• Variety, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 11:30 AM

Spike TV will pay about $12 million for an exclusive five-year license to all 257 episodes of "Married ...With Children," with the half-hour reruns set to begin airing in September. And that is just one of the recent deals by the male-oriented cable net as it has also bought updated repeats of "Unsolved Mysteries" with Dennis Farina as the new host of 175 re-edited hours of the series in a five-year exclusive contract.

While Spike isn't talking exact dollar figures, it will likely pay about $150,000 per episode to distributor HBO, with a total tab of roughly $26 million. As for "Married," the network will be able to run it on Spike.com and get 40 six-minute webisodes for Internet use. It is looking to run "Mysteries" on weekday afternoons, while "Married" will turn up in the morning, afternoon and late night.

Read the whole story at Variety »