The drama over whether Mad Men executive creator Matthew Weiner would return to the show for a third season has come to its expected conclusion: a big fat seven-figure deal for two more seasons.

As is typical for most basic cable shows, Weiner, a former writer for The Sopranos, originally signed on for peanuts when AMC picked up his drama about the Madison Avenue advertising business in the 1960s. That original deal only ran for two years and after the second season wrapped last October he let it be known that he wanted more money before he'd re-sign. A lot more money. Like the kind of money that his old boss David Chase scored for his HBO hit.

The Variety report says he was once looking for eight-figures. But the problem was that while The Sopranos had an immediate business impact on HBO's bottom-line — i.e. the number of people who'd subscribe for $20 a month whenever a new season was about to start — Mad Men has been a critical hit, not a financial one.

Mad Men won the top TV prize both last week at the Golden Globes, the Emmys and last year's Globes, but none of the plaudits have made it a ratings powerhouse. After the second season's premiere in July last year drew about 2 million viewers, the audience dropped to closer to 1 million by mid-season. To put this cultural injustice in perspective, Bill O'Reilly typically has more viewers on his Fox News show.

When Weiner threatened to walk, Lionsgate TV, the studio that produces the show and licenses it back to AMC threatened to find someone new to run the show. In fact, they would have had to because their contract with AMC obligated them to deliver a new season with or without the guy who created it. So now that the bluster has cleared on both sides, Weiner has a deal for two more seasons of Mad Men plus some development money to work on other shows and maybe a film (which he says won't be based on the show). But all we really care about is that his writers get to work on the third season which AMC plans to air sometime this summer.