New York ? A&E is placing a $195 million bet — and perhaps its future — on Tony Soprano’s broad back.

The basic cable channel’s recent purchase of rights to telecast edited versions of HBO’s “The Sopranos” for a record-shattering $2.5 million per episode is the new year’s most significant television deal. The reruns will start in fall 2006.

A rights deal for another one of HBO’s crown jewels, “Sex and the City,” has worked out well for TBS. But the price tag for “The Sopranos” has left many television executives wondering how A&E can possibly profit.

Court TV General Manager Marc Juris likened the deal to building a 10,000-square-foot mansion in a run-down neighborhood: “You will definitely impress a lot of the neighbors and make a lot of noise, but I don’t think you’ll get your money out of it.”

A&E is staring down the naysayers.

“We don’t do anything that doesn’t make money,” said Bob DeBitetto, A&E programming chief, “especially talking about that level of investment.”

A&E is clearly in transition, although DeBitetto helped stop a long-term decline. Average viewership sank from 840,000 in 2000 to 622,000 in 2003 but rose slightly to 626,000 last year, according to Nielsen Media Research.

More importantly in the youth-obsessed TV industry, the A&E audience is getting younger: The median age dropped from 56 to 53 in just one year. “Growing Up Gotti,” “Dog The Bounty Hunter” and “Cold Case Files” — which DeBitetto likes to call “cinema verite docu-soaps” — have helped.

But to this day A&E has been haunted by losing the syndication rights to the immensely popular “Law & Order” in 2002, and its executives seemed determined not to repeat that mistake.

Acquiring the rights to “The Sopranos” — the last decade’s most critically acclaimed drama — gives A&E instant cache. Although HBO has repeated the episodes frequently, the pay-cable service reaches only about a third of the TV audience — meaning “The Sopranos” will be first-run programming for a large number of viewers.

A&E hasn’t finalized its plans on how the series will be presented. In TV lingo, it’s likely to be vertical rather than horizontal scheduling.

That means showing two or three episodes back-to-back on a single night, once or twice a week. A horizontal schedule would be airing a single episode at the same time five nights a week, which is probably how A&E will show “CSI: Miami” starting next fall.

As a show rife with violence, sex and bad language, “The Sopranos” will have to be edited to meet basic cable standards. Some fans wonder how that can be done without stealing the show’s essence; the image of Ralphie’s head stuffed into a bowling bag will live forever in “Sopranos” lore.

DeBitetto is confident it can be done, and even turns the challenge around.

“Some people might like it BECAUSE it has been edited for sex, violence and language,” he said.