What Kathy Griffin Didn’t Say During CNN’s New Year’s Eve

Is it news when something doesn’t happen? Kathy Griffin was not yanked off CNN last night. Griffin, who referred to her turn on CNN’s New Year’s Eve as “Yank Watch 2011,” kept it clean during her co-hosting gig alongside Anderson Cooper. Last year, Griffin dropped the “F” bomb and the year before she heckled an onlooker who’d been heckling her. This year Griffin got physical. She slugged Cooper a few times (above), tried to take off his clothes, and kissed his producer four minutes before midnight.

TVNewser was there again on the press platform where CNN’s Cooper and Griffin broadcast from the west end, while on the east end of the riser, high above Duffy Square, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and Bill Hemmer hosted FNC’s “All American New Year.” In between stood two rows of local and national news anchors broadcasting in multiple languages to networks around the world.

Fox News hosts Ainsley Earhardt, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Greg Gutfeld roamed the Crossroads of the World talking with some of the 1 million revelers on a rare December night where, thanks to a 40-degree temperature, one couldn’t see their breath.

Leading up to the main events on broadcast and cable news channels, E!’s Bill and Giuliana Rancic hosted festivities for the Times Square crowed. Leading up to midnight, we ran into CBS News “Early Show” EP David Friedman who spent seven New Year’s Eves here producing Carson Daly’s NBC special. Friedman, who joined CBS in late 2009, is back at work today doing rehearsals with the new “Early Show” anchor team which debuts Monday morning. “We’ve changed the set a bit, so we want to be ready for Monday,” Friedman told us. On the NBC special this year, NBC News’ Natalie Morales and Amy Robach worked the crowd.

There was the occasional star sighting from the acts who appeared on Dick Clark’s ABC special: Ke$hia, and the combined New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys, to native New Yorker Gary Marshall who’s back in the city filming a new movie and the “Old Spice” guy, Isaiah Mustafa. Photos after the jump…

(Photos: Chris Ariens)