Following in David Letterman's footsteps, Jimmy Kimmel confirmed this weekend that he is involved in a relationship with one Molly McNearney, a long time staffer and the current co-head writer on his show. In the version given to People, a source close to the show (i.e. probably Kimmel's publicist) says they've been dating for several months now after Kimmel broke up with Sarah Silverman back in March and McNearney broke up with an unnamed boyfriend. As the "source" puts it: "After Jimmy and Sarah broke up, Molly and Jimmy both found themselves single, and they clicked. They're really happy together."

Also, says this insider (flack), the situation is nothing like Letterman's situation because "during work hours, they keep things professional."

While the entertainment world is no doubt reeling from this announcement, the news will come as no surprise to Gawker readers whom were alerted to a possible Kimmel-McNearney pairing a full fifteen months ago, when both were dating other people.

After Gawker ran the anonymous tip about the state of Jimmy Kimmel's romantic life, a "source close to McNearney" went to Defamer (this was before the sites merged) to vociferously deny the tale:

She is absolutely NOT banging Jimmy Kimmel. She was promoted from assistant to staff writer, and then from staff writer to head writer. Where's the controversy there? That's kinda how it works in this biz. Also, as a matter of interest, Molly has been with her boyfriend for 3 years, and believe it or not was in Africa ministering to orphans when this story broke (that's not sarcasm, I swear). The truth is that one of Jimmy's BFFs works as a writer on the show, and Molly and another writer tried to let him go. He complained to Jimmy, got his job reinstated, and then sought a little revenge via the interwebs. The sad thing is that this is tearing Molly up.

Nope, doesn't sound like Letterman's situation at all. Or perhaps they were simply star-crossed lovers who were fated to get together a full year after the rumor mill (falsely!) said they were already banging. Mysteries!

In the meantime, while we await proof from Leno, Ferguson, Fallon and O'Brien that they are not sleeping with their staff, caution would dictate that we reset our default assumption from "Sexless" to "Office Shenaniganizer" for all late-night front men.

As much as this plays into the Megan Fox as ultimate object of masculine desire cliche (which is just boring at this point), it's a relief to see poor Seth Rogen getting to talk about something different at this stop on his (and Sandler, Mann, and Apatow's) seemingly never ending Funny People tour. And, actually, it contains an infinitesemally revealing fact about Megan Fox: she was so nervous before the first show that she stopped by Seth's dressing room to ask him to stay and help her be funnier. If Megan Fox is the current blank screen onto which we project our ideas about ultimate femininity, the fact that she did that adds one little tiny pixel of coolness to that screen. I can't imagine a lot of actresses doing that, or even knowing who Seth Rogen was at that pre-Knocked Up point in time. And, bonus: next time Megan Fox is on Kimmel, she'll have something to talk about besides her tattoos.

"[O]ne ABC employee acknowledged that Nightline, the late-night ABC News show, has been talked about as a future 10 p.m. possibility," wrote Carter and Stelter. Its a weakly presented nugget—it comes from an "employee" of ABC rather than an executive or someone described as a well-placed source, and it's hedged to within an inch of it's life. ABC News executives are professing ignorance of the proposal.

The main beneficiary of such a move would be our friend Jimmy Kimmel, who would then be free to start at 11:35 and go head-to-head with Conan O'Brien. Carter wrote in January that ABC was considering replacing Nightline with Kimmel as early as this year, a notion that ABC News executives aggressively shot down. In either scenario, of course, Kimmel comes out on top. (Wait—he's an employee of ABC, right?)

Expanding Nightline to an hour and moving it up to 10 p.m. actually makes economic sense—the marginal increased costs of producing a second half-hour would be outweighed by the potential gain in doubling the show's ad revenue. And there are more viewers to attract at that hour. The question is whether it can make more profit—and provide a better lead-in for its affiliates' local news operations—than Lost or Private Practice or any of the new dramas it's launching at 10 p.m. next season. NBC's Leno move might open up space for dramas on other networks, making them a better proposition. Or it might herald an audience shift toward light-weight programming at 10 p.m. If it's the latter, moving up Nightline would be easy and smart.

