TVSquad

Comedy talk shows are a vastly underrated wasteland of quality programming, but they're shorter on female eye-candy than the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show.

ABC is hoping to change that by giving comic babe and former Talk Soup slinger Aisha Tyler her own piece of programming.

The network is letting her develop a pilot for a "hybrid" style talk show that incorporates sketch, stand-up and other variety comedy into a fully "wired" show that will communicate with their audience over the Internet's series of complex tubes.

It's hard to see beloved characters leave your favorite shows. You have created a bond with them, perhaps even projected their values onto yourself in an effort to raise the self esteem you had before, say, you fell down the Law & Order rabbit hole and started to believe the shows were actual news and not just "ripped from the headlines." But change is inevitable, and sometimes, it works out. Here are a few that worked (at least for me).

1. Current cast of Law & Order: I know, I know, who could replace Lenny Briscoe? No one, really. But the current pairing of Anthony Anderson and Jeremy Sisto as NYPD partners is the best the series has produced. They changed the feel of the show. Perhaps because we're still getting to know them, they are less predictable then previous tandems, and both evoke a certain hard-nosed quality that seems a bit more gritty and real. Plus, Anderson has chops as a stand-up comic, and could easily fill the wisecracker role, if need be.

Just when we started to get into this whole "who will replace Conan O'Brien" guessing game, we might have to find a host for another late night show: Craig Ferguson hints he might leave at the end of his contract.

Ferguson reveals to the St. Petersburg Times that he could leave at the end of his six year contract because he doesn't like being famous.

"I just don't know if I like being that visible," he said. "I don't know if I would want to ramp that up any more, you know. And people here find that, I think, quite difficult to (understand)."

I think I've mentioned here before that I'm a big fan of Demetri Martin. Some people don't seem to like him for some reason (not sure why, he's funny and doesn't have any annoying qualities). It's probably just a knee-jerk reaction, to appear hip to dislike someone who has suddenly become hip. But I have no scientific data to back up this claim.

Martin talks to The Onion about how he got started in comedy, what it was like to be an intern on The Daily Show and then an on-air correspondent, how hard standup can be, and how comedy has changed since he started (since he started? What, seven or eight years ago?)

He also updates fans on the status of not one but two pilots he wrote for NBC. Hint: the news is not good. Or maybe it's very good, depending on what you want to see from Martin. He has a new CD out, These Are Jokes, and will film a special for Comedy Central.

Yes, it was! Brian Unger, former correspondent on The Daily Show, actor, comedian, essayist on NPR, and co-host of Extra and O2Be, filled in for Keith Olbermann tonight on Countdown. I didn't recognize him at first, except I had an "oh, that guy has been anchoring in the afternoons on MSNBC too" moment. And then one of his guests called him "Brian" and then I slapped my head and said "doh!"

Anyway, interesting to see a Daily Show alum anchoring a news program, even if it is one that's not just a straight news show but an all-around news show that mixes humor with the hard-hitting questions. (The show is repeated at midnight, Eastern time, if you want to catch it.)