Dough !

The standoff between "The Simpsons" voice cast and series producer 20th Century Fox TV is over. After months of negotiations, the cast of Fox's long - running animated series reached a new four-year deal with the studio during the weekend.

Under the pact, the top actors will be paid nearly $ 400.000 per episode. While this is lower than the reported $ 500.000 the cast originally sought, it remains a significant increase from their current paychecks of about $ 300.000 an episode.

See : http://au.news.yahoo.com/080603/11/174ds.html.

Doh ! or rather Dough ! 400.000 smackers ! How much is that per word pronounced in your average episode ?

So my all time favorite TV program, now in its 20th season, is saved for another couple of years. But I have a confession to make : I'm getting terribly tired of it : the same episodes are shown over and over and over again on our TV stations over here, so I stopped watching. Too much of a good thing leads to indigestion as well.

But it is nice to know that maybe, sometime, in a not to distant future, one or another of our TV stations may possibly decide to buy some new episodes.