Creatively, this was a huge issue for the show. Syndicators believe strongly that their shows need to be accessible to a casual audience that might not see every episode. Unlike a cable network, the reality of the syndication market demanded that the show not be excessively serialized. Based on author Terry Goodkind’s sprawling epic fantasy series The Sword of Truth, Legend of the Seeker had to find a way to make a dense, highly serial story into one-hour stand-alone episodes. Action-oriented shows are always easier to market worldwide, and with strong ratings in dozens of countries, Legend of the Seeker was renewed before the first season was even halfway over.īut finding an audience wasn’t the show’s only uphill battle. Raimi and Tapert believed otherwise with a tailor-made timeslot on Saturday nights on stations usually devoted to the CW Network (which doesn’t broadcast on Saturdays), they believed they could find success again in syndication. Conventional wisdom said that the syndication market was basically dead in the 00’s, left behind by the proliferation of cable channels willing to fund original programming. The link between the two shows was executive producers Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert. Not only was it one of the first pure swords-and-sorcery fantasy shows in many years, it was also the first major show to try its hand in syndication since Xena: Warrior Princess went off the air. The first season of Legend of the Seeker faced a decidedly uphill battle.
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