Bidding has closed on the most recent round of offers in the sale of KCSM-TV, licensed to San Mateo Community College District in California. Potential buyers are Public TV Financing, an arm of Independent Public Media, a nonprofit working to preserve noncommercial spectrum; KMTP-TV, a multicultural noncom channel licensed to Minority Television Project Inc. in San Francisco; the Oriental Culture and Media Center of Southern California, a nonprofit promoting communication among different cultures; and Locus Point Networks, a spectrum speculator that is also buying Towson University’s Class A television channel just outside Baltimore. KCSM went on the market in December 2011, due to a projected $800,000 deficit.

Nightly Business Report, the public TV business news show that has repeatedly shed staff during nearly three tumultuous years under two owners, has been sold again – this time to financial news powerhouse CNBC. The cable network will produce the weeknightly series exclusively for public TV stations from its headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., effective March 4. The show’s bureaus in New York and Washington and its headquarters at Miami’s WPBT will shut down. The sale brings another round of changes to the staff who produce and appear on the show. Anchor Susie Gharib will stay with NBR, but co-anchor Tom Hudson is exiting.

Ted Krichels, associate vice president for public media and general manager of WPSU at Penn State University and a thought leader on public broadcasting ethics, is resigning his station post effective Feb. 28. A short statement from the university said Krichels, a 30-year pubcasting veteran, will “focus on consulting opportunities and independent projects within the public media industry.” In addition to his leadership at the station, Krichels led work to establish the Local Public Media Organizations Code of Editorial Integrity, an update of the 1984 Wingspread Conference’s Statement of Editorial Principles that has been under development for several years.

The Nielsen Co., the stalwart television-ratings tracker, announced Feb. 20 that it plans to track viewing on additional devices beginning in September. The news was reported by the Hollywood Reporter. Among the media Nielsen will include are Xboxes and over-the-top devices that stream programming from services such as Amazon, according to the Reporter. In January, PBS signed a deal to bring some of its local and national programming to Xbox and over-the-top device Roku. Amazon also signed a deal with PBS Feb. 1 to become the exclusive paid-streaming home of the mega-popular Downton Abbey. In recent years PBS has started mining Nielsen data more regularly to garner information about its audience during pledge drives, and it has also pointed out Downton‘s ratings successes.

Palestinian documentary filmmaker Emad Burnat, whose Oscar-nominated film 5 Broken Cameras received funding from PBS’s POV, was detained Feb. 20 at Los Angeles International Airport after arriving in the country for Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony. The news that Burnat had been held for one and a half hours was first tweeted by friend and fellow documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. Burnat later released a statement confirming that he and his family had been detained and threatened with deportation and that they had been forced to provide proof that he had been nominated for an Oscar. “Although this was an unpleasant experience, this is a daily occurrence for Palestinians, every single day, throughout the West Bank,” Burnat said.

More than five months after subpoenaing notes and outtakes from The Central Park Five, a crime documentary about the 1989 arrest and conviction of five innocent young men over the rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park, lawyers for New York City were rebuffed in their attempts to gain hold of the film’s unused footage for evidence in an ongoing federal lawsuit. The decision came on the evening of Feb. 19, as reported by the New York Times. Co-directed by Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah and longtime Burns producer David McMahon, based on extensive research from Sarah, the film was released in theaters in fall 2012 to critical acclaim and will air on PBS in April.

The third-season finale of Downton Abbey drew 8.2 million viewers for its Feb. 17 PBS broadcast, the network and WGBH announced Feb. 19. The numbers come from Nielsen and gave the episode a 5.2 household rating. The episode came in with 50 percent more viewers than the season two finale in 2012 and also drew 300,000 more fans than this year’s season premiere. Nearly 80,000 tweets were sent about the show on the night it aired, according to SocialGuide. Overall, this season of the smash-hit program enjoyed more than quadruple the average PBS primetime ratings.

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The latest in an ongoing series of Public Media Futures forums will spotlight public broadcasting’s work surrounding the arts. The Feb. 20 roundtable discussion, “The Future of Arts and Culture on Public Media,” will be hosted by the USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy in downtown Washington, D.C. The center is co-sponsoring the forums with American University’s School of Communication, publisher of Current. Confirmed speakers and participants include Alyce Myatt, director of media arts for the National Endowment for the Arts and a former PBS programming v.p.; Roger LaMay, g.m. of WXPN-FM in Philadelphia; Vincent Curren, CPB c.o.o.;

Maryland Public Television can thank the Baltimore Ravens this week for helping the station win a supply of sourdough breads and chocolate. The station laid some local cuisine on the line with San Francisco’s KQED as part of a friendly wager leading up to the Feb. 3 Super Bowl match between the Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. If Baltimore won, KQED promised to ship the bread and chocolate to MPT. If San Francisco won, MPT would send crab cakes and Bergers cookies, a Balmer fave, across the country. But despite a second-half comeback attempt from the 49ers, the birds emerged victorious, 34-31, and KQED remained true to its word.

KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., has struck the opening chords for The Organist, a monthly arts-and-culture podcast from McSweeney’s. The program is the latest collaboration between the station and the irreverent San Francisco–based publishing house, founded in 1998 by acclaimed author and screenwriter Dave Eggers. Produced by the editors of the McSweeney’s-published culture magazine The Believer, The Organist will produce 10 hourlong episodes per year covering a wide gamut of pop culture, with the help of some famous voices. The inaugural episode launched Feb. 1. The Organist will function solely as a podcast for now as it builds an audience, with KCRW providing financial support and acting as executive producers and distributors, according to Harriet Ells, the station’s program director for arts and culture programming.

Frontline and the nonprofit investigative newsroom California Watch each won George Polk Awards, the prestigious journalism honors presented annually by Long Island University. Correspondent Martin Smith and producer Michael Kirk of the pubTV investigative icon series won for coverage of “Money, Power and Wall Street.” The judges said, “In blunt, first-hand accounts, viewers were given an unprecedented look inside key decisions that affected the lives of ordinary people around the country and a play-by-play road map of what ultimately would shatter the global economy.” Assisting Smith and Kirk were producers Marcela Gaviria, Mike Wiser and Jim Gilmore. Reporter Ryan Gabrielson of California Watch won for his “Broken Shield” series, for what the judges called his “dogged persistence in exposing how California’s Office of Protective Services does an abysmal job of curbing abuse at state clinics.”

Downton Abbey Executive Producer Gareth Neame tells Entertainment Weekly that PBS’s decision to delay the season opener of Masterpiece Classic hit from September, when it airs in England, to January is “unrealistic” — yet “sensible and pragmatic.” (Here’s the interview, with this spoiler alert warning: If you haven’t yet watched the Season 3 finale that aired Sunday, back away now because he talks about it in detail.) Here’s what Neame specifically said about PBS’s scheduling decision, which is still being debated at headquarters in Crystal City: “[T]the idea that in this day and age people have to wait four months before watching a show that has aired in another part of the world is clearly unrealistic.