The term barter syndication refers to a type of contract between broadcasters such as television networks, network affiliates, independent stations and television syndicators. The commodity being bartered is advertising time within television programs. The basic issues of the barter revolve around the control of the advertising time: how much available advertising time there will be and who will sell that time.

Barter syndication is a powerful tool in the syndication business, which is growing rapidly and possesses far-reaching benefits and consequences for the syndication, broadcasting, and advertising industries.

Barter syndication, in addition to the cost advantage is popular because of its flexibility; a station can typically pick up a barter syndicated program for only a few weeks or months, without the long-term financial commitment of a traditional syndicated series, allowing the station to place the show into its lineup to fill gaps in the schedule.

The concept is to give away a syndicated TV series, similar to a free newspaper circular, with one’s own, or one’s strategic partners’, commercials already inserted into it. Then TV stations across the nation and around the world are offered such programming for free, complete with blank spaces in it for them to insert edit in their own paying commercials. But they must be contractually forbidden from tampering with the show, or with our own pre-inserted commercials. A free TV show in exchange for a free commercial time whenever it runs.