'DAILY'S' INTELLECTUAL FUDDIE-DUDDIES.

Byline: -- David Kronke

Bill O'Reilly likes to call viewers of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" stoners and slackers. Here's another name he can give them: readers (or, at least, patrons) of serious current-events literature.

The New York Times reports that both shows actually help sales of books written by the historians and political analysts who sit and chat with Stewart or spar with Colbert.

In recent weeks, Stewart has hosted Nobel Prize-winning economics guru Muhammad Yunus; Ishmael Beah, whose book "A Long Way Gone" details life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone; and Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, who was peddling his book "In the Line of Fire: A Memoir." Great targets for high comedy, all.

In the Times story, Martha Levin of Free Press calls the programs "the television equivalent of NPR. You have a very savvy, interested audience who are book buyers, people who do go into bookstores, people who are actually interested in books."

Now that serious discourse on television is allowed only on a couple of comedy shows, perhaps the Fox News Channel will take a tip from Keith Olbermann and add a laugh track to all of its shows, not just "The 1/2 Hour News Hour."

COMING SOON: If last night's ratings for "The Black Donnellys" are any indication, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" is on its way back.

Despite tons of hype -- there were about a half-dozen promos for it during lead-in "Heroes" -- the show managed to average a mere 8.4 million viewers in its premiere, which is what "Studio 60" averaged in its entire run.

Worse, it suffered from a spectacular fall-off in viewers as the episode progressed: It began with an average of nearly 10 million viewers in its first half-hour and sunk to a lowly 6.9 million in its second half.