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 modern series to enter syndication.[1][2][3]
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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 11 movies and four spin-off series. American Dad was picked up by Cartoon Network's Adult Swim after only 42 episodes. The PJs was also picked up by Adult Swim with less than 100 episodes. Adult Swim syndicated both The Oblongs and Mission Hill with only 13 episodes each. Not only did it syndicate Home Movies, but it also gave it 52 episodes, 47 more than UPN gave it. The Fox drama The O.C. was picked up by SOAPNet in April 2007 at 92 episodes. 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-1980s, 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. (Hondo, also with only 17 episodes, was also successfully syndicated.). The Honeymooners was also syndicated with only 39 episodes produced. The 1973-1974 series Dusty's Trail only lasted 26 episodes, yet has been repeated to this day due to its familiar cast and public domain status (making it extremely cheap to repeat). 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, the cult favorite Arrested Development was picked up in syndication by G4, HDNet and CBC Television, despite it only lasting 53 episodes. The original 1978 series Battlestar Galactica produced a mere 21 episodes, and yet still airs to this day after nearly 30 years of continuous syndication (though usually it is paired with its spin-off, Galactica 1980, and treated as one series; however, even with those extra episodes, the sum total of episodes from both series is still only 31). There have also been examples of recent series picked up for rebroadcast despite airing only about a dozen episodes, such as Wonderfalls and Firefly. The U.S. version of The Office has also been picked up by TBS. The show only had at the time 51 episodes over three seasons. Hope & Faith only lasted 73 episodes and is currently aired on WE tv. Futurama also had some success in syndication on Adult Swim despite only 72 episodes being completed, leading to the series being renewed for four films of 16 episodes combined, bringing the number up to 88. Before the movies were broadcasted, Comedy Central bought the rights to it, making it the only animated series to be rated TV-14 on the network (it was usually rated TV-PG on Fox and Adult Swim). GSN reruns several game shows that ran less than 100 episodes, including Greed (44 episodes), Double Dare (65 episodes), Dog Eat Dog (26 episodes), and several others.
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, Still Standing, and Yes, Dear.
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.
The South Park episode "Cancelled", which was the 97th episode produced for the series, makes reference to the 100 episodes concept. The episode begins almost identically to the very first South Park episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", until the characters realize that everything happening had happened before, which leads to them concluding that they are stuck in a repeat. It's revealed that Earth is actually the set of an alien-run reality television program, also called Earth, but now that the earthlings have become aware they're going to "cancel the show," meaning that they plan to blow up the earth. When the kids protest, the aliens tell them that they should feel good, because Earth had made it to 100 episodes, and tell them that shows have a tendency to become too outlandish after 100 episodes. Another reference is made during the actual 100th episode of the show, "I'm a Little Bit Country".
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. MTV's 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. However, these marathon events, where networks such as MTV or VH1 have shown an entire season of a reality program in a block, have been successful enough for them to become common on the networks: in 2008, both channels have frequently broadcast a season of America's Next Top Model in this fashion, airing all of the episodes in order in a single day.
Additionally, NBC's Fear Factor (a reality series in which each episode was self-contained) 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.[4] 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.
The producers of American Idol found a way around this problem by recutting and repackaging the old episodes into a new series entitled American Idol Rewind, with added behind-the-scenes footage and narrations.
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