Seinfeld is leaving its longtime cable home TBS for Viacom channels

Vanity Fair

Viacom's TV Land, Comedy Central and Paramount Network will begin showing Seinfeld reruns starting in October 2021, ending a 19-year cable syndication run on TBS. Viacom's deal for Seinfeld's cable rights comes five days after Netflix landed streaming rights to all 180 Seinfeld episodes in a $500 million deal. TBS first obtained cable syndication rights for Seinfeld in 1998, the year of its series finale, and began showing the hit sitcom in 2002. According to Josef Adalian, "Viacom makes particular sense for Seinfeld because its cable portfolio is diverse enough for the show to logically run on more than one of its networks, with TV Land and Comedy Central both already to home to numerous half-hour sitcoms. The new deal will let Viacom stream a handful of episodes on its various apps and websites, though not enough to let audiences binge full seasons. Viacom’s press release named only three of its networks as homes for Seinfeld reruns, but unless the deal with Sony expressly prohibits it, it would seem logical for Viacom to sometimes run the show on other properties, including the classic-TV themed Logo or, assuming its merger with CBS closes, the Pop network." Adalian also suggests that Seinfeld reruns could land on  the Viacom-owned Pluto TV. TBS paid about $350,000 to $450,000 per episode for Seinfeld after initially paying a record $1 million per episode. Deadline reports Viacom's deal may be worth $200,000 to $250,000 per episode since the value of a series goes down with each syndication cycle.