"Dude, I just talked to Karl Rove on my fucking phone. You think I’m fucking with you? Mike Huckabee called me, like, three hours ago." [Observer]

Ron Howard, TV's Opie, just directed the film version of Frost/Nixon, because the man knows Oscar-bait when he sees it. And also, sure, because it's politically relevant or something. Howard, the very definition of American Middlebrow, is not a political director, though this year he endorsed Obama because he is a Hollyweird liberal (like his godless pal Andy Griffith). At a recent screening of the film, Howard mentioned how the lessons of Nixon became newly relevant during the Bush administration. Shocking! Good thing Fox News anchor and noted objective journalist Chris Wallace was there to set him straight! Nixon was a crook, see, and Bush is a hero.

As if spending the last eight years as Sean Hannity's punching bag on Fox News wasn't humiliating enough, watch the crew of Hannity & Colmes break into laughs as Alan Colmes announces his plan to leave the program at the end of the year. Your colleagues will miss you dearly, Alan.

♦ Graydon Carter says Vanity Fair plans to go ahead with its annual Oscar party, but "the party will be a much more intimate affair than in years past; we're going to scale back the guest list considerably." [DH]
♦ No replacement is planned for Alan Colmes: Fox News plans to have Sean Hannity serve as solo host of the nightly show. [NYT]
♦ Ted Koppel is parting ways with the Discovery Channel. [NYT]
♦ Looks like OK! has been cutting back on copy editors. The cover of the new issue misspells Ashlee Simpson's name. [HuffPo]

♦ Alan Colmes, the "liberal" who supposedly serves as co-host of Hannity & Colmes with Sean Hannity, is leaving the Fox News program at the end of the year. [HuffPo]
♦ A daily news program hosted by Christiane Amanpour is in the works at CNN. [NYT]
♦ Despite screwing up nearly everything he touches, NBC golden boy Ben Silverman may see his contract renewed in the next few weeks. [NYM]
♦ USA Today has announced plans to cut staff. [E&P]
♦ Twilight was No. 1 at the box office this weekend, raking in $70.5 mil. [LAT]
♦ Forbes is not being sold to a shady Russian billionaire. [SAI]

What did Belgium do to Red Eye's Andrew Levy? We've never really given the country much thought, to be honest. But apparently someone at Fox News' second funniest late-night offering has been deeply offended by the nation and wants revenge. Did you know the Belgians murdered Paddington Bear and are so stupid they fish for cows? We're guessing that Greg Gutfeld (or one of his writers) was either stabbed or dumped in Belgium. Or he's still not over his Chimay hangover. (Thanks go to intern Shannon for the clip!)

Early estimates say Twilight sucked $7 million from last night's sold-out midnight screenings, and Fandango sends word this morning that tickets are selling online at a rate of five per second. Here to break it down for you now are the authorities at Fox and Friends, who have their own expertly tweaked statistics and observations to help put the phenomenon in its appropriate perspective. Did you know, for example, that 81% percent of all females — "better known as babes," we're told — plan to see the the film? Or that teen girls were turned on to the franchise by their mothers, not the other way around? Watch now for a veritable windfall of revelations, and years from now, remember where you were when Twilight finally got the fair and balanced treatment it deserved.

Fox News mastermind, old Nixon image reformer, and all-around American democracy-damaging propagandist Roger Ailes leaked the news to Drudge that Roger Ailes is getting a contract extension at News Corp. Developing! Ailes, the president of Fox News, has been focused on launching and building the Fox Business Network for the last year, which he failed at, miserably, and meanwhile Fox News itself has begun a long-overdue tailspin into delusional irrelevance, with cranky Brit Hume retiring and Shep Smith the channel's sole voice of reason as Hannity and Greta Van Susteren run wild. So hey, Ailes will remain at the wheel through Obama's first term, probably. Maybe he can right the ship and transform it into a coherent (if still nutso) voice of opposition? Or maybe it will continue to be a madhouse of feverish conspiracy and paranoia. Either way, Roger, like his Fox Business Network, will not sweat the recession.

