“What we discovered was that, one, even though we discount significantly on the brands we carry on Gilt [up to 70 percent], it’s still expensive for them,” Ms. Lyne explained. “A $200 or $150 dress is still a big purchase for them. They say, ‘I love looking at the stuff but it doesn’t really fit my lifestyle. I don’t have a place to wear those clothes.’”

So on Wednesday, Aug. 12, Gilt Groupe is launching a new site: Gilt Fuse, another private sale destination geared toward 20- and 30-year-olds on a budget—the kind of gals who shop at J.Crew and Saks Fifth Avenue on the same day and maybe swing by the thrift store for a gently used vintage dress. It’ll be the Barneys CO-OP of private fashion sale Web sites.

During Gilt Fuse’s first couple of weeks, they’ll offer frocks and stock from familiar brands including BCBG, Modern Amusement, Chelsea Dagger, Juicy Couture, Laundry, Guy Laroche and C&C, among “maybe less distributed but very cool brands,” Ms. Lyne said.

Gilt is also planning on opening up members to an even larger luxury world. Ms. Lyne told The Observer that Gilt Groupe will launch “several more verticals in the fall,” she said. “By October, we should have both home goods and a dedicated men’s area up and fully operational.” A travel site is also in consideration.

Ms. Lyne, the former president of ABC Entertainment, who developed TV shows such as Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy, joined Gilt last year after leaving Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia as chief executive. (With her feathery, ash-blond hair, she looks a bit like her former boss.) Gilt already has one or two home sales a week, but they’d like to offer a wider range of products and nab those ladies who pore over shelter magazines or, say, Martha Stewart Living. “I’m a home junkie, so I can’t wait,” Ms. Lyne said.

Presumably, neither can Gilt’s 1.3 million members—or their investment firms, General Atlantic and Matrix, which together recently raised more than $40 million for the company, Ms. Lyne confirmed. Gilt is expected to make $150 million by the end of the year and is valued at $400 million, according to The Business Insider (whose co-founder, Kevin Ryan, also co-founded Gilt Groupe, but the Observer confirmed the valuation by sources close to the deal).

Recently, Gilt quietly acquired a warehouse in Massachusetts to store new inventory, adding to their space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Ms. Lyne said.

CURRENTLY, Gilt Groupe seems to be the most high profile of this increasingly competitive breed of eBay–meets–high-fashion sites. But for the past couple of years, sites like Ideeli, HauteLook.com, RueLaLa.com, EditorsCloset.com, BeyondtheRack.com and French pioneer Vente-Privee.com have also been gaining buzz in the fashion world for bringing the sample-sale model to the Web, and letting every woman from Portland to Paris get her hands on Anna Sui sunglasses and Christian Louboutin pumps at steep discounts—without having to fly to New York or L.A. for the blowout.

“I think that any kind of new business model that emerges that works—a lot of people jump into it,” Ms. Lyne said. “I think that there will be a number of people who enter but probably not that many who succeed at it.”

During the slumping economy, brands have been especially enamored with these sites—purging bags and heels and seasonal frocks piling up in storerooms. But as more users—and entrepreneurs—discover this new e-commerce model, Gilt and other sites will have to spar for loyal members and those precious brands, whose marketers will want to be careful not to unhinge an upscale image by unleashing all of their designs at discounted prices.

“When the economy just fell out from underneath us, that worked well for a lot of the companies,” explained Adam Bernhard, chief executive of HauteLook.com, which he co-founded in December 2007. “But as the economy starts to shake out a little bit, brands will start to be concerned about what’s happening with their image—the degradation and the reputation they have to hold. They’re going to want more control.”

Mr. Bernhard said HauteLook competes with other sites by offering a cultural immersion in each brand’s “boutique.” “They feel like they’re walking into a Gucci sample sale, only it’s online,” he said. Each boutique has video, behind-the-scenes blog posts and background information on the brands, making the shopping experience more informative and personal.

