Brokered programming

Imagine you are trying to build a little Lego house, but you don't have all the pieces you need. So you ask your friend to help you. Your friend looks through their Lego collection and finds the missing pieces you need to finish building your house. In exchange for the pieces, your friend asks you to let them play with your house for a bit.

Now, let's say you are a TV channel, and you want to show a really good program to your audience, but you can't make it yourself. You can ask a company called a programming broker (like your friend in the Lego example) to find and provide you with the program that you want. The broker will look through various sources such as TV producers, independent studios, and other channels, to find the program that best suits your needs. This program could be anything from a sports event to a TV movie or a documentary.

Once the broker finds the program, they will sell the rights to air it to you, the TV channel. Just like how you let your friend play with your Lego house in exchange for the missing pieces, you will have to pay the broker a fee for providing you with the program. This fee allows the broker to make a profit, continue searching for more programs, and keep providing their services to other TV channels.

So, brokered programming is essentially the process of a third-party company finding and providing TV channels with programs that they do not make themselves. The channel pays a fee to the broker for providing them with the program, and the broker profits from the transaction while the channel benefits from having quality content to air.