♦ Roger Ailes (left) has renewed his contract with News Corp., which will keep him by Rupert Murdoch's side for at least five more years (and keep him running the show at Fox News for at least one more presidential election). [NYT]
♦ New York has fired longtime restaurant critic Gael Greene. [Feedbag]
♦ The Runway battle continues: Lifetime has sued NBC over claims it is blocking the cable channel from airing future episodes of the reality TV show. [NYP]

Greta Van Susteren and Matt Lauer were first out of the gate with lengthy Sarah Palin interviews after the election. The chats were slammed as softball jobs by some critics, and you can now add Katie Couric to that group, at least in one regard: She wishes someone had asked the former Republican vice presidential nominee why she didn't answer Couric's simple and ultimately devastating question about what newspapers and magazines Palin reads. Hopefully Lauer, who hosted Today with Couric for nine years, doesn't take the critique personally, particularly since Couric may very well end up back at NBC. Click the video icon to watch Couric explain her thoughts on David Letterman's Late Show.

♦ NBC chief Jeff Zucker is tightening making another round of cuts. This time it's CNBC, which will see its budget slashed by 10 percent. [NYO]
♦ A group of liberal activists printed up fake copies of the New York Times today to hand out to passerby in Midtown. [NYT]
♦ Gerard Baker has been named deputy editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. [Romenesko]
♦ Katie Couric's advice for Sarah Palin: "I think she should keep her head down, work really hard and learn about governing." [Page Six]
♦ John McCain's first TV appearance since he lost the election translated into big ratings for Jay Leno's Tonight Show. [THR]
♦ Monday's interview with Sarah Palin was also a winner with Greta Van Susteren's On The Record earning its best ratings of the year. [B&C]

Square-jawed Fox News host Greta Van Susteren is out to show that the media is not totally in the tank, by giving a fair and balanced interview to Gov. Sarah Palin right in her own back yard! And by that we mean not just "the state of Alaska," but literally "her own back yard." Greta is chronicling her trip to Wasilla on her very own blog, "GretaWire," which allows us all to take an intimate peek into this cross-continental journalistic excursion. Question: On a scale of 1-10, how much of this trip was for "journalism," and how much was for "Whoa, free snowmobile ride!"? Let Greta's own pictures guide you:
EXCLUSIVE PALIN KITCHEN PHOTO!!!!!

♦ More pain at 4 Times Square: Condé Nast is shuttering Elegant Bride. [Jossip]
♦ Despite the fact Portfolio fired 32 staffers last week, a spokesperson confirms the mag is going ahead with a soirée at the 21 Club later this month. [Page Six]
♦ Not surprisingly, Fox News has landed the first post-election interview with Sarah Palin. Greta van Susteren will sit down with her in Alaska over the weekend; the interview will be broadcast on Monday. [THR]

The job of the White House press secretary is a ridiculous one—DCs most overpaid "journalists" toss out leading questions they know the answer to, the press secretary replies with stonewalling, outright lying, or repetition of talking points, and everyone files the same information-free report—so it's fitting that President-elect Obama's probable pick for the job has extensive experience on the world's most ridiculous cable news network, Fox. During the campaign, Gibbs specialized in neutralizing and befuddling the dimmer bulbs of Fox, like Sean Hannity and the crew of buffoons at Fox & Friends. Want a preview of the theatrical arguments of 2009's White House press briefings? Click through for Gibbs in action. First, Gibbs spins circles around Steve Doocy and Fox's resident morons on the subject of EVIL BILL AYERS:

Who's the big winner of this election, besides whoever got laid in exchange for their ticket to last night's Obama rally? Bill O'Reilly, of course! Loud Fox asshole and bold fresh piece of humanity O'Reilly lays out his strategy: "We are going to be the watchdogs. We don't know what Obama is going to do. It's my job to explain every move he makes, but I'm not going to nitpick him." I guess he's now like Keith Olbermann, and vice versa! There are some benefits to being in the opposition party. (He said this to TMZ, btw. Bill, why do you talk to TMZ but not to us? We won't nitpick you.) [TMZ]