HauteLook, which has “more than a million members,” with 30 percent more joining each month, according to Mr. Bernhard, recently received $10 million in a round of investment led by Insight Venture Partners.

Mr. Bernhard was polite about the competition, like Gilt. “The more attention they bring into the space, the more attention we bring into the space, I imagine it will be a good thing,” he said. But! “Marketing members are going to choose who they’re going to want to be part of, and shoppers choose which they will go to,” he added. “There’s some girls who will only go to Bergdorf’s or Barney’s. Girls will get the product that resembles what they represent.”

Or what magazines they read.

In July, RueLaLa.com announced a partnership deal with Elle magazine. Members who join the luxury e-commerce site through ELLE.com will have access to “Editors’ Picks” sales, with brands and items selected by the mag’s editors.

RueLaLa.com has also been offering home and “experience” goods (like spa packages and hotel deals) since launching in April 2008. The site has just under 1.5 million members, according to Ben Fischman, chief executive and chairman.

“There’s a dramatic shift into the world of experience—well beyond travel—and into entertainment, services, restaurants and other traditional services,” said Mr. Fischman. “We need to force innovation and do everything we can to surprise and delight our membership; we always want a new and exciting boutique.”

RueLaLa.com has also tried to get ahead by launching a mobile site, so members can access sales, which open every day at 11 a.m., on their phones. A native iPhone application is in the works, too.

As for all the competition and efforts to stay ahead? This kind of online shopping model “brought some of theater back to e-commerce,” said Stacey Santo, vice president of marketing communications for RueLaLa.com.

Andrew Lipsher, a partner at New York–based venture capital firm Greycroft Partners who has looked “diligently” into investing in these kinds of sites, wonders if, as competition gets fierce, sites will create “premium club” memberships for their top users, possibly with a pay system attached, for first access to exclusive sales. “It’s the American Express business model,” he said, referring to the credit card’s color-coded hierarchy. “You’re parsing your database and serving your most profitable customer.”

Neither HauteLook, RueLaLa nor Gilt told The Observer they plan to create a kind of paid, “black card” membership—yet. But Mr. Lipsher said Gilt will be any new, or existing, luxury e-commerce site's toughest contender. He warned, however, that Gilt is at risk of getting “too complicated, with too many variables. If they get involved with travel, it’d be like walking into Barney’s one day and there was all of a sudden a travel store in there. It’s like, ‘What’s this doing here?’”

Ms. Lyne said although Gilt has their eye on other sites, they are focused on making sure that, however they expand, they stay true to those label-obsessed shoppers clicking in their cubicles. “They love the fact that it is simple, it’s fast and it’s fun," she said. "You’re never more than two clicks away from a product detail page and two clicks away from buying. We have to be careful as we grow that we hold on to that and we don’t become a giant bazaar.”

greagan@observer.com

It was Monday, Nov. 15, Ms. Lyne's second day on the job as the chief executive of the Martha Stewart multimedia empire, and she was trying to explain her connection to the gingham-and-pie-crust constituency she'd just inherited. Of course, it isn't her penchant for paint chips that qualifies Ms. Lyne for the job as head of the famous homemaking enterprise. Ms. Lyne has a diverse business and publishing background, and until April 2004 she was the president of the entertainment division at ABC. There, she shepherded a number of hit television programs to the airwaves, including the Sunday-night phenomenon Desperate Housewives-one of the few on-air reprieves from reality TV, and a saucier take on the very women that Martha Stewart's company targets. It's hard not to notice the eerie, almost comic logic in Ms. Lyne's recent career move.

"The whole idea of getting inside the mind-set of American women was very much on my mind for the last couple of years," said Ms. Lyne. "And maybe was one of the reasons that this job was as appealing to me as it is."

