Sarah Spitz, producer of Left, Right and Center at KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., is leaving the show after 15 years. “This was a decision I came to on my own, no one is shoving me out the door,” she writes in a post on her blog. “But between us, I’ll tell you in all sincerity, I hate the way politics is played now. I want our elected officials to do the business the people sent them to Washington, to city councils, to state legislatures, to do. That’s not the way they play and I no longer want to be part of the process that perpetuates a broken system.

It’s 2011, and you know what that means: KCET is on its own, formally untethered from the pubTV mothership PBS. Here’s a look at its logo and new tagline: Rethink TV. Check out the station’s Facebook page for viewer reactions so far.

KCTS in Seattle now says that WETA producer Jeff Bieber will not be coming on as vice president of content, as it had announced in November. The city’s Crosscut blog reports that Bieber “apparently changed his mind for personal and professional reasons, and now KCTS must begin a search for his replacement just days before Bieber was supposed to start” on Jan. 3. Bieber would have overseen all KCTS broadcast, production, interactive and community engagement activities. Bieber, WETA’s v.p. of news and public affairs programming, wants to stay at the Arlington, Va., station to complete several programs, he said in a statement released by KCTS.

The TV critic for the Denver Post has selected Wick Rowland, president of KBDI/Colorado Public Television, as the local 2010 television person of the year. Joanne Ostrow also called KBDI “the little station that could,” and a “feisty outlet” that “routinely stands up to the Public Broadcasting Service bureaucracy.” “When more timid station managers caved on matters of censorship or politics,” she says, “Rowland hangs tough.”

In 2011, KCET in Los Angeles will replace PBS’s famous children’s programming with a new digital family channel, as well as a daily lineup that includes Busytown Mysteries, a Canadian animated series with feline characters; and Peep and the Big Wide World, a cartoon that teaches children about nature and science. The station’s Peabody Award-winning series A Place of Our Own/Los Niños en Su Casa will remain part of the station’s morning programming. The moves come as the station nears its Jan. 1, 2011, drop from PBS membership (Current, Oct. 18). The station is also revamping its digital channels.

The documentary “New York Street Games” snagged a spot for PBS in the top 10 TV shows of 2010 as complied by New York Daily News critic David Hinckley. “This fairly modest production is a documentary shown on local PBS stations, which confirms again the value of PBS,” he writes. “It’s an unpretentious, straightforward and thoroughly charming look at the games New York kids used to play on New York streets —presented not as nostalgia, but a vivid, riveting snapshot of growing up in the melting pot that was early and mid-20th-century New York.” Other shows on the list include HBO’s miniseries “Boardwalk Empire”; AMC’s Mad Men series and TBS’s late-night Conan O’Brien.

2010 Knight News Challenge winner Retha Hill attended the Online News Association gathering in October in Washington, D.C., and found it valuable. However: Where were the minority participants? “The lack of diversity at ONA ’10 was the subject of a brief but heated conversation between some National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) members, a few of whom wanted to ‘do something’ about it, like call ONA’s leadership out,” she writes on today’s (Dec. 28) MediaShift. “Was it an oversight? A slap?” Hill mulls. “Or was it a reflection of the lack of diversity in the country’s online newsrooms? Maybe it is the echo chamber effect of the online news types whose definition of who is innovating is limited to the people they hang with.”

The Hampton Roads Virginia Voice, a service of dual licensee WHRO in Hampton Roads, Va., uses more than 90 volunteer readers to bring newspaper stories (even grocery ads), magazines and online publications to blind listeners. A story in today’s (Dec. 28) Virginian-Pilot highlights the program, which uses a closed circuit signal via a specially modified radio; about 1,000 of the devices are in use. Live broadcasts are also streamed over the Internet.

“I think comparing NPR to the BBC is like comparing Champale to Champagne,” writes actor, satirist and KCRW’s Le Show host Harry Shearer in a comment in response to a lengthy analysis of the past year at NPR on Radio Survivor. He adds: “The days when the former would ‘go long’ on a story of prime importance have long since been superseded by the era of the unbreakable, predictable format.” Perhaps Shearer is still upset with the network because it didn’t cover his Cine Golden Eagle award-winning Katrina doc “The Big Uneasy,” and wouldn’t let him buy underwriting to promote the film.

NPR’s handling of the Juan Williams controversy holds the No. 3 spot on the 16th annual year-end “Top 10 PR Blunders List,” compiled by San Francisco’s Fineman PR. It ranks behind BP’s reaction to its disastrous oil spill, and Toyota’s decisions after its massive recall. “Although [NPR] commentator Juan Williams raised eyebrows when he told Bill O’Reilly of FOX News’ The O’Reilly Factor that flying on airplanes with overt Muslims made him nervous, it was NPR that took the damaging reputational hit,” the list notes. It faults NPR President Vivan Schiller for firing Williams over the phone and later hinting that he had psychological problems.

Think it’s cold where you are? A Nebraska Educational Television crew endured 35-degrees-below-zero temperatures when they shot Tuesday’s (Dec. 28) Nova episode, “Secrets Beneath the Ice.” Since 2005, scientists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have journeyed to Antarctica to drill through ice and rock to find clues to what might happen if the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans continue to warm. Producer Gary Hochman, videographer/editor Brian Seifferlein and senior audio engineer Jim Lenertz traveled from Lincoln, Neb., to McMurdo Station on the frozen continent, landing on 26 feet of ice. Little thermometers that came with survival gear couldn’t register low enough. Cameras froze.

Robert J. Shuman, president of Maryland Public Television since 1986, announced last week that he’ll retire at the end of June. The state-operated network operates Thinkport.org, one of the more active public media sites for K-12 education, and produces MotorWeek, among other national programs. Shuman succeeded Raymond Ho, who was fired in 1985 after an unsuccessful drive to establish MPT as an international coproducer. The network later lost its major national production when Louis Rukeyser rebelled at PBS/MPT plans to refresh Wall Street Week, and new version without him failed to take hold. MPT took a shot at a nightly newscast, but NewsnightMaryand didn’t find ongoing funding and ended in 1991.

KOCE, soon to be PBS SoCal, will not carry Independent Lens, Charlie Rose and Nightly Business Report as of Jan. 1, when it becomes the Los Angeles market’s primary PBS station. The New York Times reports that viewers will need to turn to KLCS in L.A. or KVCR in San Bernardino to view the programs. Mel Rogers, KOCE president, said the scheduling decisions were made due to existing commitments.

KCET station execs told the Los Angeles Times that an institutional bias within PBS favoring East Coast stations marginalized its contribution to the system. But critics counter that the station, departing PBS on Jan. 1, 2011, “squandered its potential” of its Hollywood location for productions. PBS favors the “big three” — WETA, WGBH and WNET — which creates an “oligarchy” that means not only KCET but also medium and smaller PBS affiliates are unfairly blocked from getting their productions on the PBS schedule, KCET execs say. But LA media watchers insist that KCET simply didn’t produce competitive programming. WNET in New York contributed 125 hours to PBS last year; WGBH in Boston, 135 hours; and WETA in Washington, D.C.,

Your Current blogger has been looking for the perfect holiday item for you, and leave it to PBS NewsHour to provide it: “Hallelujah! A Global Mash-up of Handel’s ‘Messiah’.” It stars a worldwide array of musical participants including the NewsHour staff as well as contributions from PBS member stations KTWU in Topeka, Kan.; WOSU in Columbus, Ohio; and Smoky Hills Public Television in Bunker Hill, Kan.