That was sort of true of "syndication," or roughly your hundredth episode. If the show ran long enough, it got into syndication, and then the residuals mattere

That was sort of true of "syndication," or roughly your hundredth episode. If the show ran long enough, it got into syndication, and then the residuals mattered. It used to be that a hundred episodes was kind of a benchmark for that sort of thing. Case in point, Angel, which was cancelled on a February when Joss Whedon, the showrunner, demanded to know whether or not they got a fifth season. Sort of a "tell me now or fuck it." Well ... Granted, it wasn't a great choice for the network (that exec moved on, probably "failed upward") and it wasn't a good ultimatum for Whedon to make, but it does serve as an example of the kind of games that get played out, because quite a lot of networks would stop shows just before that, due to the Hollywood accounting being a pain once you had to keep paying your actors for decades. The math varies, so some shows go on, but that fourth season, man ... look out.