Sitting in her sleek new office, fronted by glass beyond which a series of polished, (mostly) female Martha Stewart employees strode purposefully back and forth, Ms. Lyne seemed to still be absorbing her new reality. While she has run magazines ( Premiere, The Village Voice), produced films and television shows (at Disney and elsewhere), and headed corporate units at Disney and ABC, playing C.E.O. of a multimillion-dollar public corporation is something different. It's unclear whether sharing Martha's passion for home improvement is critical to reviving her troubled company.

Of delicate build, with gentle blond, bob-length hair and a tailored plum-colored tweed jacket, Ms. Lyne bore a certain resemblance to Ms. Stewart herself.

"This is a really strong company, fundamentally, that has had this cloud hanging over it having nothing to do with their business," said Ms. Lyne. "And so I'm really optimistic about what's possible. Otherwise I wouldn't have taken the job."

Ms. Lyne has good reason for being optimistic-about her own instincts, anyway. Desperate Housewives, which depicts a group of sexed-up Suzy Homemakers, harried mothers and libidinous divorcées machinating in the suburbs, attracted an estimated 24.9 million viewers last week. Its success, along with other shows produced on Ms. Lyne's watch, such as Lost and Wife Swap, has suddenly transformed ABC from prime-time loser to the "hot" network. But before Desperate Housewives or Lost had even made it onto the air, ABC fired Ms. Lyne and her boss, Lloyd Braun, in what appeared to be a ritual bloodletting at the until-recently-floundering network, turning the two executives into TV-land martyrs.

The Next Girl Show

Desperate Housewives was born out of a noticeable absence in television. Ms. Lyne recalled a conversation that she'd had with another ABC executive, Stephanie Leifer, about two years back, lamenting the fact that Sex and the City was about to go off the air.

"Somehow, that idea of 'my shows'-the shows that women have to be home for-had, for the most part, disappeared," Ms. Lyne said. " Melrose Place, Ally McBeal, Sex and the City … you know, those passionate guilty pleasures weren't on television any more."

It was an epiphany of sorts, and Ms. Lyne made "finding the next girl show" one of her mandates.

"We did four pilots that were all looking for the girl show," said Ms. Lyne. "First among them was always Desperate Housewives. There are really interesting things about those characters, because they could have been archetypes: the harried mother who has given up her executive job and was great in the work place and can't handle four kids; the divorcée who is dying to find another man, and yet is vulnerable and maybe trying a little too hard to hang on to her youth; the perfectionist who believes that her worth is tied to doing everything just so, and is making her family's life miserable as a result.

"What I love about them too is they're women of a certain age, you know-except for Eva Longoria, who is her own delight-but it's four women around 40," she went on. "That's an age that I think changes everything in terms of how you perceive yourself, how you're perceived by other people, and it's a moment when a lot of women go through some kind of crisis."

The women are all in crises of sorts, which drives each one of them to varying extremes in their struggles to get what they want. But in every case, they are seeing their power diminish with age, a reminder that women's fortunes are often written, literally, on their faces. And in the business world, beauty can be both a blessing and a curse.

"You know, I think it's a liability until you are old enough that you are not just looked at as a pretty face," said Ms. Lyne, when asked what it was like to negotiate a high-powered career as an attractive woman. "Once you get beyond a certain age-and I don't know what exactly that age is-I actually tried to remember the moment when I thought that I'd hit that perfect place, where I was no longer perceived as the ingenue and yet I still felt young. And I don't know when it happened, but it just goes by.

"But once that does happen, I think that it's absolutely not a liability-and, in some instances, may actually help you," she continued. "I mean, I've read all the studies about attractive people having an easier time getting promoted, but I do think that, as a young woman starting out, it is a liability, because it's much harder to get people to take you seriously. They assume you're in your job for the wrong reasons. I know that I developed a manner that was probably more serious in business and less playful in the office, just so people wouldn't think that I wasn't a serious person."

One of the most remarkable things about Ms. Lyne is that everyone seems to love her, which seems rare in both Hollywood and the annals of corporate America. Even the receptionist at the Martha Stewart offices felt obliged to gasp, "I just met Susan Lyne this morning. She's a very nice lady!"

