Animation: How much money do TV channels pay for a cartoon series?

Prices vary widely for new properties based upon popularity of the property involved, the production costs budgeted to produce the series, and (if the property continues into later seasons/series) how well the show does in ratings and with advertisers. Pre-existing programs being syndicated to a new television network tend to be sold based upon the popularity of the property and how many episodes are present in the show's syndication package. This is why most animated programs tend to try to make it up to 65 episodes total, and then are cancelled afterwards. With 65 episodes, a syndicator can program one episode per weekday with four reruns per year, and the prices tend not to go up if more episodes are made. Production budgets for American animated cartoons start at around $180,000 and can go up to $2 million (or more for long-running popular prime-time shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy). The average is between $300,000 and $500,000. Television syndication licensing fees tend to average at about $500,000 per episode - more for more popular series, less for less popular series. Licensing fees can change (typically, go down) if sales are made between companies that are subsidiaries of a larger media conglomerate (that is to say, if The Hub, which is owned by Discovery Networks and Hasbro, wanted an original series from Warner Bros. Animation, they would typically have to pay more than WB's corporate sibling Cartoon Network) Older series go for quite a bit less - the entire 166-episode package of The Flintstones went into syndication in the early 1990s for only $40 million for a 14-year deal. At the high-end of the scale, The Simpsons is prepared to go into cable syndication once it is canceled for upwards of $1.5 million per episode (of which there are 540 at present)