Last night, Stephen Colbert made good on his promise to cover Rebecca Black's YouTube sensation (some would call it an earworm) 'Friday' on 'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.' And it was epic.

Just a bit of the funny backstory: earlier this week, Colbert claimed that his "best friend for six months," Fallon, was going to match a $26,000 donation to DonorsChoose.org. Fallon said he promised no such thing, but in the spirit of saying your BFFSM will do something without consulting him first, he promised that Colbert would sing 'Friday' with the Roots if his audience could raise the $26,000 by Friday.

Well, they more than doubled that amount, and NBC Universal kicked in another 26 grand; more than $80,000 in contributions were made to this site, where educators solicit donations for school supplies and projects.

Last night, Jimmy Kimmel told Bill Maher a story from his days of co-hosting 'Win Ben Stein's Money,' in which he alleged that Arianna Huffington, after being eliminated from the show, spent the rest of the taping repeatedly squeezing his ass from behind the podium. He went on to call Huffington "crazy" several times, making her the butt of his joke as Bill Maher cringed that his friend's good name was being soiled.

Needless to say, we were intrigued and amused by this shocking revelation. So we reached out to Ms. Huffington, the soon-to-be editor-in-chief of all of AOL's content properties, TV Squad included, for a comment. Her response was, well, adorable:

"I certainly don't remember squeezing Jimmy Kimmel's tush on the set of 'Win Ben Stein's Money,' but if I did, it was probably because my buzzer was broken."

Zing!

Now, we had previously heard that Arianna's management style involves lots of cookies and sweaters. After this report, we're fairly confident she will light a fire under our asses. Ahem ... give us a swift kick in the rear, we mean. OK, we'll stop now.

With Bill Maher on his show, Jimmy Kimmel wondered if he had any insight into the "crazy" (his word) that is Arianna Huffington, whom Maher has known since his 'Politically Incorrect' days.

"She did something to me once a long time ago that I've never told anyone before," said the host on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' (weeknights, 12AM ET on ABC). When she appeared on 'Win Ben Stein's Money', "I'm standing at the podium and she started squeezing my a-- during the show, repeatedly squeezing it. And I didn't know what to do. I turned bright red."

On 'The Colbert Report' (Weeknights, 11:30PM ET on Comedy Central) Stephen Colbert lamented that none of the $315 million Arianna Huffington received from AOL for the sale of The Huffington Post would be coming to him.

"Darling, I happened to cruise by your $300 million website and you know what I find?" Colbert said, imitating Huffington's Greek accent. "A whole lot of me. Including clips for my show on your site's dedicated Stephen Colbert page. You did the impossible. You made me feel angry while looking at pictures at myself. Where's my money Arianna?"

As you may have heard, AOL recently bought The Huffington Post for $315 million. As part of the deal, The Huffington Post's president and co-founder Arianna Huffington will now be the editor-in-chief of all of AOL's content properties.

Huffington appeared on 'Real Time With Bill Maher' (Friday, 10PM ET on HBO), and the two had a little fun with Huffington's new role by having Maher call AOL's Moviefone, only to hear Mr. Moviefone's distinctive voice replaced by Huffington's.

"Hello darling, you have reached Moviefone," said the new Moviefone message. "Now playing, 'The Kids Are Alright.' But the kids are not alright, they are suffocating under a mountain of debt, created mostly during the Bush administration."

And what does Moviefone have to say about the Oscar-nominated film, 'The Social Network'?

"'The Social Network,' finally something worth seeing, a brilliant visionary gets into the Internet business and makes a boatload of money. I love this movie."

It's been announced that AOL has bought The Huffington Post for $315 million. As part of the deal, The Huffington Post's co-founder and editor-in-chief, Arianna Huffington, will now be in charge of all AOL's content, including TV Squad.

Huffington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong appeared on 'Piers Morgan Tonight' (Weeknights, 9PM ET on CNN), where they spoke about the deal, and the future of AOL.

Morgan wanted to know if AOL was going to start charging for content, noting that his ex-boss, News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, believes that charging readers to access online content is the only way forward.

Huffington disagreed, saying that, "People are used to getting their news for free. The only thing people are willing to pay for on the Internet are specific financial information that they can monetize and, don't ask me why, but they are willing to pay for weird porn."

So, you can rest easy: This means that TV Squad won't be charging for content any time soon. (And we won't be featuring any weird porn, either.)

On the latest 'Daily Show' (weeknights, 11PM ET on Comedy Central), media mogul Arianna Huffington was the guest. Huffington is very excited about Jon Stewart's upcoming "Rally to Restore Sanity." a planned political march on Washington, DC. This rally is a sort of liberal/Democratic response to Glenn Beck's recent "Restoring Honor" event, which was also held in our nation's capital.

And because Arianna was so excited, she made a very nice offer: Free transportation to the rally for anyone who wants it!

