(Photo: Courtesy of Moshe Brakha/ABC)

Can The Woman Behind Desperate Housewives
save Martha Stewart?
When Alexis Stewart and Susan Lyne huddled together at Michael’s on October 26, few thought anything of it. “I see her there all the time,” says another diner. “I just thought she was there to give them advice on Martha’s possible reality show.” But then it all made sense last week, when Lyne, the blonde, flawlessly turned-out founder of Premiere who became president of ABC Entertainment, was named the next CEO of Martha Stewart Omnimedia (New York broke the news on its Website last week). It’s unclear whether Lyne has much homemaking experience. But before being fired last spring from ABC, she’d green-lighted Desperate Housewives, now the network’s runaway hit. Earlier this fall, we asked her why the show worked, and she gave an answer that might apply to the attraction of Stewart’s empire of desperate housewives, too: “It’s a guilty pleasure,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily reflect what women’s lives really are.”
—Jacob Bernstein