its business segments into Disney International Content and Operations and Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution. Until 2023, the business segment consisted Disney's streaming services, its advertising sales division and its linear television networks, along with broadcast, cable and international syndication. Its focus was on strategic monetization of titles from Disney's three content groups: Studios, General Entertainment, and ESPN & Sports.

Bonanza is an American Western television series that ran on NBC from September 12, 1959, to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 431 episodes, Bonanza is NBC's longest-running Western, the second-longest-running Western series on American network television (behind CBS's Gunsmoke), and one of the longest-running, live-action American series. The show continues to air in syndication. The show is set in the 1860s and centers on the wealthy Cartwright family, who live in the vicinity of Virginia City, Nevada, bordering Lake Tahoe. The series initially starred Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon and later featured (at various times) Guy Williams, David Canary, Mitch Vogel and Tim Matheson. The show is known for presenting pressing moral dilemmas.

The title "Bonanza" is a term used by miners in regard to a large vein or deposit of silver ore, from Spanish bonanza (rich ore body) and commonly refers to the 1859 revelation of the Comstock Lode of rich silver ore mines under the town of Virginia City, not far from the fictional Ponderosa Ranch that the Cartwright family operated. The show's theme song, also titled "Bonanza", became a hit song. Only instrumental renditions, without Ray Evans's lyrics, were used during the series's long run.

Death Valley Days is an American Western anthology television series based on true accounts of the American Old West, particularly the Death Valley country of southeastern California. Created in 1930 by Ruth Woodman, the program was broadcast on radio until 1945. From 1952 to 1970, it became a syndicated television series, with reruns (updated with new narrations) continuing through August 1, 1975. The radio and television versions combined to make the show "one of the longest-running Western programs in broadcast history."

The series was sponsored by the Pacific Coast Borax Company, makers of 20 Mule Team Borax and Boraxo, and hosted by Stanley Andrews ("The Old Ranger") (1952–1964), Ronald Reagan (1964–1966), Robert Taylor (1966–1969), and Dale Robertson (1969–1970). Hosting the series was Reagan's final work as an actor; he left the series in 1966 to run for governor of California.