After Anderson and Kathy and Megyn and Bill signed off last night, the Senate came to a deal — by a vote of 89 to 8 — to avert a full dive over the fiscal cliff. The House meets this afternoon with a vote coming possibly today, or tomorrow before the new Congress convenes on Thursday. Voting began after 1:45amET with the Senate adjourning at 2:31am.

CNN International was covering the vote when at 1:50amET CNN/U.S. broke into a re-air of the Anderson Cooper Kathy Griffin New Year’s Eve special taking the feed anchored by John Vause with CNN Radio’s Lisa Desjardins on the phone from Capitol Hill. At 1:51am, Mara Schiavocampo broke into MSNBC’s coverage as the vote was going on with Mike Viqueira reporting from the Hill by phone. (Schiavocampo is back on the air anchoring the 10am hour). Patti Ann Browne broke into a re-air of FNC’s Megyn Kelly and Bill Hemmer New Year’s Eve special at 2:08am after the vote occurred. Correspondents Doug Mckelway and Chad Pergram reported from Washington.

Updated: With the unexpected announcement that President Obama would be making a statement late Sunday night, the cable news channels scrambled to get their top anchors on-air.

Fox News was first to confirm the news that Osama Bin Laden was dead at 10:40 PM ET. Geraldo Rivera was at the desk at the time, and responded to the news by saying:

“Happy days, happy days. This is the greatest — give me a wide shot of the general. This is the greatest night of my career. The bum is dead. I am so blessed and privileged to be at this desk at this moment.”

CNN confirmed the news at 10:42 Pm ET, and NBC News (and MSNBC) confirmed the news at 10:45 PM ET. All three networks engaged in speculation as to what the news was about from around 10 PM until their confirmed it, and all three raised Bin Laden as a possibility.

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi‘s news-making briefing yesterday was not the only excitement in the room — some press members got into a scuffle as well.

Roll Call reports Fox News producer Chad Pergram, “got a bit hot under the collar with a photographer who had been jostling him” during the briefing. An insider tells TVNewser the photographer, who was either “new or doesn’t cover the Hill very much,” tried to push his way into position, past a videographer and into Pergram, when Pelosi began to leave.

But she was pulled back to the podium by a final question, and the bumping continued. After the briefing ended, the verbal sparring between Pergram and the photog did not.

Still, it never reached Vince Morris-like levels.