Veteran comic Joan Rivers offers a coarse variation on Robin Leach’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” with the new series “How’d You Get So Rich?” (9 p.m., TV Land). But instead of wishing us “champagne wishes and caviar dreams,” she resorts to her well-worn persona, which has become a tedious nightmare.

She accosts pedestrians and drivers on a Los Angeles street and asks them what they are wearing and repeats the title of the show. Many oblige her, but one seemingly wealthy driver objects to her “personal questions” and she responds by sputtering obscenities.

In between these contrived vignettes, Rivers offers longer profiles of wealthy people, including a native of New Orleans who made a fortune designing floats for Mardi Gras parades and a college dropout who parlayed a job selling phones door to door into a long-distance telephone business he sold for $138 million.

Rivers must have been something five decades ago when she was a brazen woman breaking into men’s comedy clubs, and challenging the mores of a buttoned-down world.

But Rivers’ routine no longer challenges or satirizes contemporary culture. It merely adds her voice to a numbing chorus of witless obscenity. She has long since lost her ability to shock or provoke. The fact that she now stars on a network once dedicated to old “Andy Griffith Show” repeats demonstrates how mainstream her trademark vulgarity has become.

Comics are supposed to challenge the status quo. Sadly, Rivers is the status quo. Decades into the era of the hip-hop video, her comedy celebrates bling, plastic surgery, crass and empty sexuality while joking about a woman’s life as little better than a prostitute’s.

You don’t have to be a prude to find her act tired and cliche. You just have to have a brain.

• Will a TV show about TV stars trying to manage their TV careers in different TV markets make for good TV? “Giuliana & Bill” (8 p.m., Style) follows celebrity couple Bill Rancic (“The Apprentice”) and E! News anchor Giuliana DePandi as they try to reconcile their lives and careers.

In episode one, he likes the city; she wants to live in the suburbs. Can this marriage be saved?

Tonight’s other highlights

• Two go home on “So You Think You Can Dance” (7 p.m., Fox), followed by a performance by the top four (8 p.m.).

• The elimination process continues on “America’s Got Talent” (8 p.m., NBC).

• Nate’s team targets an investment banker on “Leverage” (8 p.m., TNT).

• A mysterious white powder overshadows other evidence at a murder scene on “CSI: NY” (9 p.m., CBS).

• A mission to Kashmir proves perilous on “The Philanthropist” (9 p.m., NBC).

• “Locked Up Abroad: Sierra Leone” (9 p.m., National Geographic) recounts a British marine’s ordeal.

• “True Hollywood Story” (9 p.m., E!) recalls Farrah Fawcett.

• Josh Temple hosts the makeover series “House Crashers” (9 p.m., DIY).