The anchor of Fox's "Good Day New York" thinks this Rachael Ray/ Dunkin' Donuts controversy (recap: Celebuchef Ray wore a keffiyeh in an ad, right-wingers were outraged, the company pulled the ad) is so stupid. It is! When the story came up this morning, he acknowledged that he can't stand Rachael Ray and doesn't even care what this controversy is about. Cue co-anchor Jodi Applegate leaning over and hissing (audibly): "Dunkin Donuts is one of our sponsors." His backtracking is magical! Please, click to watch this moment of journalistic integrity in action.

Alan Schnurman, the lawyer representing Fox News bedbug victim Jane Clark, explains the origin of the infestation: "My position is that it comes from foreigners...Because it became so inexpensive for foreigners to travel here, I believe they brought it into our hotel system." God, we knew it was a bad sign he called his client "Joan" yesterday. Just show the pictures and keep your mouth shut, Schnurman! You'll ruin everything! [NYO]

Our item yesterday about the rumored C-word contretemps between CAA agent Dan Aloni and Fox Atomic exec Debbie Liebling — which we heard led to a unilateral CAA ban from the Fox lot — drew quite a bit of interest from all involved. Make that "everyone but CAA," rather, which had Nikki Finke do its dirty work for them. Variety even accused us of "an exceptional Internet smear campaign" — before pulling its story down minutes later. But we'll get to that in a moment. First things first: After the jump, a studio "denial"!

The blow-dried, plastic smile-bearing Fox 5 reporter asks Jared Crystal what happened. Jared, the very cultural opposite of the reporter in his ponytail and "Republicans For Voldemort" T-shirt, explains that he was simply sitting in his car, reading 1984—an ordinary night—when a tree limb came crashing down! A scary situation! The reporter grimaces at the disheveled man with the disastrous car. "Reading 1984, and look what it got you!" the reporter says. "Next time read something more easy and calm!" Jared graciously blames Arbor Day, rather than punching the reporter in the face. Click to watch the underlying tension of the media's culture war in action.

Jeff Zucker isn't making many friends these days. After tussling with Harvey Weinstein a few weeks ago over the fate of Project Runway and then feuding with Fox over the Bill O'Reilly-Keith Olbermann feud, he's now directing his aim at Fox Business News. He told Charlie Rose that the upstart posed no competition to CNBC: "It's not even, frankly, in the same universe with us." To which Fox replied in an official statement: "In Jeff's universe, where his entire career has been based on failing upwards, CNBC's performance would be considered a success." More analysis here. The video from Rose's interview with Zucker is here.

Last night, we were finally treated to the David vs. David karoake Idol deathmatch that seemed such an inevitability for weeks now. You could practically smell the tension hanging over the Nokia Theater—a potent combination of baby powder, cherry-flavored lozenges, and young testosterone—as both worthy competitors took to the stage for a championship face-off that relied heavily upon boxing metaphor. (Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was cast in the role of Mickey Goldmill, bandaging Archuleta's busted eye between songs as he implored the little belter to, "Keep hittin'em in the ribs ya see? Don't let that bastard breathe!")

· Will Smith will produce the U.S. version of Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a little French comedy sleeper about a post office manager banished to the boonies. "There are only 65 million people who live in France, and $191 million seemed to defy all logic," explained producer Ken Stovitz, his eyes rolling to the back of his head and passing clear out as he did some quick calculations and came up with an opening weekend domestic total of $1.2 billion. [Variety]
· John Grisham's novel Playing For Pizza, about a slice of pizza who gets recruited by a high-power law firm only to find itself caught up in a web of corruption and intrigue and eventually eaten by a hungry sanitation worker, has been optioned by Phoenix Pictures. [THR]
· John Woo will tackle 1949—a "a big budget romancer," that is not, to our knowledge, a sequel to the 1979 Steven Spielberg film picking up eight years into the high-flying adventures of Cpt. Wild Bill Kelso and friends. [Variety]

In a video testimonial posted this weekend to YouTube (do you call something that runs at 1 frame-per-second a "video," or just a really fast slide show?), American Idol contestant Danny Noriega—who before a premature ouster ushered in such hot-tranny-fierce-messisms as "TMTH: too much too handle," "ish," "mmm-hm," and, most notably, "SOME people weren't LIKIN' it," (accompanied by a whiplash-inducing neck-swivel)—revealed that he hasn't so much as received a ticket to attend any portion of this week's two-part, all-David finale.

