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Jennifer Finney Boylan is at ease now in the living room of the Devon home where she spent her boyhood. She has not always been comfortable in this place. When she lived here as 13-year-old James Richard Boylan Jr. and had the whole top floor to herself, she did her homework with the dead bolt on the bedroom door, wearing the bra and sweater she kept hidden behind the room's faux wood paneling, and trusting she'd hear the stairs creak if anyone approached. Now a professor of creative writing at Maine's Colby College since 1988, Boylan, 52, is a visiting prof this semester at Ursinus in Collegeville.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY on Monday to Ukee Washington, who'll wake up with the city (or, as he says, his "morning family") by celebrating his 54th on "Eyewitness News This Morning. " The West Philly-born news vet's been at Channel 3 since 1986, first as a sports anchor, now as the anchorman for both "This Morning" and "Talk Philly. " (You can also catch him on the CW.) Recently recovered from a left-hip replacement, Washington has a big year ahead of him, starting with a few more squats and lots more fabulous Fridays.

She's young. She's smart. She's outtahere. Yesterday was Channel 6 reporter Kristen Sze's last day on the air for WPVI. She's departing for New York City, and a spot as the sole East Coast correspondent for the syndicated show Extra, which airs locally on the competition, WCAU (Channel 10), at 7 p.m. Sze describes the show as "a People magazine on TV," covering feature stories, interesting people, medical developments and, of course, celebrities and their woes (the show was big on Diana's funeral, Versace's murder, and recent fave, the Marv Albert trial-cum-guilty plea)

Any way you look at it, it was a tough year for the networks. Broadcast ratings dropped by an average of 7.5 percent, the steepest decline in six years. NBC's Do No Harm notched the smallest audience for a series debut in broadcast history and was canceled after two episodes. Fox's old warhorse, American Idol , tumbled to new lows. Even the ragged Robertsons of Duck Dynasty have been beating the previously unassailable singing competition. And Wednesday's showdown between Kree Harrison and Candice Glover didn't even top the night among viewers 18 to 49, the first time that's ever happened to an Idol finale episode.

IT IS THE impossible question, but when you get Ron Turcotte on the phone, it has to be asked. Which one of Secretariat's Triple Crown races was best? "They were all great," Turcotte said last week from his home in Canada. In fact, a very strong case can be made that the same horse ran the greatest Derby, greatest Preakness and greatest Belmont, all in one 5-week period. As Big Brown, after totally dominating the other horses in the Derby and Preakness, gears up for the Saturday's Belmont Stakes and a run at the elusive Triple Crown, it is hard not to think of the horse who during that 5-week stretch was the greatest race horse who ever lived.

LET'S FACE it, the reason the Daily News is profiling NBC10 meteorologist Sheena Parveen is not because she is more accurate in her forecasts than any other member of the small army of weather people who take up increasing amounts of screen time on local TV news programs these days. The reason is that, thanks to her stunning visage and engaging presence, the 26-year-old weather reporter for the station's 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekday newscasts has become the market's newest "It Girl.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and director of People United to Save Humanity (PUSH), and a number of CBS executives including Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News, and Neal Pilson, executive vice president of the CBS Broadcast Group, met at CBS headquarters in New York on Tuesday to discuss the PUSH boycott of CBS affiliate WBBM-TV in Chicago; the hiring of more minority applicants; and the possible boycott of the other three CBS affiliates, including...

Anchorwoman Alycia Lane's future with KYW (CBS3) is uncertain after her arrest early Sunday on charges of slugging a plainclothes New York City police officer. The station announced that Lane, 35, would begin a planned two-week, end-of-year vacation a week early, effective yesterday. Her name and image were stripped from station promos, and her work on the station's holiday special, airing tonight, was edited out. Observers say her return to her $700,000-a-year anchor job hinges not only on her legal case - a felony charge of second-degree assault that could take months to resolve - but the court of public opinion.

S ALEKA SHYAMALAN , the daughter of Bucks-based director M. Night Shyamalan , laid down some tracks at MilkBoy the Studio recently, my sources tell me. I hear that the 17-year-old Shyamalan has a piano-based, singer-songwriter type of vibe. Think Vanessa Carlton , or, like a super-cute, less-depressed Billy Joel . The studio would not comment on the session, but Saleka apparently joins Meek Mill , Miley Cyrus , Justin Timberlake and Pink , who have all used MilkBoy's services.

They have all been there. Trying to explain to grandparents that their child is not rude or spoiled. Enduring the judgmental stares of strangers. Hoping kids at school won't be mean. They are parents of children with Asperger's syndrome, and now they can see a portrayal of their lives on TV. The NBC series is called Parenthood . It depicts Max, a young boy with the syndrome, and parents of real-life "aspies" say the show mostly gets it right. "Ever since the first episode of Parenthood , it's been: 'Hey, did you see it this past week?