David Letterman dedicated five-and-a-half minutes of his opening monologue to Elliot Spitzer, including a call for his resignation. Check out the video above.

In addition, the Top Ten list was “Top Ten Messages Left on Elliot Spitzer’s Answering Machine.” That clip is after the jump.

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Letterman’s reached a deal with the WGA, and will be returning to television next Wednesday.

The Writers Guild of America called its pact with Letterman’s production company, WorldWide Pants Inc, a sign of union readiness to negotiate a deal with major film and TV studios to settle Hollywood’s worst labor crisis in 20 years.

The WGA said its “comprehensive agreement” with WorldWide Pants included provisions to pay writers for work distributed over the Internet — presumably covering the large assortment of advertising-supported video clips of Letterman’s show that CBS posts on its Web site.

Conan — who’s with the same production company — will be coming back, as well.

Letterman is returning to late-night.

Says producer Rob Burnett:

“Worldwide Pants has always been a writer-friendly company. Dave has been a member of the WGA for more than 30 years, and I have been a member for more than 20. Because we are an independent production company, we are able to pursue an interim agreement with the Guild without involving CBS in that pursuit. Therefore, since the beginning of the strike, we have expressed our willingness to sign an interim agreement with the Guild consistent with its positions in this dispute. We’re happy that the Guild has now adopted an approach that might make this possible. It is our strong desire to be back on the air with our writers and we hope that will happen as soon as possible.”

Yay!

Although new episodes of The Late Show will not be airing during the writers strike, Mr. Letterman has agreed to pay his staff — this is hair and makeup, grips, props guys, etc — through the end of the year. Out of his own pocket.

“Dave’s not doing this to get good press, which is why it hasn’t been reported for almost two days,” says a source.

But before everyone gets all “why isn’t Jay Leno doing this too?,” remember that Letterman owns The Late Show, whereas Jay does not own The Tonight Show. Just saying.

The striking writers on Dave’s show have their own blog now. You can read it here.

Drew Carey announced tonight on David Letterman that he would take over the spot Bob Barker left empty in June.

“I actually had lunch with an AP reporter today, we had a big, long lunch,” Carey said. “I couldn’t tell him anything because we were negotiating the deal. And they approached me right after the pilot for ‘Power of 10,’ and they called me, I said, ‘No.’ Then they called me a month later, they said, ‘What if we really’ — they called my agent: ‘What if we really go after Drew.’ This is like a month later after I did the pilot for ‘Power of 10’ and I said, ‘Well, what does that mean?’ and he said, ‘Well, you know, I mean, maybe this kind of money.’ I go, ‘What kind of schedule?’ He said, ‘I don’t know,’ so I met with them and stuff and we’ve been negotiating ever since. Couldn’t say anything, but during your ‘Harry Potter’ bit — honestly it was like 15 minutes ago — they called me. It’s a done deal. I’m the new host of ‘The Price Is Right.’”

“Well, history says that this will be a nice long career for you as the host of ‘The Price is Right,’” Letterman commented. Carey said, “It’s fun doing a show for years and years, isn’t it?” and Letterman concurred.

I wonder if Drew will be reminding us to get our pets spayed and neutered, too. It just won’t seem like the same show without that.

From Letterman last night. Watch it before YouTube yanks it.

CBS just sent out their press release from the taping of Letterman this afternoon (the actual interview will air on CBS tonight). Fresh from my inbox:

Richards was featured via satellite from Los Angeles during an interview with scheduled guest Jerry Seinfeld, who asked Richards, his former “Seinfeld” co-star, to appear on the CBS late night broadcast. The following is an excerpt from Richards’ interview:

Letterman: “Why don’t you explain exactly what happened for the folks who may not know.”

Richards: “I lost my temper on stage. I was at a comedy club trying to do my act and I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage and said some pretty nasty things to some Afro-Americans, a lot of trash talk, and uh…”

Letterman: “And you were actually being heckled or were they just talking and disturbing the act?”

Richards: “That was going on too.”

* * *

Richards: “…You know, I’m really busted up over this and I’m very, very sorry to those people in the audience, the blacks, the Hispanics, whites – everyone that was there that took the brunt of that anger and hate and rage and how it came through, and I’m concerned about more hate and more rage and more anger coming through, not just towards me but towards a black/white conflict. There’s a great deal of disturbance in this country and how black feel about what happened in Katrina, and, you know, many of the comics, many of performers are in Las Vegas and New Orleans trying to raise money for what happened there, and for this to happen, for me to be in a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, you know, I’m deeply, deeply sorry. And I’ll get to the force field of this hostility, why it’s there, why the rage is in any of us, why the trash takes place, whether or not it’s between me and a couple of hecklers in the audience or between this country and another nation, the rage – “

Letterman: “But Michael, let me interrupt here for a second and ask a question about had the people doing the heckling or the people who were not paying attention, had they been white or Caucasian or any other race, what would have been the nature of your response then?”

Richards: “It may have happened. It may have happened. You know, I’m a performer. I push the envelope, I work in a very uncontrolled manner onstage. I do a lot of free association, it’s spontaneous, I go into character. I don’t know, in view of the situation and the act going where it was going, I don’t know, the rage did go all over the place. It went to everybody in the room. But you can’t – you know it’s, I don’t – I know people could, blacks could feel – I’m not a racist, that’s what so insane about this, and yet it’s said, it comes through, it fires out of me and even now in the passion that’s here as I confront myself.”