WITH AN EYE ON . . . : The past is still part of Kathleen Sullivan’s present--well, let her explain

Kathleen Sullivan sounds hoarse and congested. “Too many airplanes,” says the former sweater-clad Olympics sportscaster and current spokeswoman for Weight Watchers. “I’ve just been moving around too much,” she says from the Palm Springs airport en route to Texas.

Sullivan’s travels now take her back to her first prime-time anchoring stint in four years: On Tuesday she will host NBC’s “After the Headlines

The producers are trying to keep secret some of the “instant stars” profiled, but one is Mary Beth Whitehead, surrogate mom to Baby M. The show is done “Rescue 911”-style, using file footage to reacquaint viewers with the original stories, followed by interviews with those whose lives had been so dramatically affected by them.

Sullivan, who describes hers as “the William Shatner role,” does not do the interviews but serves only as host. Still, the controversial Sullivan, now 40, ackowledges she was an obvious choice.

“First of all, I was there for many of those stories, covering them and discussing them on the air,” she says. “Secondly, I’d worked with (executive producer) Susan Winston on ‘Good Morning America.’ And, finally, I’m having my second 15 minutes of fame right now.”

Sullivan laughs with little bitterness about the fact that she burst onto the news scene at CNN, then moved to ABC, and finally to CBS where she co-anchored “CBS This Morning.” There she was fired in a highly publicized fall from grace, replete with rumors about her frisky night life and comments about her wildly fluctuating weight. So she can relate to many of the people interviewed on this program and only hope she is handling the post-fame syndrome half as well as they have.

“I’ve never seen interviews so compelling as these,” she says, “and one reason is the interviews are not antagonistic. No one’s judging or blaming. All these people--whose moments of fame occurred between 7 and 24 years ago--come to the table with real wisdom. They’re not bitter and I don’t think the word media comes up one time. This show is about light, not heat, and we can all learn some lessons.”

Sullivan’s first response to the question, “Is there anything bad with falling out of the spotlight?” is “no.” On second thought, she adds, “What’s hard is when people still write about you and forget you’re a human being. Too much has been written about me that was mean-spirited and false.”

She has no regrets about her route back into the spotlight, as spokeswoman for Superstart, a weight-loss program from Weight Watchers. “It’s really a lot of fun,” says Sullivan, who plans to fulfill her two-year contract. “I also feel really great with the fat off me and I’m just on maintenance now, though I’m a lifer in the organization. And the job has helped bring me back at a time when I needed the exposure. Research has shown that there are a lot of people under the age of 25 who had no idea who I was before this. Well, now they know.”

As for the next 15 minutes, Sullivan says she’s working on a development deal with one network and remains active with women’s golf activities. “I want to do quality stuff like this show,” she says. “I don’t want to bluff and I don’t want the daily grind of a regular show. I’ve been around long enough to know that you grab the good moments and you live with the bad ones until they pass.”

“After the Headlines ... “ airs at 8 p.m. on NBC.