But really—does anyone care anymore? Carter's January story about Kimmel taking Nightline's spot was cast in the breathless language of a battle between entertainment and news values. That was the case back in 2002, when ABC tried to lure David Letterman over to replace Nightline. But it was the case because Ted Koppel was hosting the show at the time, and Nightline was serious and designed to actually gather and distribute valuable information about the world. The fates of Martin Bashir and Cynthia McFadden may be interesting from a business perspective, but the battle between entertainment and news values was lost long ago.

Well Nikki Finke would argue that there shouldn't be any fuss at all, because winking network bashing is a hallmark tradition at upfronts. Which, absolutely, this is true. But what stuck (and stung for some) about this particular account is how, here in the glaring neon white light of TV's economic apocalypse, grim and trenchantly true all of Kimmel's jokes were. Especially when non-industry people heard them.

Yes, the whole thing is built on a pack of lies! And yes! A throw-millions-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks because, as Kimmel put it, "who cares? It's not your money" sort of attitude does seem wrong and a part of why the entire television industry and media at large and, hell, all of America is in the shitter. And that the factory workers of this creaky, arrogant system just sat and laughed and hooted to themselves "Ohhh, it's all so true!" seems a bit obtuse and, I'd imagine if I'd just lost my job at ABC in the past eight months, a bit callous.

In the past these upfront presentations were put on for the clubby group of television and ad execs and the reporters that cozily cover them, and everyone could have a laugh, go get drunk and then the next day everyone would continue to tell everyone how fabulous business is. Now, the dreaded Internet — which has basically demolished the old advertising business model — guarantees that all the inside jokes will get out.

So the people in the audience are sorta jerks and so is Kimmel and so are we for sticking our noses in other people's industries. Everyone's a jerk! This is TV after all.

[via AllThingsD]

In case you're unfamiliar with the "upfronts," they're an annual television industry event held in New York where all of the bigshots and stars from all the networks present their show lineups for the upcoming season to advertisers in the hopes of removing them from their money. Usually, these events are one enormous act of autofellatio, an endless stream of workers sucking the cocks of the companies they work for in order to hold on to their jobs and continue to cash ridiculously large paychecks, and really, who can blame them? Apart from the time in 1991 when Johnny Carson announced out of the blue that he was retiring during an NBC upfront presentation, these things are usually painfully benign, and are rarely, if ever, truly newsworthy. Typically it's an endless parade of people like Charlie Sheen stepping up to a podium to tell the fine folks at Procter and Gamble and General Motors how if they thought last year's season of Two and Half Men was funny, well, they haven't seen anything yet, because this upcoming season is going to be a fucking riot, and then they politely ask them for $1.5 million for a thirty second spot and the advertisers usually pay it and everyone goes home fat and happy. The end.

Now, with all of that established, back to Kimmel, who completely shattered this usual sort of monotony with his performance yesterday. Here's a sampling of what he said as advertising executives just sat there squirming in their seats, laughing nervously, exchanging "WTF?!" glances, not quite sure of what to make of what what happening in front of them as he fired rhetorical scuds at ABC, its competitors, and the advertising industry in general.

"Let's get real here. Let's get Dr. Phil-real here. These new fall shows? We're going to cancel about 90 percent of them. Maybe more."

"Every year we lie to you and every year you come back for more. You don't need an upfront. You need therapy. We completely lie to you, and then you pass those lies onto your clients."

"Next year on ‘Grey's Anatomy,' your product could kill Dr. Izzie. It just depends on how much you want to pay."

"I think all our shows are going to work this year. I really do. I don't, really."

"The important thing to remember is: who cares, it's not your money."