· Fox's fall schedule announcement introduces only two new shows: a comedy called Do Not Disturb (formerly The Inn), and J.J. Abrams's new series Fringe, which will air Tuesdays at 9 after House. Details on Fringe are being kept under close wraps, but based upon a slew of promotional images over at TV Week, we think it revolves around a conspiracy discovered by a quality control technician at a menthol cigarette factory, played by Joshua Jackson. Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, meanwhile, and new animated shows Sit Down, Shut Up and The Cleveland Show won't air until mid-season. Executed: Back to You, Canterbury's Law, K-Ville, Nashville, New Amsterdam, The Next Great American Band, The Return of Jezebel James and Unhitched. [Variety]
· Daniel Day-Lewis may be taking over the role vacated by Javier Bardem in Rob Marshall's movie of the musical Nine. Bla bla milkshake jazz-hands bla bla. [Variety]

On last night's splendiferous, Sayesha-ejecting American Idol results show—like nasty walnut chunks in maple ice cream, she was utterly ruining our pure, David-savoring experience—third season Idol winner Fantasia Barrino stopped by the Karoakedome to perform. And yet "perform" seems not quite the sufficient term in this instance—rather, she seemed literally belched from some fiery, subterranean afterworld miles beneath CBS Television City, accompanied by a chorus of winged backup-demons. The audience—many of whom were still enjoying the pleasant, torpor-inducing effects of David Archuleta singing about "fishes in the ocean"—reacted as though they had just been smacked against the side of the head with a hooker's club foot.

"American Idol, the most popular show on television, will be back on Fox next year." Did anyone actually think it would get cancelled? [Times]

· Fox has picked up J.J. Abrams's Fringe, about a female FBI agent who "tackles unexplained medical and scientific phenomena," and Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, both for mid-season debuts meant to be bolstered by American Idol's return, an effect Fox internally refers to as "the Drunk-Paula Boost." [Variety]
· The CW makes it official: The Beverly Hills, 90210 spinoff is a go, with Jennie Garth reprising her role as Kelly Taylor. New York magazine will eventually go on to declare the series "mankind's greatest single achievement since the Wright brothers perfected human flight." [THR]
· ABC, meanwhile, has ordered "quirky sci-fi thriller" Life on Mars, a new animated series from Mike Judge called The Goode Family, and Ashton Kutcher reality show Opportunity Knocks. Unlike last year's Cavemen, none are based on an insurance commercial—though Allstate, a "drama with supernatural elements" starring Dennis Haysbert as a creepy guy who has a way of always showing up at highway accidents, is said to be a possible mid-season replacement. [Variety]

Mike Darnell is the undisputed evil genius of reality TV, a fiendish Rumplestiltskin installed high atop a Fox tower, where he oversees day-to-day operations of that network's Dept. of Non-Scripted, Deluge-Summoning Entertainment. Ask anyone who has witnessed Darnell in action, and they'll describe how his mind never stops churning, processing the virtually limitless combinations of millionaires/ abandoned daughters/ homely women he can sequester on islands/ McMansions/ lie-detector-equipped soundstages, confident America will tune in to find out if they forget the lyrics/survive that reindeer attack/are dumber than a 5th grader. THR sat down with Darnell to find out what makes Satan's Primetime Minion tick:

If we can rely on American Idol for one thing, it's to witness some of our favorite pop and rock standards get mutilated in increasingly graphic and elaborate ways, like some nubile brunette exchange student wandering unwittingly into an Eli Roth movie. It was Jason Castro who delivered last night's purest moment of armrest-clutching terror, an aural torture in two acts that first required him to channel Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," apparently as interpreted by a special-needs monkey. Predictably, the performance inspired some extra-vicious critiques from Simon Cowell. (We were a little surprised, however, that none of the take-downs involved the term "dredful," or his envy of the sheriff's sweet, silencing fate.)

