When he nation's largest independent public broadcaster, KCET, signs off from PBS, it's changing management, to. Deborah Hinton, the station's longtime financial chief will replaced by Camille Gonzalez, the controller. CET, based in Silver Lake, announced earlier this year that it would leave PBS after months of disputes over dues and other issues. Al Jerome, the president and chief executive at KCET, unveiled other changes: Mary Mazur, the station's programming chief, will become COO, a newly created position. Her old job will be filled by Bret Marcus, currently one of her lieutenants.

CNBC's "The Strategy Session" reported that Nielsen Holdings, the global TV rating and consumer measurement company, is looking to go public as early as January. The company back in June filed with the SEC for an initial public offering of up to $1.75 billion of its common stock. Nielsen Holdings is moving ahead in what appears to be a better IPO climate, especially after the recent successful GM IPO. The company is going to meet right after the New Year to see what's happening in the market and target a road show starting the week of Jan. 10. If …

Viacom has sold Harmonix Music Systems, the developer behind the Rock Band franchise, to the investment firm Columbus Nova and gained an estimated $200 million in the deal, ending a failed foray into the video game business. Analysts have long questioned the value of Rock Band for a company known more for cable networks MTV and Nickelodeon and film studio Paramount Pictures. Viacom said in November it was putting Harmonix up for sale. Harmonix-SBE Holdings LLC, an affiliate of investment firm Columbus Nova LLC, will pick up the asset. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. The Harmonix …

It was an undistinguished 2010 for television, so ordinary it generated only nine significant events, four of them low lights. The year started with a messy reversal of one of TV's worst programming mistakes -- "Leno" at 10 p.m. -- and ended with the country paying far too much attention to a contrived dancing competition, "Dancing With the Stars. Viewers watched as clumping Bristol Palin advanced farther in the competition than her performance could possibly allow. The broadcast networks' rollout of new fall shows was pretty much a disaster. Hailed by many critics, Fox's Lone Star, about a …

IAC property Pronto has quietly launched a company called The Writers Network that looks for people willing to write short-length, how-to articles, much like Demand Media, AOL's SEED or Yahoo's Contributor's Network. According to the website, most of the assignments center around how to put together parties, such as one titled "Formal Dinner Party Napkin Folding Ideas," which pays $15, and "How to Host a Nascar Party," which pays $20. The fees range from $10 to $25. But unlike Demand Media's model, which creates assignments based on what people are searching for on Google, most of the articles from …

Rovi Corp will pay $720 million in cash and stock to buy Sonic Solutions, which owns the popular digital video player software DivX, in a bid to broaden its footprint across the digital entertainment space. The Rovi deal follows Sonic's purchase of DivX Inc in June for $323 million, which boosted Sonic's Internet-based video delivery products. The proposed combination of Rovi and Sonic will be better able to help Hollywood studio clients sell content in a fast-growing digital entertainment market, the companies said. Consumers will be able to more easily find the content they want to watch, which may …

Novaya Gazeta, the Moscow newspaper controlled by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and billionaire Alexander Lebedev, said it agreed to join forces with WikiLeaks to expose corruption in Russia. Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, which publishes secret government and corporate documents online, has materials specifically about Russia that haven't been published yet and Novaya Gazeta will help make them public, the newspaper said on its Web site. "Assange said that Russians will soon find out a lot about their country and he wasn't bluffing," Novaya Gazeta said. "Our collaboration will expose corruption at the top tiers of political …

Cable networks have been challenging broadcasters' hold on TV viewers for years, but the big networks' lackluster fall is proof of a new parity. Nielsen figures show the Big 4 and basic cable gained 1% in 2010 as overall viewing continues to rise to a record 34 hours a week. But the fall season has been less kind: Fox is down 15% and ABC is off 5%, offsetting smaller gains by CBS and NBC. Few cable series outpace broadcast hits, but increasingly the strongest are beating many of their big-network rivals. TNT's "Rizzoli & Isles" averaged 8.8 million viewers …

Judge Virginia Phillips issued a 54-page which upholds the July verdict that Disney and its ABC and Buena Vista Television subsidiaries cheated Celador out of millions by cutting sweetheart deals to bring "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" to America. The verdict was for $319 million. The detailed opinion denying Disney's motions to reverse the verdict and order a new trial suggests Phillips knows this case is headed for appeal, which Disney has said it will pursue to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. The studio has 30 days to file a notice of appeal after the final …

Gregg Birnbaum, the former New York Post political editor who recently left that paper after 17 years after a widely reported newsroom spat, has signed on as a senior editor at Politico. He will be based in New York and concentrate on breaking news coverage, with his responsibilities expanding from there. Birnbaum began at the NYP as a reporter covering City Hall and the state house in Albany for eight years. He began editing in 2001, overseeing coverage of Washington and Albany as well as national, state and local campaigns. During the 2008 campaign, he ran a Web …