One Show. Many Lives.

How Streaming Is Reinventing Syndication

A funny thing happened when I opened Netflix recently.   

I saw a familiar show being promoted: Murder in a Small Town. 

I knew the series as I really enjoyed watching it. It stars Rossif Sutherland as police chief Karl Alberg and Kristin Kreuk as Cassandra Lee, the local librarian who becomes his romantic interest.  I also knew it as a Fox show. It airs over the air on Fox and, like other Fox programming, has been available to stream on Hulu.   Now, suddenly, the first two seasons were on Netflix.

My first thought was that the show had moved. Maybe its run on Hulu had ended and Netflix had acquired it. But it hadn't moved at all.

As I write this, both seasons remain available on Hulu. The show has been renewed for a third season on Fox. Netflix has simply become another place where viewers can discover it.

That may seem like a minor distinction, but it says a lot about where the television business is headed. After years in which streaming companies fought to make their programming exclusive, we are increasingly seeing shows appear on multiple platforms.

In some respects, what looks new is quite old.  Streaming may be reinventing syndication.

A Story More Than 40 Years in the Making

To understand the value of Murder in a Small Town, it helps to go back long before Fox, Hulu or Netflix entered the picture.

Canadian novelist L.R. Wright published The Suspect in 1985. Interestingly, Karl Alberg wasn't part of the story Wright initially set out to tell. According to Wright's biography, she began writing about an elderly man who unexpectedly became a killer. Once she realized the police would inevitably become involved, she needed a detective.

Karl Alberg was born.

The Suspect went on to win the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best Novel. Wright continued writing about Alberg and the fictionalized British Columbia coastal community surrounding him, ultimately creating a nine-book mystery series.

Those books eventually attracted the attention of Vancouver-based Soapbox Productions, which optioned the series. Producer Nick Orchard remained involved as the project evolved, eventually joining a team that included writer and showrunner Ian Weir, Sepia Films and former USA Network President Jeff Wachtel's Future Shack Entertainment.

Fox commissioned Murder in a Small Town in December 2023 for its 2024-25 season, acquiring all U.S. rights. The arrangement was notable enough that Fox described it as part of a strategy to work with international studios and create new production models.

The series is produced in British Columbia by Sepia Films in association with Fox Entertainment and Future Shack Entertainment, while ITV Studios handles distribution outside the United States and Canada.

The series premiered in September 2024 on Fox in the United States and Global in Canada. It found an audience. Fox renewed it for a second season and then, in May 2026, ordered a third.

Fox says Season Two improved its seven-day multiplatform audience by 11 percent over the first season and reached series highs in both total multiplatform viewing and streaming.

Think about the journey of that intellectual property.

A novelist created Karl Alberg more than four decades ago. A production company eventually optioned the books. Producers, writers and production companies developed the property for television. Fox acquired U.S. rights.

ITV Studios took international distribution rights. Fox broadcasts the series in the United States. Hulu streams it.

And now Netflix streams it, too. One story. Many lives.

Where Does a Television Show Live?

For viewers, the streaming era has made the answer to that question surprisingly complicated.

We tend to associate a show with the place where we watch it. A Netflix show is on Netflix. A Hulu show is on Hulu. An HBO show belongs on HBO or Max.

But what appears on our screens is ultimately the result of rights.

Someone owns or controls a piece of intellectual property. Someone has the right to produce it. Someone has the right to distribute the finished program. Those distribution rights can then be divided in numerous ways, including by geography, platform and time.

That's why a program can disappear from one streaming service and later appear on another. It's also why the same program can sometimes appear on two services simultaneously.  Murder in a Small Town provides a particularly clean example.

Fox acquired the U.S. rights when it commissioned the show. Its episodes have been available on Hulu, where both seasons remain available today. Now Netflix has added the series to its enormous programming library.

Netflix isn't producing those first two seasons again. The work has already been done. It is acquiring the ability to distribute an existing asset to another audience.

We've Seen This Movie Before

Those of us who grew up before streaming are familiar with an earlier version of this model.

A television series would originally air on a broadcast network. During the season, episodes might be shown again as reruns. If the program lasted long enough and accumulated a sufficiently large library of episodes, the syndication market could create an entirely new economic life for it.

Shows that originally aired once a week on a network could eventually appear five nights a week on local television stations around the country. Cable television created still more opportunities. International television created others. 

The original broadcast was only one window into the value of the program. Streaming has made the system considerably more complicated, but the core idea remains remarkably similar: make something once and create multiple opportunities to distribute it.

The rights may be carved up differently. A license may cover a specific country. Another may apply to a particular streaming service. Some arrangements are exclusive. Others aren't. Rights can expire and return to their owners, who can then license them again. 

But the underlying asset remains the same. The show.

The Streaming Wars Changed the Equation

For a while, the streaming business seemed to be moving in the opposite direction.

