Late-night ratings sank over the past three months, despite the attention and extraordinary television created over the winter by the drama of Leno taking back “The Tonight Show” from Conan O’Brien.

“Late-night talk shows have been around since the 1950s, and you wonder if they are getting passe with the viewing public,” said Brad Adgate, an analyst with Horizon Media.

Competition is a factor. Johnny Carson in his prime never had to worry about a Jon Stewart or George Lopez. Or video games and the Internet. Or, for that matter, his own network. At 11:35 p.m., more people now watch programs saved on their digital video recorders than either Leno and Letterman, the Nielsen Co. said.

Back at NBC, Leno averaged 4 million viewers a night during April, May and June. That’s a full 1 million viewers lost to NBC compared to the same three months in 2009. Letterman wasn’t necessarily the beneficiary, since his audience of 3.3 million people was off 7 percent from 2009.

An hour later, NBC’s Jimmy Fallon and CBS’ Craig Ferguson are both down, with Fallon’s nightly audience of 2 million last year slipping to 1.64 million. Comedy Central’s Stewart and Stephen Colbert are essentially drawing the same numbers as last year.

TBS may be excited about O’Brien bringing his fans over this fall, but they may want to pause at Lopez’s numbers. Lopez, who has the time slot O’Brien will take over, saw his numbers dip by 20 percent to 820,000 a night.

Bright spots are ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who was aggressively promoted by his network this spring, and E! Entertainment’s Chelsea Handler. ABC’s “Nightline” is also up slightly in viewers and consistently beats Letterman.

“The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” — and not “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” — is among the nominees for the Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series Primetime Emmy.

TBS, which will air Conan’s new show beginning in the fall, began a campaign last month to have Conan’s previous work on “The Tonight Show” nominated for the Emmy.

Also nominated in the category are “The Colbert Report,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “Real Time with Bill Maher,” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Walters, who has been absent from the show since her heart surgery in May, will be appearing live via Skype on July 12.

Though she’s been seen around town since the surgery, Walters has stayed away from “The View,” instead making the occasional on-air phone call to her fellow co-hosts.

Today the women of the “Daily Show” responded to the press in an open letter:

“Dear People Who Don’t Work Here,

Recently, certain media outlets have attempted to tell us what it’s like to be a woman at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We must admit it is entertaining to be the subjects of such a vivid and dramatic narrative. However, while rampant sexism at a well-respected show makes for a great story, we want to make something very clear: the place you may have read about is not our office.

The Daily Show isn’t a place where women quietly suffer on the sidelines as barely tolerated tokens. On the contrary: just like the men here, we’re indispensable. We generate a significant portion of the show’s creative content and the fact is, it wouldn’t be the show that you love without us.”

The letter goes on to dispute the allegations of sexism (which Jon Stewart alluded to in a rant against Fox News last week) point by point. But when you scroll to the bottom of the page to see the women’s names and what they do there, you see only two female writers and one full-time female correspondent (Samantha Bee). Hallie Haglund, the longest-serving female writer, has “5 years” written next to her name and title, but as recently as two years ago when I asked Hallie to blog for us she was a receptionist there, putting in her dues. The other female writer, Jo Miller, has been there under a year. Excluding the two women who founded the show, “DS” has only had two other female writers in its long history.

As we learned last year from NYT’s Bill Carter and Nell Scovell, women are universally scarce in late night television. As of the 2010 WGA Award nominations “Real Time” had none, Conan O’Brien had none, Leno had none, “Colbert Report” had two out of 15 writers, and the “Late Show” had none (until they hired the amazingly funny Jill Goodwin). The most women-friendly network show is Jimmy Fallon’s and on cable it’s “Chelsea Lately.”

According to the announcement on his website:

“Beck University is a unique academic experience bringing together experts in the fields of religion, American history and economics. Through captivating lectures and interactive online discussions, these experts will explore the concepts of Faith, Hope and Charity and show you how they influence America’s past, her present and most importantly her future.”

Professors will include pro-family advocate David Barton, business guru David L. Buckner and Lousiana State University political science professor James R. Stoner Jr., who told Inside Higher Ed he was “delighted” to accept Beck’s offer.

Beck University will be online-only and courses are not for credit.

Huckabee — former Governor of Arkansas and Republican Presidential candidate — will begin airing “The Huckabee Show” July 26 at 12 PM. It will be taped in New York in front of a studio audience.

The show will feature Huckabee’s take on politics and culture, according to the NY Post, and will air on several Fox affiliates nationwide.

“Governor Huckabee is a dynamic figure with a loyal fan base and we are thrilled to be working with him on this program,” Twentieth Television president Greg Meidel said.

“The Fox News chief Roger Ailes is also the chairman of Fox Television Stations and chairman of Twentieth Television,” the New York Times’ Brian Stelter notes.

Behar’s prime time show on CNN’s sister network Headline News has been a bright spot for the network. Her show has gained viewers in recent months, while King’s ratings have slipped.

King said he wants to hand over his long-running talk show to Ryan Seacrest, the host of “American Idol.” Piers Morgan of “America’s Got Talent” and “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric are among the other marquee names considered to be candidates to take over for King.