Kimmel also took a shot at NBC and Jay Leno, whom ABC once courted to possibly replace him when his contract with NBC expired, saying that they're "giving Jay's viewers exactly what they want. An early-bird special."

It's hard not to love and respect Jimmy Kimmel more than ever after all of this, but one can't help suspecting that ABC will soon be announcing his show's cancellation so that it can extend Nightline back to a full hour.

Jimmy Kimmel Demolishes ABC's Upfronts [New York Times]

Also unsurprising: Kimmel was entirely uncritical of Thorton's behavior earlier this month, when the Oscar-winner went off on a well-meaning Canadian DJ for daring to mention Thornton's work as an actor and director. Kimmel told Thornton he completely understands his ire, because "it's rude" to mention a famous actor's acting career... or have a journalist dare say what he's "not supposed to say." Jimmy Kimmel: The Ari Fleischer of the celebrity industrial complex since 2007.

Related: How Dare You Call Billy Bob Thornton An Actor [Gawker]
How The Gawker Stalker Map Works: A Guide For Dummies, Outraged Famous People And Old Folk [Gawker]

Mintz-Plasse was telling a story about how Harrison Ford thought he was really funny (right...) and, while supposedly quoting the grizzled old actor, said "Your speech... was fucking hilarious." Kimmel didn't seem particularly fazed — he even congratulated McLovin on getting Indiana Jones to use profanity. But just so you don't think the censors were snoozing, a few minutes later, as you'll see in the clip, they bleeped him saying "goddamn."

In a sign of how pointless it is to compete against our superstar President — it's fucking 2:30 in the afternoon and we're just getting around to it — according to a very lazy search of the Internet, approximately three Obama-hating people were watching at the time.

Actual, or setup for a joke? It's confirmed, anonymously but by Us Weekly and then People, so probably as real as it gets between two Hollywood celebrities and their dualing phalanxes of "people."

In other words, they waited until after the Oscars. Wouldn't want any "plus one" guest-list awkwardness at the afterparties! (Judging from the Vanity Fair Oscar-party pic above, they both knew the fix was in.)

Even outside this spot, Cruise and Kimmel have a stiff, awkward relationship. Witness the pair's somehow very wrong conversation on Kimmel's ABC late-night show this past December. It was the most awkward thing... well, since Kimmel had that one guest on and no one knew whether the couple were having sex with each other or not. Which was obviously a totally different situation from the Cruise thing. Entirely.

Now there's this, a bizarre ad that puts Cruise and Kimmel in a hot, handsy, intimate back and forth. Until the end, where Cruise decides the relationship is unnatural, and then kills Kimmel, like some kind of psychotic crazy person. Which, uh, must have required some strenuous acting. Especially because it's not like a male relationship would ever make Cruise just SNAP in some way.

We look forward to seeing this creepy role-playing game between the two men continue, until their relationship gets as odd and twisted as the Kimmell-Matt Damon bond, and we learn something new and vaguely unsettling about the ABC host.

For every admission that Kimmel thought — like pretty much everybody else — he'd be following Jay Leno when he presumably moved to ABC, there are a few less specific allusions to his place in the schema of late-night power brokerage. Kimmel backdoors his way into acknowledging that of course he wants to go up against Conan and Letterman (and hasn't ruled 11:30 out as an option at Fox), but at what cost? Being the guy that killed Nightline? If he doesn't do it, somebody else will, yet Kimmel's high-road holiday indicates he's got other things on his mind. Like toy metaphors:

The rumors have surfaced again lately that ABC's entertainment side is making a run at Nightline.

News always wants as much real estate as they can get, and so does entertainment. I don't know that I've ever met [ABC News chief] David Westin, to be honest with you. I just stay out of it. I'm the action figure in their playground, you know, in their bat cave. But it's weird to be part of this circle of gossip. Especially being a fan of late-night television. It's very surreal to be a character in this story.

So do you want 11:30? Would you do things differently?