Guess who's here: Ralph Nader! The irritating old fool went completely around the bend this year, and now he's on Fox News calling Barack Obama an Uncle Tom. That's right! The formerly respectable lefty consumer advocate—seriously, we didn't even hate on him after 2000—now just says outrageous nonsense for attention, like when he did the thing with the parrot. He's pissed away his relevance and thus his hope of accomplishing any of his admirable goals and we're sick of him.In 2000, Nader got nearly 3 million votes, for 2.74 percent of the popular vote. In 2004, he didn't even get 500k. This year it looks like he managed to get half a percent of the vote, though, with 587,758 and counting, so good work, Ralph! He beat the Libertarian! And got just enough votes, it looks like, to put Missouri in the McCain camp! SPOILER!!! There was a time, 20 years ago, when Nader could've been in a Democratic president's cabinet. And, you know, then he could've actually helped working people and stuff! Now he just talks to parrots and says incredibly insulting things about Barack Obama, who everyone likes, unlike poor dumb Ralph Nader, who invented seat belts and then spent his last years annoying liberals.

The list of election '08 losers is a long one: There's John McCain, of course, who will die angry and bitter, notwithstanding his rather gracious concession speech last night. Steve Schmidt, McCain's chief strategist, will probably have trouble finding a Little League team to advise, unless he manages to redeem himself somehow. From Republicans on the Hill to GOP strategists to snowmobile and hunting enthusiasts, plenty of people will feel the cold wind of electoral defeat for a long time to come. After the jump, a roundup of New York City's nine biggest losers.

It appears we have the first media gaffe of the evening: Fox News called the swing state of Ohio, crucial to John McCain's hopes of an upset, for Barack Obama. It looks like a butterfingers on the graphics team got ahead of the network's decision desk, placing an all-important checkmark next to the picture of Obama and misleading anchor Brit Hume. UPDATE: And Karl Rove now says McCain needs a miracle, after Fox News officially called Ohio for Obama. Two videos are after the jump.

CNN has, as Barack Obama might put it, reshaped election night for the 21st Century, with holographic reporters and John King's famous, magical touchscreen. Over at Fox News, meanwhile, outgoing anchor Brit Hume is still coming to terms with basic "greenscreen" tech, the well-established technique in which a correspondent stands in front of a monochromatic background that is filled in later with special video equipment.

Has Rupert Murdoch made a terrible miscalculation? Michael Wolff thinks so! Wolff, Murdoch's newest biographer, says that the New York Post's uncharacteristically fawning Obama-centric cover today is Murdoch's way of apologizing to the future president (Obama) for the Post's endorsement of McCain. In fact, it's been widely rumored for months that Murdoch wanted the Post to endorse Obama. So what's going on here? Rupert Murdoch has always been canny about getting in good with those in power, even if they're from the party he opposes. He made nice with Tony Blair in the UK. And the Post did in fact endorse Obama over Hillary Clinton, once it was clear Obama would win. Besides that, Murdoch's pet paper the Sun in the UK pretty much deified Obama. And even Fox News managed to work out an Obama interview with Bill O'Reilly, when they weren't calling him "Osama" and such. So why didn't Rupert just get the Post to go ahead and endorse Obama in the general election? Two reason. One of those reasons is named "Sarah Palin." Murdoch flirted with her coyly, and ended up tentatively supporting her convoluted policy proposals in public. It may be that he fell in love with her personality (the same mistake McCain made), or just came to the conclusion that, dumb as she is, at least she wasn't likely to push for any more regulation of his business if she came into office when McCain keeled over. The second reason is more basic: a Post endorsement of Obama just wasn't practical. It would defeat the paper's very reason for existence, which is to be a rabid conservative voice in the midst of the liberal NYC media. So Rupert Murdoch just allowed them to endorse McCain, then set about sending every possible signal that he's willing to be friendly with Obama after he wins. Not that dumb after all.