What Exactly Were Barter Cartoons?

[Markxxx]

I see that a lot in Wikipedia articles on small stations. I recall when ME-TV was starting out, they ran a lot of public service announcements and cheap ads and two of there offerings were "Tennessee Tuxedo" and "Underdog."

Would this be an example? If not what were some other examples and how did it work.

I'm not sure if stations do this anymore, this is why I put the question under "classic" forum.

 

[TheBigA]

The two cartoons you're talking about (along with King Leonardo) were produced by Total Television. Their post-network distribution was done by The Program Exchange, owned by the ad agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. That company shut down in 2018, and the archive is now managed by Dreamworks TV (part of NBC Universal).

But it's possible during the DFS days that they offered the shows without much advertising. Which may explain why the company shut down.

 

[crainbebo]

Barter meant cheap. Stations could purchase the shows for a cheap (or even free) price. Low-budget indies didn't air DuckTales for that reason. But they plugged in Gumby or Heathcliff instead.

 

[davideduardo]

I believe at that time the ad agency, DFS, would exchange the program content for a certain number of ads in each broadcast. This is similar to the way almost all the syndicated shows in radio work today: get the show but run our ads.

Barter means "trade". We give you a program, you run it but in exchange you give us some of the ad time in the show to sell to our accounts.

 

[Markxxx]

Thanks, When METV started on low power channel 23 in Chicago, most of the ads on the cartoon offerings were simply PSAs. As stated, I was taking barter to mean, you get a share of the ad revenue for providing us the cartoon for free.

And I was thinking, how are they making anything if all the ads are PSAs.

It took almost a year of very low budget commercials, things like ads for pet cemeteries, local ma and pop stores and even one lawyer who showed up every other commercial to say, she experienced bankruptcy and she'll help you out with yours.

 

[yeoldeschool]

There is a good explanation of how barter syndication works in the television business here -- coincidentally enough also concerning a cartoon:

The Simpsons Archive: Simpsons Syndication FAQ

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Disney, Fox Clash Over Children's TV Programming

In a nasty dispute between two entertainment giants, Walt Disney Co. filed an antitrust suit accusing units of Fox Inc. and 129 affiliated television stations of trying to monopolize the children's TV market.

www.latimes.com

Fox Kids - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In the past "Fox Kids" was formed in the 1990's to offset the syndication contract the affiliates had to pay to Disney at that time for kids programming. Also in some of this was related to the dispute where Disney had a contract to air kids programming on Fox owned stations.

Kevin O’Brien, general manager of KTVU-TV in Oakland and president of the Fox Children’s Network oversight committee, said: “This is nothing but an effort on the part of Disney to chill program diversity by the Fox affiliates.”

O’Brien accused Disney of trying to scare the Fox affiliates into backing away from their decision to form the children’s network. Affiliates are only now in the process of signing up with the new entity, which wouldn’t be owned by Fox, and so presumably could distribute additional hours of programming to Fox stations without violating the FCC’s rules that currently limit Fox to 15 hours a week.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Thanks, When METV started on low power channel 23 in Chicago, most of the ads on the cartoon offerings were simply PSAs. As stated, I was taking barter to mean, you get a share of the ad revenue for providing us the cartoon for free.

And I was thinking, how are they making anything if all the ads are PSAs.

By the time MeTV (to use its preferred capitalization) started, those cartoons had long since been through their barter runs -- typically, those had only been for the first several years of any specific cartoon's history -- and were essentially available on the cheap. Weigel just paid whatever low rate the syndicator was asking, just as they did for much of their early schedule.

But it did give them the ability to hit the ground with something other than infomercials and grow. The only thing that surprises me is that they ran PSAs instead of hooking up with the multitude of PI/DR agencies to run their campaigns instead.

Fun factoid: Most of the famous early Hanna-Barbera cartoons (Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw) were originally offered to stations via barter.

 

[TexasTom]

The Program Exchange was still offering "Underdog", "Rocky & Friends", and several other old cartoons in barter syndication as recently as twenty years ago, so the barter runs continued for decades after the shows were originally produced. I would guess that they got pulled from barter syndication when it just hit the point where there was absolutely no market left for bartered childrens shows outside whatever was needed to meet the E/I requirements.

 

[TheBigA]

The Program Exchange was still offering "Underdog", "Rocky & Friends", and several other old cartoons in barter syndication as recently as twenty years ago

From what I can see, the company shut down in 2008, and as we said earlier, the rights to the TV shows are now owned by NBC Universal.

 

[Route66Fan]

From what I can see, the company shut down in 2008, and as we said earlier, the rights to the TV shows are now owned by NBC Universal.

With the exception of Garfield & Friends whose rights now belong to 9 Story Media.