With four new prime-time series, another original film production, and more than 300 hours of original programming, Court TV last week announced an aggressive ? and expensive ? programming slate for 2002-'03. Over the next two years the network will spend $160 million on shows, an unprecedented amount for the 11-year-old service.

Court executives hope the new offerings will help buffet its recently undertaken $16 million rebranding campaign, which is built around the tagline ?Join the Investigation.? Certainly qualifying under that rubric is I, Detective, which invites viewers to solve mysteries presented during the course of the show.

Joining it on next year's slate are: Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice, hosted by the Vanity Fair writer, which will examine celebrity cases from crime to resolution; Body of Evidence: From the Case Files of Dayle Hinman, a behind-the-scenes look at a criminal profiler; and The Elite, a trip inside the training corps of law enforcement academies.

The network is also developing two original features, one currently called Political Asylum, about a young lawyer and her struggle with an Afghan woman's case, and another called The Interrogation of Michael Cowe, a true story about the coerced confession of a minor in California. One of those will run this year.

As for distribution, Court recently passed the 70 million subscriber mark and expects to reach 80 million homes in 2003. Ratings are growing as well: The first quarter of 2002 was the network's most-watched quarter ever, with a 61% increase in household delivery versus the same period in 2001.

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