Rich Jernstedt, the chief marketing officer of the massive PR firm Fleishman-Hillard, emails us to explain why, exactly, someone at his firm had the bright idea of mocking Fox News as a nasty, bedbug-infested den of disease, and offering Fox guests a free de-lousing in order to get publicity for a pest control client. Rich, Rich, you don't understand: we're with you on this one. Fox News is a nasty, bedbug-infested den of disease. And we like to see a PR firm uncharacteristically attack a powerful media outlet. We're hoping for a full-on war here! But, reading between the lines of Rich's email, it sounds like Fleishman has done some serious groveling since its CEO got mocked by Fox on-air in retaliation last week. His full email about "our friends at FOX," below:

It was less than six months ago that Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane was picketing along with his fellow WGA members, saying of Fox's plans to air Guy episodes that had not yet been completed: "It would just be a colossal dick move if they did that." At the time, MacFarlane had the luxury of knowing his deal with the studio—two years in the making, and reportedly astronomical—had yet to be finalized, putting him "in breach of nothing" during the work stoppage. Well, the dotted-lines have at last been signed, the fences, apparently mended: 20th Century Fox TV will make MacFarlane the highest-paid writer/producer/gay-baby-voicer in television.

Fox News's 3 a.m. time-slot filler Greg Gutfeld has an interview with TVNewser coming up that is sure to be chock-full of quotable lines. Like Gutfeld calling his show Red Eye "the most subversive, surreal piece of programming ever to be on TV." You, sir, have apparently never caught Unbeatable Banzuke. Greg will also take on HuffPo, Gawker, the magazine industry, and "politically correct media." We're sure he has very SHOCKING and CONTROVERSIAL opinions on all of those things. Cutest part of the interview excerpt posted so far is when Greg says Fox pushed him from the semi-reasonable 2 a.m. slot to the desolate 3 a.m. slot because the network needed "more political coverage." We're all big fans of Fox News's award-winning 2 a.m. election updates! [TVNewser]

Steve Jobs has finally wooed all the major studios, including Fox, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Universal, to sell movie downloads on the day DVDs are released. On Friday, you'll be able to wait a while as American Gangster downloads over your crappy American broadband connection for $14.99. And it will be delivered in lower quality than standard DVDs, without any of those annoying extra features. But it will have Apple's DRM installed with every copy! What finally brought Hollywood to the table?

Hillary Clinton sat down with Bill O'Reilly yesterday because she apparently feels no compunction about encouraging him. The result was a reasonably reasonable interview, especially for Bill—which is not entirely surprising, as he usually saves his bullying for people who are easily bullied. He called her a socialist, yes, and then he called Teddy Roosevelt a socialist as well. At the end of the interview (which continues today) O'Reilly tried to goad Hillary into trashing NBC news. It might've worked! Bill hates MSNBC because their Keith Olbermann subjects him to the sort of personal abuse that Bill specializes in. Hillary hates MSNBC because their Chris Matthews compulsively says terrible sexist things about her. Sadly, Clinton backed down from the fight. Later today, they're gonna talk waterboarding!

· This just in! A tensely worded rehashing of Variety's SAG strike doomsaying piece from Monday! Twelve days into things, progress looks "negligible." Need we remind the Powers That Be of that full-page trade ad taken out by George, Tom, Meryl and Bob back in February? For the love of God, Alan Rosenberg! Just. Talk. [Variety]
· The Young & the Restless and Sesame Street lead the Daytime Emmy nominations, though the two long-running series will only face off in one category: Outstanding Performance By An Actor or Math-Obsessed Vampire. [THR]