Cyndi Stivers, the president and editorial director of Time Out New York, who worked with Ms. Lyne at Premiere magazine, said that "[Susan's] wise, kind, compassionate, one of those people who has room for everybody-stepdaughters, children, cousins. She's always got nieces and nephews staying with her. And this is true of every kind of writer, editor, creative person, too. She's never been a desperate housewife. I don't even know that she knows any desperate housewives."

In Martha's Absence

After leaving ABC, Ms. Lyne took the summer off, during which she "did all the things [I] never get to do in New York City," including sleeping in, hanging out with her daughter and "walking every inch of Central Park." Ms. Lyne was offered the C.E.O. spot at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia after serving on its board of directors for five months, which means she knew the company's troubles well.

For starters, Ms. Stewart is in jail in West Virginia, serving out a five-month sentence for lying to federal investigators about a 2001 sale of ImClone shares. Ms. Stewart's magazines have been losing ad pages and face competition from publications like Real Simple. Production of the television series has been suspended, although there are plans to resurrect it with the help of reality-TV guru Mark Burnett, who was recently hired as a consultant. Kmart sales of Martha housewares are holding up, although there seems to be a crisis of confidence in the overall brand, which has always been embodied by Martha herself. The company's last C.E.O., Sharon Patrick, a company veteran who held the post for less than a year and a half, just wearily announced her resignation for "personal and professional reasons."

Ms. Lyne only had good things to say about Ms. Stewart and her future impact on the company.

"The irony of it is that, for all the pain and problems that Martha's situation caused for her and the company, it created a different interest level in her than I think has existed, maybe ever," Ms. Lyne said. "And she is an extraordinary character. I had never met anyone who has as fertile a creative mind. She really knows those women who shop at Kmart. She really knows the women she creates this how-to content for-respects them, and knows them. I think she will return with an unbelievable pent-up energy to do new stuff."

Ms. Lyne acknowledged that there were similarities between ABC, which faced terrible ratings and an identity crisis when she first took on its entertainment division, and her new project of safeguarding the Martha brand name through a rocky public-relations recovery. There were also some differences.

"Network television, for all that is said otherwise, is such a hit-driven business," said Ms. Lyne, a potted white orchid quivering on the table beside her. "Making television is really fun. That's different from the business. The business is brutal. Someone asked me last week why I left ABC-which you know, was amusing in its own right. But a friend of mine said, 'What you should have told them was that very few people retire from entertainment jobs in television.' And it's really true. When I went into it, I said to my husband, 'This is a three-year cycle.' So that's what my expectations were."

While she knew it was an unpredictable universe, Ms. Lyne said she was still hurt when the ax came down just over two years into the job. (ABC declined to comment on Ms. Lyne or her departure.)

"I was completely surprised-but, you know, six months out, I probably should have been less surprised that they'd made changes," she said. " Disney is a company that's been under enormous pressure from stockholders, and obviously they felt they had to address what was a poor performance."

When asked whether she'd been given enough time at ABC, Ms. Lyne said: "Oh, no! Of course not. And I'm sure nobody feels like they have enough time. Two years really is an awfully brief window, given how long it takes to turn a network around."

She said she still had many friends at ABC and still thought of it as "my network," and that watching shows like Desperate Housewives take off after her departure was "thrilling."

"All the way up to the top," said Ms. Lyne, "everybody has been very generous in saying, 'Thank you, thank you.'"

A 'Rock-Solid Center'

Ms. Lyne now lives with her husband, George Crile, an investigative 60 Minutes producer and the author of Charlie Wilson's War, on the Upper East Side. They have two teenaged daughters together, as well as Mr. Crile's own two girls.