As media companies raced to launch their own services, exclusivity became part of the strategy. Studios that had previously licensed their programming to Netflix began pulling it back. If you wanted people to subscribe to your streaming service, the thinking went, you needed programming they couldn't watch anywhere else.

Content became ammunition in the streaming wars, but there was a cost to that strategy.

Keeping a program exclusively inside one ecosystem limits the number of people who can see it. It can also mean giving up licensing revenue that could be generated by allowing another distributor to put the same asset to work.

The industry has begun rediscovering the value of library programming and broader licensing. Nielsen noted this change in 2023, describing a significant shift as titles that had once been exclusive began appearing on multiple streaming services.

And one show demonstrated just how powerful that second life could be.

Suits.

The Second Premiere

Suits originally aired on USA Network from 2011 to 2019. It was successful, but its original television run had been over for years when it became available on Netflix in 2023 while also streaming on Peacock.

Then something extraordinary happened. People started watching it. Lots of people.

Suits spent a record 12 consecutive weeks at the top of Nielsen's U.S. streaming rankings. Nielsen ultimately described Suits as the biggest streaming story of 2023.

Nothing about the episodes had changed. The audience had.

Netflix put an existing television library in front of millions of people who either hadn't seen Suits during its original run or were willing to watch it again.

In effect, the show received another premiere.

That is significant because distribution isn't simply about collecting licensing revenue. Distribution creates discovery, and discovery can create value. The show had a more personal impact, too: it has my son telling me he wants to be a lawyer and asking me why I didn’t go the law firm route with my career. But I digress. I don’t want to make this about my questionable life choices. 

There’s a lesson here for every storyteller: a story’s first premiere doesn’t have to be its last.

Could It Happen Again?

That's what makes the arrival of Murder in a Small Town on Netflix interesting to me.

There are already indications that the series can find audiences outside its original distribution channels. Netflix began rolling the series out in international markets earlier this year. It reached No. 2 in Australia during its first week in that country's Netflix Top 10 and later reached No. 5 in the United Kingdom.

Now the show has another opportunity in the United States.

It would be premature to suggest that Murder in a Small Town will become another Suits. Very few shows will generate those kinds of numbers. This one doesn't need to.

There are undoubtedly Netflix subscribers who have never watched the show on Fox, don't subscribe to Hulu or simply never noticed it before. To them, Murder in a Small Town may feel like a new Netflix discovery even though its first season premiered two years ago.

Meanwhile, the Fox series continues.

Season Three is coming, with Peter Gallagher joining the cast. The television franchise remains alive even as its existing library reaches another audience.

That's not a show changing homes. That's a story, and an IP asset, expanding its reach.

Distribution Is Part of the Story

We tend to spend a lot of time talking about what it takes to get something made.

That's understandable. Making a film or television series is difficult. Getting someone to finance it is harder. Getting someone to distribute it can be harder still. But distribution isn't simply the finish line. It's part of the life of the intellectual property.

Murder in a Small Town began with a book published in 1985, the year I graduated from high school and Kristin Kreuk turned three. That book became part of a nine-book series. Decades later, the rights were optioned and developed for television. The resulting series airs on broadcast television, streams on Hulu, is distributed internationally and is now finding another audience on Netflix.

Each step can create value from the same original story.

That's why creators need to think beyond simply getting something made or getting it onto one platform. The rights surrounding a story matter because those rights determine what can happen next.

A film can have theatrical, streaming, broadcast, educational and international lives. A television series can move through different platforms and territories. A book can become a series. A finished program can be licensed again years after its original release.

The audience that matters most may not even be the first one. If history is any guide, I’d suggest it most likely isn’t. Stories can be durable IP assets that appreciate over time, especially when their owners take care to cultivate that value. 

One Show. Many Lives.

Somewhere this week, someone will open Netflix, see Rossif Sutherland and Kristin Kreuk staring back at them and decide to try Murder in a Small Town. That viewer may have no idea that the show airs on Fox. They may not know it is also available on Hulu.

They almost certainly don't know that Karl Alberg first appeared on the page more than 40 years ago.  None of that matters to the viewer. They found a story they want to watch.  But for those of us interested in how stories are developed, financed and distributed, the journey matters enormously. It demonstrates why the value of intellectual property isn't necessarily exhausted by its first release.

Television understood that long before anyone had heard the word streaming. Networks aired shows. They aired them again. Successful programs entered syndication, moved to cable and were sold around the world.

Technology changed the distribution system, but it didn't change the underlying opportunity. A good story can keep finding new audiences. 

And every new audience can give that story another life.   One story. Many lives.

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About Ron Watermon

Ron Watermon is a creator, builder, media entrepreneur, filmmaker, and the founder of STORYSMART. He writes about professional storytelling, media entrepreneurship, filmmaking, and the business of turning stories into valuable assets.

Ron is the author of STORYSMART Storytelling for ALL and is currently building STORYSMART STUDIOS, an independent media company dedicated to developing, producing, and owning profitable, enduring original media properties.

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