Financial Interest and Syndication Rules  From Wikipedia, the
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Interest and Syndication Rules, widely known as fin-syn rules,
were a set of rules imposed by the Federal Communications
Commission in the United States in 1970. The FCC sought to
prevent the Big Three television networks from monopolizing the
broadcast landscape by preventing them from owning any of the
programming that they aired in primetime.1 The rules also
prohibited networks from airing syndicated programming they had
a financial stake in. The rules changed the power relationships
between networks and television producers, who often had to
agree to exorbitant profit participation in order to have their
shows aired. Some argue the rules brought about a golden era of
independent television production by companies like MTM
Enterprises (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and Norman Lear's Tandem
Productions (All in the Family).2 Others argue the rules made
the work of independent television pro