Ms. Lyne grew up in the tony Boston suburb Chestnut Hill, the oldest of five children, with "the only Irish-Catholic Republican parents in Boston." She rose quickly in her career. After dropping out of college at U.C. Berkeley to pursue journalism, Ms. Lyne quickly went from an editor at Francis Ford Coppola's startup, City magazine, to the managing editor of New Times and, after it folded, the managing editor of The Village Voice from 1978 to 1982.

Then, with the backing of Rupert Murdoch, who owned The Voice during her tenure there, she founded Premiere magazine in 1987. She went over to the Disney film studio in 1996, and to ABC in 1998, where she worked first as head of movies and miniseries, producing TV films like Annie and Life with Judy Garland, before becoming president of ABC Entertainment in 2002.

Ms. Lyne has certainly enjoyed an enviable rise to the top-and, according to those who know her, it's not surprising. One of her close friends, the powerhouse ICM literary agent Amanda (Binky) Urban, described her as having a "rock-solid center."

"You know, I do feel that I'm a pretty steady person," Ms. Lyne said in response. "My children would say that, too. Not that I don't get into high dudgeon occasionally, but yeah, I am pretty steady.

"You're either born with it, or you're not," she continued, when asked about the source of her steely core. "I was born with it. I have an older daughter who has that same basic centeredness. That's why, I think, I was never scared of that ABC job. It did not keep me awake at night. I never woke up in the middle of the night, worried about what the ratings were going to be. Maybe I should have been! But I don't think you can do one of those jobs for long if you don't have some of that basic calm."

cheery mood. It was Monday, Jan. 28, and Ms. Lyne, 51, was sitting in her airy

office on West 66th Street, mulling over ratings for the previous night's debut

of Rose Red , a new Stephen King miniseries.

The numbers looked solid: Rose Red

grabbed more than 20 million viewers and also performed well in the 18-to-49

age group, television's most coveted demographic. Ms. Lyne had already given

the news to Mr. King, and now Disney president Robert Iger was on the horn.

"Isn't that niiiice ?"

Ms. Lyne cooed into the phone. She and Mr. Iger chatted about Mr. King, and

talked about The Kingdom , a new drama

series the author is creating for the network. Prior to becoming entertainment

president, Ms. Lyne was in charge of ABC's movies and miniseries, and she had

worked with Mr. King on repeated occasions.

"I always figured one of the things I had to do here was just not

to screw up that relationship," Ms. Lyne said to Mr. Iger, referring to Mr.

King.

She hadn't screwed it up. But Ms. Lyne's network is sure screwed

up. After riding Regis Philbin to ratings dominance in 2000 and early 2001,

ABC's fortunes have fizzled. The network is currently mired behind CBS and NBC,

and tangling with Fox for third place. Drama and comedy development, shortchanged

during the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

run, is in rough shape; Ms. Lyne-who replaced Stu Bloomberg, himself canned as

ABC's entertainment president in early January-steps aboard an operation

thought to have squandered its best opportunity in years.

At the same time, Ms. Lyne

must negotiate one of the bigger hornets' nests in television. ABC has had four

entertainment presidents in five years-Ms. Lyne, Mr. Bloomberg, Jamie Tarses

and Ted Harbert-and has long been considered a managerially confused shop. With

ABC, the question is always who's really in control: Mr. Iger, Disney chief

executive Michael Eisner or their entertainment president du jour. Said one

industry insider, referring to Ms. Lyne: "She's walking into a multiheaded

hydra where the lines of authority are murky at best."

But Ms. Lyne, a relative newcomer to television who remains

better known in New York as the founding editor of Premiere magazine, figures she can fix ABC by making it a little

classier, and by returning the network to its roots. For years, ABC was a kind

of middlebrow, J.C. Penney network, with a reliable tradition of

family-oriented programming- Happy Days,

Home Improvement , etc.-that may not have won critical acclaim, but

performed ably in the ratings. Though the network did field risky projects- NYPD Blue , Twin Peaks -the ABC sensibility was historically seen as white,

Midwestern and middle-class, younger than CBS, less affluent than NBC's, less

edgy than Fox's.

