Conan O’Brien versus Chelsea Handler…the war of numbers in late night cable, and for the first time, the blonde, snappy and sometimes (or should we say, most times) potty-mouthed bombshell surpassed the ginger NBC kick-out in ratings since he took his late-night quirks and smirks on cable via TBS.

For the month of June, E! network’s mean queen attracted an average of 959,000 viewers, almost a hundred thousand more than what O’Brien managed to pull for the same month (851,000). And while many will attribute Handler’s winning figures to the hype she’s drawing from an impending book release (‘Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me’, her follow-up to her succession of NY Times best sellers), a new NBC sitcom and/or the continuing success of her stand-up tours, most people would simply suggest that it’s her brutally honest, raunchy and ‘I-don’t-give-a-damn’ style of comedy that glues millions of viewers to their TV sets for 30 minutes every midnight, regardless of how late ‘Chelsea Lately’ airs.

We could write more than a handful of reasons why Handler’s edging out Conan in the battle of the cable ratings but one thing is for certain, she knows how to play the hand she’s been given, and Conan needs to learn a thing or two from this funny gal who made a name for herself by calling out on celebrities, wannabes, or even the lamest of ordinaries who are acting like the finest a-holes America has seen. ‘Chelsea Lately’ is probably the only show in the entirety of television that knows how to bank on the stupidity and bluntness of Americans, concepts that have always been the ground material for the late night talk show which spares no one, from rapper Pharrell, to Justin Bieber, to her new found BFF Jennifer Aniston and even Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow. All the profanities and provocation surrounding every bit of conversation in every ‘Lately’ episode is giving Team Coco a run for their money.

All we’re saying that now Conan is on cable, where a wider leeway in terms of language, theme and topics is tolerated, he should maximize it. After all, comics never run out of material, there is always enough dumbness among Americans to go around, and when there is shortage, there’s always the story of how he was ‘Jay Leno-ed’ out of NBC to laugh and be sarcastic about.