Sen. Barack Obama and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee have won the Iowa
caucuses last night, with Obama garnering 37.6 percent of Democratic delegate
support and Huckabee coming away with 34.4 percent of the Republican delegate
support (after 86 percent of precincts had reported).
The New York Times reports that
two Democrats dropped out last night: Sen. Christopher Dodd of New Jersey and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware.
The number of Democrats participating in the caucuses jumped
to almost 240,000, which almost doubles the number of votes in 2004, according
to Bloomberg news.
Even Hollywood stars are
lending their
celebrity to back the winning candidates. Scarlett Johansson stood by Obama's
side and appeared at a college-aged “Barack Stars” rally in Iowa, while Chuck Norris has been publicly
advocating for Huckabee's victory since last year.
Also:
Following two months of reruns, night time talk shows
returned to the air, with Jay Leno's The
Tonight Show attracting more viewers than David Letterman's Late Show. The Writers Guild of America
is now saying that Lenoviolated one of the Guilds' strike rules by writing for The Tonight
Show, after he admitted that he wrote his own monologue for his first show
back from the hiatus.
Speaking of the writer's strike, TVGuide.com is packaging
full-length episodes of current and upcoming TV series into a new channel
called the
“Strike Survival Guide,” which will feature the episodes found in TVGuide.com's
Online Video Guide. Episodes from the returning show Jericho,
newly created show Cashmere Mafia,
and the long-awaited fourth season of Lost
will be shown, among others.
Other news in the TV
world: Despite continued rumors of
pulling the plug on its show Zoey 101, after the show's 16-year-old
star Jamie Lynn Spears revealed she was pregnant, Nickelodeon says that the
fourth and final season, which has already been taped, will premiere next
month.
And although Details
Editor-in-Chief Dan Peres risked a severe outcry from the media for putting Kevin Federline on the magazine's December issue and including him as
one of “America's new parental role models” in its December Power List, the
issue is on track to sell more then 75,000 copies. As Britney's increasingly
erratic behaviors grow day by day, so does Federline's image as the doting
father of two (only by contrast and pure irony).