G'day, Chelsea! Handler goes down under

Next week, "Chelsea Lately" will air a series of shows shot in Australia.

"The shows will be recorded at Sydney’s Foxtel Studios in front of a live audience, will feature Australian guests, and will be broadcast to a worldwide TV audience," according to an E! press release. "For the sharp-tongued star, this will be her first trip to Australia and the first time E! has ever shot a series of talk shows outside the US. Local celebrities shall be put on notice, as Chelsea seeks out the best and worst of Australian popular culture for her inimitable, frank and always funny verdict.

"Says Handler about the upcoming trip to Australia, 'I am so excited to turn the tables on a country and finally be the one going down instead of the one being gone down upon...I love kangaroos.'"

(Incidentally, this may be the "the first time E! has ever shot a series of talk shows outside the US," but another one of the channel's stars, "The Soup"'s Joel McHale, went to Australia last spring, and taped a special "Soup" episode for broadcast down under.)

Chelsea's Aussie guests will include talk show host Rove McManus, "True Blood" actor Ryan Kwanten, and nature program host "Ranger Stacey" Thomson.

Lou Dobbs, VP Joe Biden to sit down with Jon Stewart next week

Lou Dobbs will be the guest on next Wednesday's "Daily Show."

Dobbs has been in the news since he abruptly quit his CNN talk show a couple days ago -- there's even been speculation that the reason he walked away was because he wants to run for president.

It won't be Dobbs' first public chat since leaving CNN, though; he'll be appearing on Monday's Bill O'Reilly program.

In other big TDS guest news: vice president Joe Biden will be visiting Jon on Tuesday the 17th. It won't be Biden's first appearance on the Comedy Central program, but it will mark the first time a sitting vice president has visited. (The closest Stewart could come to Dick Cheney was his wife, Lynne, in October 2007.)

The rest of TDS's upcoming guest lineup: author Jake Adelstein on Monday and rock band Jack's Mannequin, for some reason, on Thursday.

David Letterman and Andre Agassi: Bye-bye hairpiece

On tonight's "Late Show with David Letterman," Dave speaks to Andre Agassi about something the host calls "more stunning than the drug revelation" -- the tennis player's mullet hairpiece.

"That is not my hair," the now-bald Agassi admitted when Letterman displayed a 1990 photo of the star with flowing blond locks.

"It's not a wig, it's a system, is that what we have going on there?" asked Dave.

"It's a weave system," said Agassi. "The night before the French Open final, I used the wrong conditioner and it started to come off... I've never prayed for a result in my life. I prayed that day for that wig to stay on. I had about 50 bobby pins holding it down."



One lucky lady winds up with a souvenir!

David Letterman Case: Dueling lawyers!

ABC's "Good Morning America" featured an 8-minute interview with the lawyers involved in the David Letterman extortion case: Gerald L. Shargel, Joe Halderman's attorney, and defending Dave, Daniel J. Horwitz. You can watch the entire segment here.

As I mentioned yesterday, Shargel's point is that Halderman was simply a man trying to sell a story -- he had a First Amendment right! -- and Dave could have paid for it, or not.

Shargel couldn't understand why Halderman bringing the offer to Letterman's car at 6 AM was such a big deal. "There's nothing illegitimate about going to the car where he knew he could effectively deliver the proposal. He knew Letterman's driver, he gave the package to the driver. He didn't break into the car. I don't quite know why people are focusing on that. Would it have been better if he sent it Federal Express? I think that's silly... He had a First Amendment right to create that property, to develop that property."

"This was not a legitimate business transaction," countered Horwitz. "Who negotiates a business transaction at 6 in the morning in the shadows of somebody's apartment building? Who says 'your world's about to collapse'? Who threatens their personal and professional lives? And who says at 6 in the morning, 'I need an answer in 2 hours'? Those are not the earmarks of a legitimate business transaction. Those are the earmarks of classic blackmail."

"I'm sitting here at 3 in the morning in Santa Monica in the dark, so in one sense, that rings hollow," said Shargel, who was appearing via satellite.

Naturally, both attorneys ended with, "I'll see you in court!" "David Letterman is fully prepared to go all the way here, and that means testifying at a trial if necessary," said Horwitz.

"I look forward to that time when I will cross examine David Letterman," responded Shargel.

Ratings News: Leno's low, good start for Lopez and Sykes

Bad ratings news for Jay Leno: last night's show had a disastrous 1.2 rating, his lowest to date, in the coveted™ 18-49 demographic. NBC had insisted that Leno only needed a 1.5 rating to be profitable, since the show is so cheap to produce. However, the Monday night football games on ESPN are taking a bite out of Leno's male audience, and ABC's "Castle" and CBS's "CSI: Miami" are also attracting many viewers.

According to the New York Times, Leno's woes are affecting the rest of NBC's late night franchises: "Conan O’Brien on 'The Tonight Show' fell to just a 1.7 rating in the overnight household ratings and the preliminary 18-49 ratings put him well below his main competitor, David Letterman on CBS... Jimmy Fallon hit his lowest number to date Monday night in those household ratings, a 0.9, well behind his main competitor, Craig Ferguson on CBS, who scored a 1.7."