But in recent years, ABC tried

to remodel itself and get a little sexy. Ms. Tarses, a Wunderkind executive from NBC, was enlisted to develop the edgier,

urbane programs that ABC wanted to help it appeal to a younger, more affluent

audience. Though Ms. Tarses famously flamed out, that strategy remained largely

in place under Mr. Bloomberg, with mixed results. When ABC did develop shows

that appealed to critics- Once & Again ,

Sports Night , The Job -it had trouble converting them into hits.

Meanwhile, it was hard to

discern what ABC represented. Quirky advertising campaigns with fancy

black-and-white portraits and odd slogans-"TV is bad"-only added to the

confusion. And to date, nobody understands what Bob Patterson was.

"The problem is that ABC really hasn't established itself as a

brand," said Stacey Lynn Koerner, a vice president of broadcast research at

Initiative Media, a company that studies broadcasting trends.

In an interview, Ms. Lyne conceded that mistakes were

made-though, in deference to her predecessors, she noted that such observations

were easy to make in hindsight.

"We needed to have those urban, hip 18- to 34-year-old shows that

appealed to upscale viewers, instead of those meat-and-potatoes shows that had

sort of driven ABC in the past," Ms. Lyne said. "The problem when you do

that-besides the fact that you better hit-is that you run the risk of

alienating your core audience of people who have been watching your network for

a long time."

Of course, ABC's biggest blunder may have been its management of

its biggest hit ever. It was less than two years ago when Mr. Bloomberg and ABC

entertainment chairman Lloyd Braun tromped across the stage at Radio City Music

Hall like conquering Roman emperors at the network's upfront presentation. Millionaire had been averaging 28

million viewers per episode;  ABC had

vaulted into first place.

Then, of course, ABC

proceeded to drain Millionaire for

all it was worth. The show was scheduled four nights a week, but that proved to

be too much; eventually cut back to two episodes for the 2001-02 season, Millionaire's ratings fell dramatically,

and its future status on prime time remains unclear. (A syndicated version of Millionaire, not hosted by Mr. Philbin,

is ready to debut next fall.)

Some believe that ABC's

mishandling of Millionaire has been

overblown; the network knew it had a temporary franchise on its hands, this

thinking goes, and was wise to make as much money as it could as fast as it

could.

But most people, including Ms. Lyne, agree that the network

faltered when it didn't do enough to build upon the Millionaire franchise, and didn't create and promote other

successful shows on its strength.

"You take the benefit while you can," Ms. Lyne said. "The problem

was that we weren't able to launch any more shows from that Millionaire bubble."

And now Ms. Lyne ascends to the president's chair at a time when

network television programming has never been more turbulent. Audiences for

broadcast networks continue to thin, and now that the wave of game and reality

shows seems to have died down, prime time's future is as uncertain as ever.

But Ms. Lyne has her believers, who think she might be the right

executive not only to salvage ABC, but also to correct the recent tide of

prime-time gimmickry. Boosters point to Ms. Lyne's picks when she ran ABC's

movies and miniseries, a list that includes acclaimed projects such as Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows ,

Arabian Nights and Tuesdays with Morrie .

"She's kind of a breath of fresh air in a doomed industry," said

Robert Halmi Sr., the executive producer of miniseries epics including Arabian Nights , whose latest project, Dinotopia , is set to air on ABC in May.

"When everybody else-and also her predecessors at ABC-were running to the

lowest common denominator, Susan went the other way."

Ms. Lyne laughed at the suggestion she might be some kind of

highbrow television savior. "Let's be honest," she said, "we also did the Growing Pains reunion movie. I think

there is a place for high and low entertainment."

And those who have worked with Ms. Lyne said that she is capable

of playing both sides of the taste deck-that she won't be stuffing ABC's

schedule with Masterpiece Theatre –esque

knockoffs.