Yeah I would [want 11:30], sure. Would I do anything different? Mostly thematic. I don't think the approach of the show would be much different. I'd like to have more staff. [...] There are a lot of boring things I could tell you about, but as far as big changes that would be about it. Maybe we'd need a bigger theater, a theater that looks bigger on camera. We're in a very old building.

So, for the record: Kimmel "stay[s] out of it," then in the next breath alludes to the ways Jimmy Kimmel Live has outgrown the confines of its 12:05 ghetto. Guests are improving but still trickling down to the El Capitan after earlier shows, if at all. In his own words, he's on the "very tail end of television as a big money-making business." A perfect time to stay out of it, Jimmy, no doubt. Now might be the time for that David Westin introduction, preferably with a few of your representatives. Unannounced. In a parking garage. After hours. That's where all the best deals are made. Make yours already.

• Q&A With Jimmy Kimmel [B&C]

After discerning that Hathaway's 2009 resolution was to try something new every day, Jimmy Kimmel invited her to do just that by blowing out the candles on a birthday cake with a fire extinguisher. And why not. Hathaway seizes the opportunity to crack a number of double entendres and enough "that's what she said" jokes to make even Michael Scott shoot an anxious glance to the camera. This is going straight in your matchmaking file, Anne—be careful, or Ellen may set you up with James Woods. [Jimmy Kimmel Live!]

Sure, the Cruise Fire appears to have been all but snuffed, as if the rigors of round-the-clock Valkyrie-pimping have finally gotten the best of him, draining all mystery and excitement from his story about Spaghetti alla Carbonara preparation. But why is Kimmel asking if Cruise feeds his children "porn pasta?" Is this what now passes for late show small talk with one of the world's most recognizable leading men? Is Kimmel starstruck? Bored? Was this just a case of "porn pasta" being the best comic copper Kimmel could spin out of depression-eater Cruise's life-unaffirming Italian cuisine anecdotes? Why are we suddenly so compelled to hit the Chianti, and hard? Children eating porn pasta makes us die a little inside. That is all. [Jimmy Kimmel Live!]

Then, when pressed by Kimmel about injuries suffered while making the film, Kurylenko one-upped her co-star Gemma Arterton by claiming she lost not just a superfluous sixth finger but a third arm as well! Hmmm, a third arm... there's gotta be a 007 sexual innuendo in there somewhere...

• Jimmy Kimmel Live [ABC]

After some loaded, pause-laden banter, Kimmel unveiled footage of a teenage Sarah (just look at that cute little punim!) singing her heart out. Though Silverman was initially horrified by this blast from the past, the clip eventually became a running joke that both comedians cued up when things got a little too frosty. Would that we all had such an option, but here at Defamer, we doubt that even the old VHS of us belting "Tell Me Something Good" (at age 10!) could get us through an awkward, P.F. Chang's-set reunion with some of our exes. Sarah? Jimmy? Good luck with your post-breakup journey, you crazy kids.

• Jimmy Kimmel Live [ABC]

After the jump: Michael Douglas has a party, Woody Harrelson has a complex, and Bull Durham plots a return by Costner demand.

· Eighteen years after giving the hardware to his father, the American Film Instutute selected Michael Douglas to receive next year's Lifetime Achievement Award. [BBC]
· Kat Dennings is in talks to co-star in Defendor, featuring Woody Harrelson as a man who believes he possesses superhero powers and Dennings as the ADD-afflicted, poor-spelling neighbor girl who gives him his name. [THR]
· Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are all reportedly in talks to return for Bull Durham 2: The Beer League Years. [Page Six]
· Crisis averted! After less than a day of protests, Bollywood's dancing girls and nearly 100,000 other actors, filmmakers and crew concluded their big-budget production Kuchi Kuchi Pay Us Bitches in record time. [NYT]

Our Suggestions For Jimmy:

Adam Carolla: We've never actually seen Kimmel look quite as happy on any TV appearance to date than during those beer-guzzling days of homo-erotic male bonding with Carolla, currently desperate for some much-needed post-Dancing With The Stars publicity.