King told CBS News shortly after the announcement, “If it was up to me, I’d have Ryan Seacrest do it.”

But those are some big suspenders to fill.

Statesmen, newsmakers and Hollywood stars have sat across from King’s desk for plain-spoken interviews. In total, CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod reported, King has done about 50,000 interviews.

King called it quits last night, saying on-air, “Twenty-five years ago, I sat at this table across from New York Governor Mario Cuomo for the first broadcast ever of ‘Larry King Live,’ and now, decades later, I talked to the guys here at CNN and told them I’d like to end ‘Larry King Live.’”

The 76 year-old King says he felt no pressure from CNN to leave.

CBS News was the first to speak to him, just after his show. King said he wants to do other things.

He called the decision “bittersweet.”

He told CBS News. “It was my decision I made it, but it was hard to talk to the staff, and I know down the road I’m gonna miss it.”

King says he wants to spend more time with his family. He’s been married eight times to seven different women, and nearly split with current wife Shawn Southwick. They have since reconciled.

With a 53 year broadcasting career, he is known for his direct, but non-confrontational style. He says he’s always tried to keep it simple.

He told CBS News, “I never presume what my guests would say. I listened to answers. I asked short questions, left my ego at the door and I had a motto through my whole career is that I never learned anything when I was talking. That’s true to this day.”

King was recently entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for hosting the longest-running show on the same network in the same time slot.

Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post and host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” said on “The Early Show” Wednesday that King wanted to walk away on his own terms.

Kurtz said, “Let’s not forget, his ratings have declined by almost half in the last year. … This is a guy who revolutionized cable television. You know putting on a radio show, with people calling in, presidents, politicians come on, none of that had been done before but he was an institution whose time had passed. I think he came to recognize that with the family problems, ratings problems and maybe just a sense at 76 it was time to move on.”

Kurtz said King spoke with him last night about his 25th anniversary on the program.

Kurtz said, “He interviewed President Obama, Lady Gaga, Bill Gates and LeBron James. He said, ‘I ain’t going to top this,’ and maybe it was time to move on to another chapter in his life.”

“Early Show” co-anchor Harry Smith noted, “You have to think about CNN in its infancy 25 years ago. This is the guy who put CNN on the map.”

Kurtz agreed, adding, “In 1992, when Ross Perot essentially launched his candidacy on ‘Larry King Live’ then Bill Clinton went on, and first president Bush went on. Bill Clinton made three appearances in his first two years as president. We take this for granted now, they all go on ‘The Daily Show,’ Leno and Letterman, but at the time it was a way of circumventing the Washington press corps. And Bill Clinton said Larry King liberated me by giving me to the American people directly.”

So can anyone really take Larry King’s place?

MSNBC announced that Maddow will travel to Kabul this week and anchor “The Rachel Maddow Show” live from Kabul next Tuesday and Wednesday (July 6-7).

Maddow will be joined by NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel.

Until yesterday, Zach Anner, a witty wheelchair-bound Texan who explains in his video that he has cerebral palsy (“the sexiest of the palsies”) and pitches “a travel show for people who never thought they could travel,” held a commanding lead (see video below).

But in the afternoon, contestant Dr. Phyllis — who proposes a reality show on teachers because the drama is in the classroom, rather convincingly — took the top spot by amassing votes at a rate that spurred some techno-savvy readers into sleuth mode.

Geekosystem has a detailed breakdown of the various claims (complete with graphs), among them that for at least a few hours, the source code for Phyllis’ “Vote” button differed from that of all the other contestants and that as quickly as her vote-per-minute average rose it dropped later that day (from 1,923 votes a minute to 3). Contacted by EW, a spokesperson for OWN issued the following statement: “The online voting rules for the ‘Your OWN Show’ video submission competition were carefully crafted to be fair to everyone. Any allegations of impropriety will be investigated and the appropriate actions taken to keep the process unbiased.” (As of 5:15 p.m. ET Wednesday, Anner was back in the lead, by a margin of more than 400,000 votes; Dr. Phyllis could not be reached for comment.)

Show publicist Chelsea Hettrick says the lights went out Monday night about an hour before ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was set to begin taping at its Hollywood studio. She says the outage shut down the control room, broadcast transmission center and tape operations area.

Hettrick says as guests and a studio audience waited, Kimmel grabbed his laptop and recorded the entire show with his computer’s webcam.

Hettrick says guests Seth Rogen, John Henson and country artist Dierks Bentley were very accommodating in “going with what happened.”

There’s no word on what caused the outage.

The telethon is called “Disaster in the Gulf: How You Can Help.” Proceeds will benefit several charities, including United Way and The Nature Conservancy.

In a press release, CNN listed some of the stars who will be featured, including Justin Bieber, Cameron Diaz, Robert Redford, Tim McGraw and Kathy Griffin. Anderson Cooper and other CNN reporters will also be giving live updates from the Gulf Region.

In the announcement, King said that he wanted to do the telethon so the region could get immediate help: