While FOX continued to pounce all comers in the ratings, it was MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell who made for the most intriguing storyline: Friday marked his last show at 8 p.m. (he’s being swapped with Ed Schultz and starts broadcasting at 10 p.m. tonight), and he went out with a bang, finishing in second place behind [...]

After 23 years, 500 episodes and billions of d’oh!’s later, money disputes have shown Fox studio executives ready to pull the plug on their long running hit series, The Simpsons.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson earned himself a hardy round of laughs at last night’s Fox News/Google debate when he joke that “his next-door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration.” It was a good joke, but it wasn’t him. According to Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone, radio host Rush Limbaugh delivered a similar joke on air earlier that day.

Is Obama losing the Jewish vote? Probably not, says provocateur and American Jew, Jerry Springer. ”Look, come on, Perry?” he begged on a Fox and Friends this morning, where he joined Gretchen Carlson, Big Hollywood’s Larry O’Connor and country music singer Billy Dean on a “Special Political Panel” to discuss the much coveted “Jewish vote.”

Bad news for Emmy viewers who were hoping to catch Alec Baldwin tonight– an off-color phone hacking joke seems to have prompted the actor of abandon the project, leaving a trail of angry tweets behind him. The drama started last Thursday, when Baldwin was notified that a joke about the Murdoch phone hacking scandal may have been cut from an introductory comedy bit. With that rumor confirmed tonight, the actor is boycotting the Emmys and, apparently, spending the night at his trusty keyboard instead.

The New York Post reports this morning, in brief, that “CBS and Fox infuriated viewers yesterday by cutting away to the opening Sunday NFL match-ups — in the middle of the 9/11 memorial coverage.” And they weren’t even New York football teams!

Last night, Bill O’Reilly had actress and environmentalist Darryl Hannah on his show to talk about her continued opposition to a proposed oil pipeline that would run from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. An odd match, the two actually seem to be in agreement when it comes to on thing: the need for fossil fuel independence. We weren’t expecting that.

Fox News has taken to the earthquaken streets of DC, where they met to two officers and are now reporting that the Washington Monument may in fact be in danger. A District police officer told the Fox producer that, “They are concerned the Washington Monument might be tilting.”

The long national nightmare may be just beginning. The most hated woman in America, former Orlando mother acquitted of murder Casey Anthony, is officially a free woman, after Orlando officials released her into an unmarked car beside an angry crowd. She will not be returning to her native habitat, but to an undisclosed location to which she was flown with attorney Jose Baez by her side.

What were they thinking in the morning meeting? The Fox station in Memphis decided to send reporter Ben Ferguson out to get some “political perspective” by jokingly interviewing the always intelligent and reliable “people on the street,” and ask them questions like this: “can you name the candidate for president who thinks if he’s a good person he will get his own planet?” One MOS (that’s Man on the Street, of course) tells Ferguson he wouldn’t vote for a person who believed such things, since it’s “a little fruity, a little nutty.”

How did the publisher of a family-owned newspaper in Adelaide, Australia rise to become one of the most powerful media tycoons on Earth–controlling a fortune worth more than 30 billion dollars? The rise of News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch is probed in a Bloomberg TV special airing Tuesday night. The Murdoch special, part of the Game Changers series, includes interviews with people who’ve worked with Murdoch at Fox, the New York Post and in the U.K., and by journalists who’ve studied him. “Rupert Murdoch is what God meant when he created a media executive,” says Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Ron Grover.

NBC’s late night comic Jay Leno got some unflattering attention from Fox’s overnight Red Eye crew, who suggested one of Leno’s jokes sounded awfully familiar. The show’s Andy Levy began by airing a delightfully amusing clip from Leno, from May 26

Nick Kosir, aka “The Rapping Weatherman,” is that uniquely 21st century breed of celebrity, the viral video superstar. In 2010, Nick’s fly forecasts propelled him on a meteoric career trajectory that saw him break onto the national radar, and garnered him a jump from the 141st TV market in the country to the 6th. Along the way, Nick encountered a fork in the road to fame and fortune, and he chose the off-ramp to Twin Falls, Idaho…and true love.

In Houston, the Fox television station asks an important question: “how on Earth can you mix pole dancing with Jesus.” Indeed. And since this is local news, we get the treat of a full investigation of the Texas phenomenon of pole dancing for Jesus, which takes church-going girls, puts them in stripper heels (“the shoes are good for the glutes”) and puts them on the pole. You know, for fitness. And God.

After his interview on FOX, Philadelphia sports radio personality Mike Missanelli thought his microphone was off, so he didn’t realize he was on air when he started using some…colorful language.

The continued rise of Spanish-language Univision was on display in February, as the network passed NBC to become America’s fourth network–regardless of language. And on Friday nights in February, Univision was the country’s top-rated network among the coveted demographic of viewers 18-34. “We are thrilled that Univision continues to deliver season-to-date growth while solidifying its position as a top five network in the U.S., competing head to head with ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC,” said Cesar Conde, president, Univision Networks, in a statement.

Last night FOX chose to air their hit show Glee in the coveted post-Super Bowl time slot. The football themed episode featured the cast performing their take on “Thriller” in addition to having the CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric drop by to interview “loser of the year” Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch’s hilarious cheerleading coach).

These days it seems President Obama can’t even get through an apolitical football game without someone bossing him around to do something or another. Despite being a unique game in many ways, this Super Bowl was no different, as the Black-Eyed Peas’ Will.I.Am took poetic license to demand of the President to “get these kids educated!” in the middle of “Where is the Love?”

Father Alberto Cutié– Miami’s most popular formerly Catholic priest– is heading back to his TV roots, this time in English. Fox television is giving Father Albert, a life advice talk show, a shot, nearly two years since Cutie controversially left the priesthood (and, subsequently, his talk show host status on Telemundo) to start a family.

From the outset, CNN’s Piers Morgan made it clear he had his eyes on one very specific prize: beating Fox News. With one week–albeit the first, which tends to attract higher ratings as viewers drop in to check out the new guy–in the books, Morgan’s Piers Morgan Tonight is still a ways from threatening Fox. But he’s definitely put a dent in MSNBC’s hold on second place.

Fox has rejected a Super Bowl ad for a site called, innocently and innocuously, JesusHatesObama.com, calling it “unacceptable.” The site sells merchandise like mugs and T-shirts poking fun at the President and his policies and informs visitors that while they don’t actually believe Jesus hates Obama, they do believe in “the freedom to make fun of the Obama Administration with novelty T-shirts.”

British meteorologist Piers Corbyn appeared on Fox and Friends to not only celebrate his accurate prediction of a bone-chillingly cold winter, but to also share his disgust with the “failed science” known as global warming. Despite it often being mentioned that the scientific community agrees about global warming, Corbyn is proud to go against the grain and advocate for his hypothesis of the coming global cooling.

Talk about your tough game shows: they got the $80,000 question right, but lost anyway. Now the couple’s getting a do-over.

Gabe Okoye and Brittany Mayti were contestants on Fox’s new game show Million Dollar Money Drop (apparently money actually does drop) and somehow they lost $800,000 even though they had the right answer to the question, which came first–the Post-It Note or the Sony Walkman.

What? It didn’t work out? The winner of last season’s Hell’s Kitchen thought she’d scored an epic job: head chef at the Savoy Grill, a Gordon Ramsay restaurant project inside the massively renovated (£220 million) Savoy Hotel in London, which opens today.

If you watched the show, you were treated to endless mentions of the Savoy and the job–pitched as a massive prize for whichever contestant could endure the backstabbing among the other contestants and the withering criticism of Ramsay himself. And now? Well, winner Holli Ugalde’s not making the trip to London after all. “I’m extremely disappointed and I feel a little betrayed,” she tells the Daily Mail.

The biggest story of the year comes (mostly) to a conclusion tomorrow night, and every network you’d expect to be covering the midterm elections will be in grand fashion.

We at Mediaite will be taking the night off (ha, kidding), but here’s a list of all the places to tune your TV to Tuesday night – and what to expect.