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Ellen Gray: Niecy Nash, Ryan Seacrest and the showbiz crush

IF YOU WANT something done, they say, you should ask the busiest person you know. In television, that might mean asking someone who already has a full-time job to take on another. And maybe even another.

IF YOU WANT something done, they say, you should ask the busiest person you know.

In television, that might mean asking someone who already has a full-time job to take on another. And maybe even another.

And while this in some ways mirrors what's happening in the rest of the country - if you're lucky enough to have a job, chances are you're working harder and longer than you once did - in television, the money's generally better and the complaints fewer.

"There's a really nice balance and a way to make it all work," actress and "reality" star Niecy Nash told me recently after I asked if she ever slept.

Nash, whose TLC "docu-sitcom" about her newly blended family, "Leave It to Niecy," premieres March 25, to be followed in June by her TV Land sitcom "Have Faith," also has a Yahoo Web series, "Let's Talk About Love," and a book in the works.

"It ain't even about sleep, because I'm a newlywed. I got other things to do," she joked.

Does she ever think, when someone approaches her with an idea, that she'd love to do it, but maybe next year?

"No. I want to do it now," she said, and not because she's afraid people might stop asking.

"I want to say yes to everything I love. I don't say yes to everything. I say no to something if it doesn't feel right. If it feels right, I'll find a way to squeeze it in," Nash said.

At Comcast-owned NBC Universal, where Ryan Seacrest and Chelsea Handler are both driving forces at E! Entertainment and Bravo's executive vice president for development Andy Cohen also hosts a five-night-a-week show, "Watch What Happens: Live," multitasking reigns.

"I don't think it's a Comcast thing," Cohen said. "We live in a world of multi-hyphenates - Ryan Seacrest, Anderson Cooper. . . . I think it's the new media age that we live in."

As for himself, "I'm very passionate about what I do and I love what I do. And I try to work out five days a week."

Some might look at all this passion as costing other performers opportunities, but as E!'s Handler is quick to point out, the three shows she's involved in - "Chelsea Lately," "After Lately" and NBC's "Are You There, Chelsea?" (in which she plays not herself but a version of her own sister) - make work for others.

"If this [her NBC] show's a success, then we'll have three shows that have real good work forces and, hopefully, tons of opportunities for actors. Because truly, there's nothing really better than like creating work for other people," she said.

Meanwhile, "I'm good. I'm fine," Handler said, laughing. "Less is more. At this point, when they came out with the NBC show, I'm like, 'OK, enough of me already.' If you're not sick of me, you're going to be sick of me."

The words "less is more" don't appear to be part of Seacrest's vocabulary.

The "American Idol"/radio/E!News host and "reality" show producer had this to say at a recent "Idol" press conference: "These are my jobs. . . . I enjoy balancing all of it, and, hopefully, that keeps me better at my job."

Afterward, Mike Darnell, the Northeast Philadelphia native who's Fox's president of alternative entertainment, told me how the guy who parlayed a hosting gig on "American Idol" into an empire keeps all those plates spinning: "He's almost superhuman. And so maybe some people couldn't handle it, but he's the one person who can. He's a dynamo."

Tim Gunn would probably agree.

Gunn, the "Project Runway" mentor who recently expanded his TV presence to a five-day-a-week job with ABC's daytime show "The Revolution" - without giving up his role as chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne - is one of the few people I talked to for this story who'd actually acknowledge that overemployment takes a toll.

"Can I be honest with you? Generally speaking, I'm a hair shy of a psychotic breakdown," said Gunn after an ABC press conference recently.

"It's hard. It really is. I have to say, I consider myself to be a very lucky guy. At the same time, I readily acknowledge how much I have on my plate, and I'm challenged myself with coping mechanisms. And I won't trivialize how difficult that is," he said.

He does occasionally say no - he's not in Lifetime's "Project Runway: All Stars" because he didn't see how that and "Runway's" Season 9 could be made simultaneously ("that would've been looney-cajooney") - and he tries to stick with whatever task's at hand.

"When we're doing 'The Revolution,' I'm only focused on that segment that we're doing, not even on the whole hour of the show . . . and I give that, hopefully, 150 percent. Because otherwise, at least with me, I find, I can't multitask," he said.

And he remembers there's always someone else who's busier.

"When I look at Ryan Seacrest, I feel physically lighter. There for the grace of God. I don't know how he does it," Gunn said, laughing.