Syndication is selling the same programme or column to many outlets. Newspaper syndication, in syndication, syndication rights.
It is where the money is in American television: a series that runs long enough to be sold on for repeats earns more that way than from its first broadcast, which is why episode counts mattered so much. In newspapers, syndicated columns appear in dozens of titles at once. Note syndicate, from a word for a delegate.
syndication is a form of distribution.
From the verb syndicate, first used this way in 1925, from syndic, a business agent or delegate.
From the verb syndicate (1925).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA