Syndex

Syndication exclusivity (also known as syndex) is a federal law implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States that is designed to protect a local television station's rights to syndicated television programs by granting exclusive broadcast rights to the station for that program in their local market, usually defined by a station's Nielsen Designated Market Area.

As a result, any airings of the same program on cable networks and, more commonly, superstations must be blocked by the local cable provider upon request from the local station. Broadcast television stations have the option of signing programming deals with or without syndex protection, but they stand to have audiences significantly diluted in markets without protection. Syndex protection is rarely enforced in regards to conventional cable networks, which (particularly since the late 1990s) often concurrently maintain rights to a particular program during the period of a broadcast syndication deal.

The first syndex rule to be passed by the Federal Communications Commission went into effect on March 31, 1972. The regulations at the time were similar to those in the present-day law, except for the fact that they applied to almost all programming, including shows such as the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon.WTCG in Atlanta, the original "superstation" (which at the time was distributed only in the Southeastern United States, five years before it became available nationally via satellite transmission), had programming blacked out in some areas where duplication existed.

In November 1976, the FCC began to consider making alterations to the syndex rulings. In April 1979, the FCC made a proposal to remove some of the rules. Further debate led the Cable Television Bureau of the FCC to recommend doing away with the rules entirely. On July 22, 1980, the Commission revoked the syndex rulings in a 4–3 vote, on the basis that "local stations are not adversely affected when a cable system offers subscribers signals from television stations in other cities." In 1980, the FCC lifted the old syndex law, as a way to bolster the growing cable television industry. This led cable systems to begin carrying other superstations and more regional out-of-market independent stations, at a time when the popularity of both was growing.

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