What's Happening to First-Run Syndication?

[TMC]

With Mutant X closing and Andromeda moving to Sci-Fi that leaves (at least as far as I know) She Spies and the only syndicated show on the air now. There used to be lot of syndicated shows a while back.

You had comedies (Charles In Charge, Out of This World, Small Wonder)

, action (Relic Hunter, Adventure Inc, Lightning Force, Queen of Swords), fantasy (Hercules, Xena, Lost World) and sci-fi (TNG, DS9, B5, Superboy). Now there's nothing (except She Spies) on the air now.

What happened? Did networks like UPN, WB, Pax, Oxygen wipe out the syndication industry or did the sydication production companies figure they can get bigger money by tying themselves to a network? Where did it all go?

If you can't answer those questions answer this: What are you favorite syndicated tv shows? They can't have been on network tv (unless new episodes where made specifically for syndication) and to make it a little tough you can't have TNG, DS9, B5, Hercules or Xena.

The ones I liked were:
The Lost World (it was cheesy but I liked it)
My Secret Identity
Superboy
Friday the 13th-the series

EDIT
Of course I'm not talking about the talk/reality shows (Oprah, Ricki Lake, ET,Access,Judge Judy/Brown) there's still a sickening amount of those still on. Or the game shows, I'm talking about the ones with actors, writers, plotlines.

[tvfan0101]

From what I've seen, syndicated packages made up of repeats of shows like Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier pull in more ad revenue than first-run shows. Viewers are more apt to tune into repeats of a hit, tried-and-true show, rather than try some new first-run syndicated show.

[jamesanthony]

I liked The Adventures of Superman and Abbott and Costello, though I am too young to have watched them in first-run syndication in the 50s, I saw both in syndicated reruns in the 70s. Neither ever aired on a network. Marvel Superheroes which was syndicated in the 1960s was another show I liked watching in syndiacted reruns in the 70s and early 80s.

I also liked some of the comedies from the late 80s-early 90s: What's Happening Now!!!, New WKRP in Cincinatti and Throb with Diana Canova.

I never cared for sci-fi tv or Baywatch, Xena, Viper, Beastmaster or the other hourlong syndicated shows and I have little patience for the talk shows and court shows. Game shows are not something I would sit down to watch either, although they don't offend me as much as the court and talk programs.

[tvparadise]

Baywatch= proof that a television series could be just as big (if not bigger)in syndication than on network television.