Chelsea

At the time of his famous father's unusually public death, Aaron Stewart was 10 years old, a fifth-grader. "I was in class and I got called into the principal's office," Payne Stewart's only son recalls of that nightmarish moment nearly a decade ago. "I thought I was in trouble." If only it had been so. Instead, he soon learned what millions of television viewers already knew: His father, one of golf's most recognizable figures and winner of three major championships, was gone. It was Oct.

Stephen J. Cannell, the prolific television writer and producer who co-created "The Rockford Files" and "The A-Team" and later became a bestselling novelist, has died. He was 69. Cannell died Thursday evening of complications associated with melanoma at his home in Pasadena, his family said. In a career that began in the late 1960s when he sold his first TV script and took off as he soon became the hottest young writer on the Universal lot, Cannell created or co-created more than 40 TV shows, including "Baa Baa Black Sheep," "Baretta," "The Greatest American Hero" and "21 Jump Street.

David Copperfield was supposed to visit the set of NBC's "Today" show last week, but when his flight had to make an emergency landing in Illinois the network went to Plan B - an interview with the illusionist from a hangar in Peoria. Host Matt Lauer was game but technology wasn't. NBC's Skype connection produced bad audio and grainy images of a cheesy illusion that probably only served to make viewers disappear. Just as that segment stumbled to an end, "Today" cameras caught comedian Chelsea Handler awkwardly walking onto the set before her hosts were ready to greet her. It was amateur-hour television and exemplified the struggles at the once-dominant NBC show.

Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang Chelsea Handler Grand Central: 248 pp., $25.99

Outspoken comic Chelsea Handler is opening up about her abortion at 16 -- and taking aim at reality shows that star pregnant teens. Handler got the profile treatment in the New York Times recently, where she touched on her repeated attempts at a mainstream career. Chelsea decides she's too obnoxious to be a "media darling" like Tina Fey. "People are too P.C.... We need to be focusing on other things. We're seeking out such grossness in human behavior ... '16 and Pregnant.' Getting rewarded for being pregnant when you're a teenager?

Chelsea Handler may not have a lot of viewers, but she gets paid a lot of dough for the ones she does have on "Chelsea Lately. " Jon Stewart is likewise laughing all the way to the bank. And it's time for CNN's Anderson Cooper to come out … as possibly overpaid. But not every TV star triumphed at the negotiating table with the network suits. Ashton Kutcher may have nabbed $17 million a year to replace Charlie Sheen on "Two and a Half Men," but that's not necessarily a king's ransom given that sitcom's popularity (it's also less than Sheen made)