"She's got high taste and mass taste, and she understands both,"

said Chris Connelly, who succeeded Ms. Lyne as editor in chief of Premiere and now hosts Unscripted, an interview show on ESPN, a

Disney property. At Premiere, Mr.

Connelly said, "we put Cindy Crawford on the cover for Fair Game ; we put Madonna on the cover. We weren't just putting Wings of Desire on the cover. Susan knew

she had a business to run, and she played the game."

There, too, Ms. Lyne's prowess is well-known. Other ex-colleagues

noted her ability during her Premiere days

to woo and finesse high-profile subjects, especially during the magazine's

annual power issue, which Hollywood kingmakers would lobby to make.

"There is no better training for a career in Hollywood diplomacy

than publishing the power issue every year," said Cyndi Stivers, the editor in

chief of Time Out New York , who

worked for Ms. Lyne at Premiere . "She

has a very stiff spine and could take it when they threw their hissy fits, but

she never lost sight of where we were going and how we needed to get there."

That training is likely to help Ms. Lyne not only when she deals

with television producers, agents and talent, but also with her own colleagues.

Asked how she interacts with Mr. Eisner, Mr. Iger and Mr. Braun (who was spared

when Mr. Bloomberg was let go), Ms. Lyne diplomatically said that Mr. Eisner

"has no involvement in the network at this point," but that she intends to

consult regularly with Mr. Iger and Mr. Braun.

The trick for Ms. Lyne, of course, will be keeping everyone happy

and giving herself enough elbow room to make the kind of personal imprint that

the best network presidents-the Grant Tinkers, the Brandon Tartikoffs-made.

Said one industry insider, referring to ABC's top-heavy management: "Picking

shows by committee usually rubs the edges off of programs."

And it remains to be seen how long Ms. Lyne will get to put her imprint

on ABC entertainment. Lately, the job has had all the permanence of a

night-manager shift at Ranch 1.

Ms. Lyne is staying in New York with her family for the

foreseeable future, and will commute to Los Angeles. "Everybody at Disney knew

that the only way I was going to take this job is if I could stay here," she

said. For the next few months she'll be reading scripts and watching pilots,

trying to turn her network around and make that little Mouse happy.

It won't be easy.

"We have a big challenge ahead of us," Ms. Lyne said. "And it's

not going to happen fast, or overnight."

Tonight on ABC, watch Denis

Leary in The Job . The Job is

one of those smarty-pants ABC shows, but no one's walking around town in a

Denis Leary T-shirt or coming up to you and saying, "Hey, did you see The Job last night?" [WABC, 7, 9:30 p.m.]

Thursday, jan. 31

On CBS tonight, The

Price Is Right 30th Anniversary . It won't feel the same- PIP is only fun when we're playing hooky

from work, happily recuperating from the "flu." [WCBS, 2, 8 p.m.]

Friday, feb. 1

Tonight, ABC has The Best Commercials You Have Never Seen (And

Some You Have) (And this is why Susan Lyne has a fancy new job.)

[WABC, 7, 9 p.m.]

Saturday, feb. 2

On Showtime tonight, The

Original Kings of Comedy. Comedian D.L. Hughley is funny in this

movie. He wasn't on his ABC sitcom. [SHOW,

48, 8 p.m.]

Sunday, feb. 3

Say goodbye to play-by-play maestro Pat Summerall

tonight during Super Bowl XXXVI on

Fox. Also say goodbye to your smelly Kurt Warner sweatshirt, as New England

strides to a title. [WNYW, 5, 6 p.m.]

Monday, feb. 4

Tonight on the Fox News Channel-now king of cable

television, having smooshed CNN across the board in January-Bill O'Reilly

announces he's going to "spot" Connie Chung 500,000 viewers a night. [FNC, 46, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday, feb. 5

Tonight's E! True

Hollywood Story is Olympic figure-skating champion Scott Hamilton.

We're lookin' here, E!, but we can't spot the Hollywood angle. [E!, 24, 8 p.m.]