Yup, the very wealthy Ms. Huffington will be giving free bus rides to the "Sanity" event. "We have as many buses as there are people to fill them," she said. "That's our promise." So if you're in the New York City area, and you're interesting in heading to DC for the rally, you can just show up at the following address on October 30th ...

File this under good casting news: 'Firefly's' Alan Tudyk has reportedly joined the cast of NBC's upcoming 'Rockford Files' reboot, which stars Dermot Mulroney as the titular character, Jim Rockford. Tudyk, who also appeared on 'Dollhouse' and 'V,' will play Det. Dennis Becker, the only cop who seems to get along with Rockford's "slightly crumpled" and "cynical" personality. 'House's' David Shore wrote the pilot. [Hollywood Reporter]

More casting news after the jump.

I had no idea that Arianna Huffington was also producing TV shows along with being in charge of a giant blogging empire. But she's one of the people behind the new ABC series 'Freshman,' along with Greg Malins ('How I Met Your Mother'). The comedy will be set in Washington, D.C. and will be about three young politicians. I guess Huffington is going to produce a show about something she's familiar with, politics and Washington, D.C.

One of those three young politicians will be Sarah Chalke, formerly of 'Scrubs.' Can I tell you how embarrassed I was when 'Scrubs' started that I didn't realize that Chalke was the girl who took over in the role of Becky Conner (from Lecy Goranson, now called Alicia Goranson) on 'Roseanne' for a few seasons? Looking back now it's insanely obvious but I didn't make the connection until a few years after 'Scrubs' started.

Sarah Chalke is going to Washington.

The former 'Scrubs' star has been tapped to star in ABC's 'Freshmen,' the highly-anticipated comedy pilot from Greg Malins and, of all people, blogger Arianna Huffington.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Chalke will play Jane, a "beautiful," "smart" and extremely successful woman who is great at politics but terrible with men. Jane lives with two male roommates in D.C., each of whom are freshman members of Congress. Said roles have yet to be cast.

The game of programming roulette continued Monday as several more shows were picked up by the networks -- each hopeful to have locked in the next big thing.

Fans of 'The O.C.' and 'Gossip Girl' have reason to rejoice. Creative wunderkind, Josh Schwartz and his 'Chuck' co-exec producer, Matt Miller, have sold a new sitcom called 'Hitched' to CBS. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the half-hour, mulitcamera comedy will focus on a young newlywed couple trying to figure each other - and marriage - out.

Joining 'Hitched' on the eye network will be a new untitled comedy from Tad Quill. Quill, a longtime collaborator with Bill Lawrence on such hits as 'Spin CIty' and 'Scrubs', has written a still untitled comedy about a widower dad who grapples with raising his 12 year-old son and getting back in the dating scene.

Arianna Huffington teams with ABC, 'Dancing With the Stars' to pay tribute to the late Patrick Swayze, Ron Howard returns to Fox and more of today's top TV headlines.

When I first read the headline about Arianna Huffington getting into the TV comedy business, I had visions of her as Maude or something equally as bizarre.

Fortunately, it was just my skewed sense of humor at work, because Arianna Huffington, the political talking head and co-creator of The Huffington Post, is not starring in a sitcom. ABC has bought Huffington's idea for a multicamera sitcom. And just to make sure it's funny, they've hired executive producer Greg Malins (Friends, How I Met Your Mother) to develop the project.

20th Century Fox TV is producing the show for ABC and, yes, it is about politics. See, there are these three freshman members of the House of Representatives, two men and a woman (but no pizza place). They share an apartment in the D.C. area. "One is swept up in the movement of change... one has been in politics for a long time, and one is a master of the media and sound bites," said Malins.

Last week, we reported on George Clooney and a blog entry he claimed wasn't his that was posted on Arianna Huffington's website. It was a compliation of political quotes from Clooney. Huffington claimed no wrongdoing on her part.

Well, she kinda changed her mind.

According to CNN, Huffington has apologized to her readers about the mishap. Saying that she was blindsided by the creation of the blog, Huffington admitted that she made a mistake when she didn't clearly identify the material that was being posted. She told her readers that she will include snippets from interviews and other conversations into her own blogs in the future.

Now, you notice that she apologized to her readers and not to Clooney himself. Needless to say, Clooney's publicist wasn't entirely satisfied. Well, gosh, now George has something else to be ticked off about!

 

 

George Clooney is upset. Well, that's not really news, as he gets upset about a lot of things. This time he's miffed about a blog entry on Arianna Huffington's website, which he claims he did not write.

According to CNN, the recent Academy award winner and former star of ER and, um, ER, says he did not post a profanity-laced blog entry on Huffington's website, though he gave her permission to use a compilation of his quotes on the war in Iraq from past interviews. The post itself criticized the Democrats for stamping down their views and their criticism of the Bush administration in the months before the invasion of Iraq began.

Clooney claimed Huffington's blog was misleading, while Huffington denied any wrongdoing in a rebuttal on her website.

I smell a new movie, produced and directed by George. I'll warm up my DVD player.