Arts Entertainment Television Network

Despite the mortgage meltdown, there still could be money in house flipping -- or at least in a dispute over a show about house flipping. A jury trial in Charleston, S.C., begins today to determine whether cable programmer A&E Television Networks must pay a South Carolina real estate broker as much as $30 million for creating the popular get-rich-through-real-estate show "Flip This House." The idea originated five years ago at the start of the housing boom. Richard C.

In an upcoming scene from the edited version of "The Sopranos," the one that begins airing tonight on A&E, mob guys Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico) and Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) are chasing a wiseguy through the woods before killing him, in cold blood, pumping his chest full of bullets, repeatedly, brutally. What you don't get in this scene is the full effect of dark comedy -- Paulie Walnuts fretting, in colorful language, that he's just schlepped through poison ivy.

It looks like Ice Cube will be keeping it real on A&E. The rap icon and star of such films as "Barbershop," "Three Kings" and "Are We There Yet?" has signed a deal with the cable and satellite television network to produce "Good in the Hood," an hourlong pilot for an unscripted drama series about gang members and urban criminals who have changed their ways and are looking to help other people do the same.

Walt Disney Co., NBC Universal and Hearst Corp. have finalized an agreement to merge several cable networks together -- for now, anyway. Under the terms of the agreement, A&E Television Networks, which is owned by all three companies, will acquire Lifetime Entertainment Services, which is owned by Disney and Hearst. The channels that will make up the new entity are A&E, History Channel, Lifetime Television, Biography and a handful of smaller networks. The deal is part of an ongoing process to reduce and eventually eliminate NBC Universal's stake in the entity.

Mobster Tony Soprano is headed to basic cable, minus a @#$%! or two. After a protracted bidding war, Time Warner Inc.'s HBO network agreed to sell 78 episodes of "The Sopranos" to basic cable's A&E Network, A&E said Monday. The episodes fetched more than $2.5 million apiece, people familiar with the situation said, the most ever for a syndicated TV show. The deal will bring "The Sopranos" -- a critics' favorite since its debut in 1999 -- to a much broader audience.

The blond woman at the check-in counter is crying, tears streaking her cheeks. She has too many bills, she explains. She is supporting her brother, her family. She's just a bus driver. She's stressed, she says, not drunk. Across from her, the man in the Southwest Airlines uniform leans in, nods sympathetically. He understands life can be hard. He understands she is upset. He's still not going to let her get on the plane.

As with several other reality shows (think "Trading Spaces" or "What Not to Wear"), "Airline" is a copycat of a British reality program of the same name, which has shadowed the no-frills carrier EasyJet for eight seasons. When A&E Network decided to produce an American version, Southwest Airlines seemed like the natural fit -- it was the most recognizable low-cost airline at the time, and it had a reputation for being fun and having character.

Peter Weir did more than just read Patrick O'Brian's books when he began pre-production on his seagoing adventure film, "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World." For more practical advice, the Australian director turned to several crew members of the Emmy Award-winning A&E cable series "Horatio Hornblower." And for good reason. Over the last six years, A&E and its British partner, Granada, have produced eight two-hour movies based on C.S.

In 1996, JonBenet Ramsey, age 6, was beaten over the head and garroted in her parents' Boulder, Colo., home on Christmas night. In the months that followed, her parents were beaten over the head and garroted by the media. The still-unsolved slaying of the elfin beauty queen initiated one of the foulest, yellowest chapters in contemporary U.S. journalism. As smelly as the media assassination of former Atlanta bombing suspect Richard Jewell.

Producer Peter Jones reaches for something in his West Los Angeles office and picks it up with tender care. Small wonder, for it turns out to be an extremely personal family scrapbook of the Nelson family ("Here's Ozzie, here's Harriet . . . "). When Jones first approached David Nelson, the remaining member of the core family, and his Uncle Don, they were extremely reluctant to cooperate in a probing look at his family, whose TV series came close to being "The Truman Show" of the 1950s.