Cameron Diaz: One of the co-stars of Kimmel's revenge video in which Ben Affleck managed to keep down a visible need to dry heave while millimeters away from Kimmel's mug, we've noted recently how eager the bed-hopping actress is for action. And so far, no amount of plumber butt crackage, receding hair lines, or drastic height differences have stopped her from jumping into the next bed!

Emily Gould: Any loyal reader of our siblings in snark over at Gawker are more than familiar with that epic battle between Kimmel and former Gawker blogger Emily Gould. Standing in for Larry King last year and feeling very important about it, Kimmel accosted Gould for daring to contribute to a site that caught him "drunk and talking loud" on the streets of Manhattan. But whenever we watch the clip, we can't help remembering why all those chubby little kindergarten boys would be mean to girls: they sooo wanted to take them behind the school bus and get them pregnant!

Our Suggestions For Sarah:

Seth Rogen: We don't know about Sarah, but we would have been more than a little miffed after seeing less-funny quasi-Jew Elizabeth Banks stealing her thunder by filming the (again) less-funny version of Silverman's original "I'm Fucking" video alongside the goofy and kinda Kimmel-esque Seth Rogen. What better way to kill two birds with one fuck stone than to team up with Seth and form the new and improved comedic union of uncomfortable love?

Britney Spears: Remember what we said about those mean boys on the playground? We've long suspected Silverman's borderline-cruel rant against Spears after her tragic VMA performance may have been a guise for an intense girl crush. And Britney, lest you forget, dabbled in the very chic girl-on-girl movement long before Lindsay and Sam made it "cool."

Doug The Dog: Because who wouldn't risk jail time to pucker up to this little twitchy bundle of chihuahua ass?

• IT'S OFFICIAL: KIMMEL AND SILVERMAN NO LONGER F*CKING [Vanity Fair]

She is absolutely NOT banging Jimmy Kimmel. She was promoted from assistant to staff writer, and then from staff writer to head writer. Where's the controversy there? That's kinda how it works in this biz.

Also, as a matter of interest, Molly has been with her boyfriend for 3 years, and believe it or not was in Africa ministering to orphans when this story broke (that's not sarcasm, I swear). The truth is that one of Jimmy's BFFs works as a writer on the show, and Molly and another writer tried to let him go. He complained to Jimmy, got his job reinstated, and then sought a little revenge via the interwebs. The sad thing is that this is tearing Molly up.

• Previously: 'Us Weekly' Liveblogs Sarah Silverman's Post-Jimmy Kimmel-Breakup Brunch Of Despair [Defamer]

"She really looked like she was in good spirits," an observer tells Us. "She was laughing and smiling. Very animated."

But a few minutes later, Silverman - who ate organic quinoa topped with fresh fruit - grew somber and became enthralled in a heart-to-heart conversation with her pal.

"She was talking and it looked like he was listening and then advising her," the onlooker tells Us. "This went on for around 20 minutes."

Mutual friend Jonah Hill - who has appeared in comedy skits on Kimmel's ABC show - was dining in the restaurant and also stopped by to say hello.

"Jonah's appearance definitely had an effect on her," a witness tells Us. "They spoke for just a minute. And after he left, Sarah looked momentarily pensive."

We'll spare you their breathtaking coverage of what Silverman's eyebrows were doing when she asked for a coffee refill, and analysis of the sounds coming from the women's bathroom (muffled sobs, streaming liquid) after she briefly excused herself from the table. The last thing anyone wants or needs after a difficult breakup is to have their every move scrutinized—particularly any pensiveness one might experience after a close friend with romantic designs offers, "You want a shoulder to cry on? Or a funny shlub who actually knows what he's doing in the sack? You call me, Sar. Enjoy the quinoa. Works wonders on the colon," before smiling empathetically and sailing out the doors.

• Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman Split After Five Years [usmagazine]