Nick at Nite's TV Land has purchased exclusive cable rights to Norman Lear's groundbreaking 1970s sitcom Maude, Lear said during an appearance Wednesday at the Museum of Television & Radio. The series, which ran for six years on CBS in the 1970s, will join the producer's other classics on TV Land: Sanford and Son, All in the Family and, beginning in January, The Jeffersons. Maude will be added to the network's lineup beginning in November 1999. Maude, which starred Bea Arthur as an outspoken, upper-middle-class liberal cousin of All in the Family's Edith Bunker, is a personal favorite of Lear. "He kept calling me and asking me to pick it up," said Diane Robina, senior vice president for programing and associate general manager at TV Land. "He doesn't own the show anymore, so it's not as if he's financially rewarded if we air it, but his shows are his babies." Unlike All in the Family, Maude has not been aired in syndication in recent years. "I like the fact that it is a found gem for TV Land," Robina said. "I think it will do well for us." TV Land has been promoting All in the Family with a marathon on parent channel Nick at Nite this week. TV Land will air a lost pilot for All in the Family on Saturday. Lear said at the museum that some CBS affiliates were at first reluctant to air Maude after it was launched in 1972. But the series was a top 10 hit in three of the six years it aired on the network. Lear said he doubted that his brand of topical, controversial sitcom could make it today on broadcast television because of the current environment of "political correctness and ratings pressure." (It should not be a surprise that he is a big fan of Comedy Central's South Park.) All in the Family was so risque for the time that when Lear approached Mickey Rooney about playing the role of Archie Bunker, Rooney told him "they're going to kill you in the streets if you do this." Lear said that Carroll O'Connor (who played Archie) "didn't think the show would last very long."