Two years after selling WXEL-FM in Palm Beach, Fla., for $3.85 million, Barry University has agreed to sell its public-TV sister station for $1.44 million. The buyer is the WXEL Public Broadcasting Corp., a nonprofit set up by the TV station’s present executives. WXEL’s 15-year custody by the Catholic university in Miami Shores began in 1997 when the school rescued the Palm Beach FM/TV combo from perilous fiscal condition. The stations attracted unsuccessful sale contracts, bids or at least inquiries from New York’s WNET, the Palm Beach County school board, competing Miami station WPBT and a longtime suitor, Community Broadcast Foundation of Palm Beach and the Treasure Coast.

Broadcasting giant Barry Diller spoke up in defense of the new subscription streaming TV service Aereo, which his company is backing, during a panel at the SXSW Film Festival Sunday (March 11). He’s looking forward to battling several broadcasters including WNET in New York and PBS, who have filed a copyright infringement suit against the service, which says it uses “proprietary remote antenna and DVR” technology to enable subscribers, for $12 a month, to watch over-the-air broadcasts on their smart phones, tablets and computers. “It’s going to be a great fight,” Diller said in Austin. “This is not some evil thing,” Diller said of Aereo, which is set to launch in the New York Market on Thursday (March 14).

Daniel del Solar, 71, a Chilean-American media activist, poet and photographer who headed training for CPB in its early days and later managed countercultural stations in San Francisco and Philadelphia, died Jan. 13 in Oakland, Calif. He had prostate cancer. Del Solar served as director of training and development at CPB in the late 1970s, during a period of active recruitment and training of ethnic-minority professionals. He later became g.m. of San Francisco’s KALW-FM from 1985 to 1992 and of Philadelphia’s WYBE-TV from 1992 to 1995. “What he did at CPB was exceedingly important,” says Nina Serrano, a longtime friend and volunteer producer at Pacifica Radio’s KPFA in Berkeley.

The shift of Independent Lens from Tuesdays to Thursdays this season has created ratings and carriage woes for the indie-doc showcase.

P.O.V.’s blog has an interesting analysis of the viral phenomenon of KONY 2012, the 30-minute film on Ugandan guerrilla group leader Joseph Kony that’s been viewed more than 80 million times since it was posted on YouTube and Vimeo on March 5, written by guest blogger Heather McIntosh of Documentary Site. Invisible Children, the advocacy organization that produced the film, “labels KONY 2012 a documentary, and it is one that falls squarely into the propaganda/persuasion traditions developed in the work of Frank Capra, Leni Riefenstahl, and Pare Lorentz,” McIntosh writes. “But KONY 2012 pushes the boundaries of these traditions.

NBC turned down Downton Abbey, which is produced by NBCUniversal’s Carnival Films in London, “believing that American audiences wouldn’t have the appetite for a very British historical drama set in a country manor in Edwardian England,” reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. An NBC official told the paper that the decision was made under previous NBC leadership, and it’s pleased that sister company NBCUniversal found success with the show, which was picked up by Masterpiece on PBS. But that exec acknowledged that even the current NBC brass could have overlooked Downton’s potential. “The official said it was hard to imagine any network — including PBS — thinking Downton would become a hit,” the paper said.

The Michael Eric Dyson Show will go off the public radio airwaves at the end of the month, and its host has already left the program, reports the Journal-isms blog. “There’s something else potentially in the works, but the show as it exists now is about to end,” Carla Wills, senior producer, told the blog. “The contract was over. We didn’t do another round of funding.” Wills said Dyson was increasing his appearances on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir Show as well as continuing his speaking engagements and teaching at Georgetown University. Guest hosts will fill in for the final shows. LaFontaine Oliver, Dyson’s producer and g.m.

A media-oversight nonprofit in Seattle will hold a hearing later this month to consider an antiabortion group’s allegation that KUOW-FM, the city’s all-news pubradio outlet, aired an inaccurate report about the group last year and fell short of correcting its missteps. The complaint by the Vitae Foundation centers on an April 2011 story by reporter Meghan Walker about the foundation’s billboard advertising campaign for a website, YourOptions.com, that discusses choices available to women with unplanned pregnancies. The story began with a Planned Parenthood representative discussing the YourOptions website but did not include comment from anyone with Vitae. Deborah Stokes, Vitae’s c.o.o.,

A pre-execution interview show on death row in China, set to air as a documentary on the BBC next week and available via PBS International, has abruptly been canceled by the Chinese producer, ABC News is reporting. Legal TV, the station in Henan province that produced and broadcast the show for the last five years, confirmed to ABC News it has been canceled, effective immediately, due to “internal problems.” The program has a viewership of some 40 million.

CPB and PBS are collaborating on free educational apps that will be available at Head Start centers, member stations and other organizations in underserved communities, the two announced Thursday (March 8). The outreach is part of Ready to Learn, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. Recent research shows that access to computers, smartphones and tablets is much less prevalent in low-income households, which limits children’s exposure to educational applications, the two said in the announcement. This program will work to increase access to educational mobile content for children from low-income families at community organizations equipped with mobile and tablet devices.

Writing on his blog, public radio consultant John Sutton argues that the inability of some stations to support themselves can be blamed on national organizations more concerned about their own priorities than those of stations. “NPR’s primary goal these days is to further grow its direct-to-listener offerings and audience,” he writes. “CPB is now primarily funding projects that will help it get funded again. Neither organization is doing much to help stations become more self-sufficient in the open marketplace. That’s what they have to want in order to help stations.” Sutton’s post was inspired by our coverage of the Public Media Futures Forum, held last month in Washington, D.C.

This is just a test…

Before his death on March 1, conservative online publisher Andrew Breitbart hinted that he had video of a 1990 speech given by then-Harvard student Barack Obama that Breitbart said was evidence of President Obama’s longtime radical political beliefs. It was posted on his site Breitbart.com Wednesday (March 7) as an “exclusive.” But it turns out the footage was shot by Boston’s WGBH and has been on the Frontline website since 2008. Frontline provides details in a web post, along with unedited footage.