Local Syndication in Fall 2004; Cable Syndication in Fall 2007 on FX!

[Pavan]

'Malcolm, 'King' Rack Up Funny Money in Syndication


TV distributors are laughing their assets off in cable-rerun syndication.

Twentieth TV, with "Malcolm in the Middle," and Sony Pictures TV, with "King of Queens," will together harvest more than $150 million from basic-cable deals that surfaced recently.

Twentieth TV has sold "Malcolm" to its FX sibling in a five-year deal worth $600,000 an episode. In addition, Twentieth will carve three 30-second spots out of each run on FX. By the end of the 2002-03 season, 88 episodes of "Malcolm" will have been produced. (Both Twentieth and FX are units of News Corp.)

Sony has sold the exclusive cable-TV rights to its hit sitcom "King of Queens" to TBS in a six-year deal worth $425,000-an-episode in license fees plus, potentially, another $200,000 a half-hour for the three 30-second spots. "Queens" has amassed 125 episodes covering the five years of its CBS primetime run through the 2002-03 season.

FX will start stripping "Malcolm" in fall 2007, and TBS starts "Queens" in September 2006. Each network has also committed to buy any additional episodes produced beyond the current season.

Both cable networks will share the shows with local TV stations, which start airing repeats three years before the cable runs. "Queens" enters broadcast syndication in fall 2003, while "Malcolm" kicks off the following year.

The lucrative cable contracts for "Queens" and "Malcolm," on top of deals in previous years by TBS for "Seinfeld" and "Friends," are convincing proof that hit sitcoms can hold their own with off-network hours in cable such as "CSI" (which fetched $1.6 million an episode from TNN), "The West Wing ( news - web sites)" ($1.2 million per from Bravo) and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" ($1.3 million per from USA).

Twentieth has taken great care to charge FX the marketplace price for "Malcolm," in order to avoid self-dealing accusations that can escalate into lawsuits by profit participants, who typically hire experts to keep an eye on deals between distributors and their sister cable networks.

For "Queens," TBS outbid a number of other cable networks looking to buy the comedy, with the most aggressive being TNN and USA. TBS declined to comment on the deal.

Since Kevin James starrer "Queens" is one of the bellwethers of CBS' Monday night sitcom block, the series is almost certain to get a renewal for 2003-04, and beyond.

Sunday night Fox fave "Malcolm," with Frankie Muniz in the title role, is also a shoo-in for renewal. The comedy has chalked up solid ratings since its January 2000 debut.

So King of Queens will be on TBS for 6 years, from 2006-2012; local syndication starts next fall. Malcolm in the Middle will be on fX for 5 years, from 2007-2012; local syndication starts Fall 2004.

[JD2635]

I've learned that Malcoms has been picked up by KAIL 53 in Frsno/Clovis and KUVI UPN 45 in Bakersfield! This will be exciting news come September 13th.