Well, maybe Rob Lowe isn't such a big TV star after all.

Not only has the former "West Wing" star's departure not hurt that show, but his new series, "Lyon's Den," has failed to catch on. Ratings started weak and got worse, prompting NBC to yank it off its Sunday-night schedule for at least the duration of the November sweeps.

"West Wing," meanwhile, has been up in the ratings this season after suffering some rather serious audience erosion last season.

All of which makes Lowe's comments to critics this past summer that he'd like to do a "Battle of the Network Stars" between the "Lyon's Den" cast and the "West Wing" cast seem sillier now than they did then. "(Matt Craven) can do a soliloquy against Richard Schiff," Lowe said. "(Elizabeth Mitchell) can take Allison Janney down with arm-wrestling. It's all good. Game on."

It now looks like game over.

The fact is that Lowe's departure from "West Wing" was never as big a deal as some of his fans thought. Yes, the show's ratings dropped last season, but they started dropping before Lowe left. And the drop was largely attributable to the competition that ABC's "The Bachelor" presented.

But this fall it's "The Bachelor" that has been in decline. Perhaps it's a fad format that has already worn out its welcome. (Or so we can hope.) And lower "Bachelor" ratings have meant higher "West Wing" ratings.

Which is not to say that Lowe wasn't good on "West Wing." He was. And I can certainly understand that he was unhappy because his character wasn't given a lot to do.

But given that viewers have been rejecting "The Lyon's Den," that other show may start looking like a pretty good thing to Lowe. And he's learning a lesson a lot of far-bigger TV stars have learned — that landing on a hit show is like winning the lottery; it's extremely difficult to do once and almost impossible to do twice.

"EYE" FOR CASH: The surprise hit "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" returns to Bravo with new episodes beginning Tuesday, Nov. 18, and the Fab Five will be making a good deal more money for the second season. They got a 267 percent raise out of NBC (which owns not only Bravo, the cable channel that airs the show, but also the company that produces it).

But let's keep this in perspective. Ted Allen, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, Carson Kressley and Jai Rodriguez are getting bumped from $3,000 to $8,000 per episode. That's, oh, about half of what the lowest-paid sitcom actors make per week.

The Fab Five took a page out of the "Friends" book, negotiating as a bloc. They just weren't quite as successful in the negotiations. Their $8,000 per week salary is eight-tenths of 1 percent of the "Friends" cast members' $1 million per week paycheck.

Not that $8,000 per week is exactly chump change. (Anybody out there who might be reading — I'd work for, oh, half that much. And be grateful.)

And Allen, Douglas, Filicia, Kressley and Rodriguez will be paid an (undisclosed) additional salary when episodes of "Queer Eye" air on NBC. Which, given the current state of NBC's ratings, seems certain to happen again. And more frequently.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com