Things are looking cheerier for new entrants Wanda Sykes and George Lopez. The debut of TBS's "Lopez Tonight" was a big hit with young demos: "Lopez managed to surpass the season averages for shows starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Craig Ferguson­ and in some cases even Conan O’Brien and David Letterman." 1.02 million 18-49 viewers tuned in, "which beat the regular performances of those first four hosts. He also had 608,000 viewers between the ages of 18 and 34."

Of course, Leno started strong, too. The question is whether the people who were curious enough to tune in last night will stick around.

Sykes' first outing on FOX averaged a 2.2 rating in the overnights. Meanwhile, NBC's "Saturday Night Live," featuring guest host Taylor Swift, scored a 5, one of its best of the year so far.

David Letterman Case: It wasn't extortion, honest!

Now it can be revealed: the legal tactic that Joe Halderman will use to assert his innocence. According to the New York Times, Halderman "was simply trying to sell a story, not extort money."

His lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, is seeking to have the attempted grand larceny charge against his client dismissed. “This was a commercial transaction,” he told reporters at the courthouse. “It was nothing more.”

Writes the Times' John Eligon: "What Mr. Halderman did was legal because the information he possessed had its own independent value – meaning that, even without going to Mr. Letterman first, a third party, such as a book publisher or movie producer, would have paid for it, according to the motion."

So Halderman wasn't trying to blackmail Letterman -- he was simply trying to peddle a heartwarming tale of a talk show host... and the women who loved him. If Dave had said no, he probably could have sold it to "Law & Order."

The broadcaster's lawyer, Daniel J. Horwitz, stated that despite his client's three decades in the biz, Letterman has never been accused of sexual harassment. “Mr. Letterman is not on trial,” Mr. Horwitz said. “Any attempt to focus attention on Mr. Letterman, who’s the victim in this case, is an attempt to divert attention away from Mr. Halderman.”

George Lopez: Did you watch?

So apparently no one in the vast Talk Show News reading public watched Wanda Sykes' new talk show, as there were no comments on that post. Based on the comments that do come in, there are lots of Conan and Dave fans in my audience. But did anyone click over to TBS before "Tonight" or "Late Show" kicked off to watch the debut of "Lopez Tonight"?

I'm no Lopez fan, but I forced myself to watch at least the first half hour (the things I do for this blog). He kicked off with a 10-minute monologue that was very light on topical references, except a couple remarks about Sammy Sosa's oddly bleached skin and the swine flu. It seemed like his usual stand-up fare, with lots of gags about his family and ethnic background, which makes me wonder how he'll be able to sustain it over the course of weeks and months. Maybe he'll gradually fold in more of the usual late night talk show topics.

After a brief appearance by a nightshirt-clad Ellen DeGeneres (she was trying to sleep next door, but the Lopez audience was just having too much fun!), the comedian brought a couple of audience members up on stage to play a race-based game show. Interestingly, Wanda Sykes did a similar thing on her program -- slides of Asian celebrities were shown and her celebrity panel had to guess which country they were from. Lopez's duo had to watch brief man-on-the-street clips of minorities being interviewed by a show staffer and guess how they would respond to certain stereotypical questions: had the black dude ever been in jail? Did the Asian guy have a small penis? Hee-larious!

There was something self-congratulatory about the whole affair, as if Lopez thought he was the Sonia Sotomayor of talk show hosts. Maybe once he relaxes a bit, the show will find its groove, but I definitely won't be watching unless he has a guest I'm just dying to see. Maybe I'll tune in for Lisa Lampanelli tomorrow. Scheduled to appear tonight: Jamie Foxx and Marc Anthony; Wednesday, Queen Latifah and Oscar De La Hoya, along with the divine Miss L; and on Thursday, Larry David and Kelly Osbourne.

What did the nation's TV critics have to say? The Boston Herald's Mark A. Perigard was harsh, criticizing Lopez's monologue ("a relentless volley of duds") and the ethnic-stereotype bit ("a cringeworthy segment that seemed never-ending"). AdAge.com's Laura Martinez wrote a piece titled "I Might Be Mexican, but I Don't Have to Like 'Lopez Tonight'": "I might be missing something here, but I don't find jokes about Mexican food and the gases it produces really funny... To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, still one of my favorite comedians, Mr. Lopez's comedy doesn't offend me as a 'minority'; it offends me as a funny person."

EW.com's Ken Tucker was friendlier, complimenting Lopez's "disarming, relaxed air that puts him ahead of, say, Jimmy Fallon’s jittery opening night." Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times called it "a standard, if entertaining hour... Lopez took [Arsenio] Hall's vision of a funky good time and blew it up to enormous proportions." The Onion AV Club's Todd VanDerWerff gave the show a B minus: Lopez was "[a]n alert and interested interviewer," but said his "jokes all went to fairly expected places."