Randi Levin, a top manager for Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, abruptly resigned on Friday after a KCBS investigation revealed that her husband owed over $56,000 to the LA Department of Water and Power.

KCBS reporter David Goldstein had been investigating the department’s inability to collect millions of dollars from people who rent land from it when he discovered that Levin’s husband owed money.  Goldstein confronted Maurice Levin last week about the $56,000 in unpaid rent he owed to the city (video inside). Read more

Bob Jordan has been named news director at KIRO, the CBS-affiliate in Seattle. He will begin his new role in August.

Jordan comes from WFTV in Orlando, where he has been the news director for the last decade. It was Jordan’s second stint as WFTV news director. Both WFTV and KIRO are both owned by Cox Media Group. The move is a return to Seattle for Jordan, who is a former news director at NBC-affiliate KING.

“Great things have followed Bob wherever he’s gone through his successful career,”  general manager Jay O’Connor said in a statement announcing the hire. “KIRO 7 Eyewitness News has incredible momentum and we know Bob Jordan is the right individual to lead our great news staff.” Read more

Los Angeles CBS O&O KCBS posted some exciting news on its website Thursday for fans of White Russians and the Coen brothers: a sequel to the 1998 cult hit “The Big Lebowski” was set to begin filming in October.

KCBS excitedly reported the return of “The Dude,” sourcing the story to the Examiner, only to eventually find out that the report was based on a hoax (and not a very complex one at that).

KCBS based its article on an Examiner post written by a guy whose title is Phoenix Cannabis Culture Examiner, and who runs a blog called WeedGeist.  His story, in turn, appears to have been taken from a post on the website Super Official News with the byline “The Ass Press.” Read more

A power outage in Studio City knocked KCBS and KCAL off the air Friday night, right in the middle of KCAL’s 8 p.m. newscast.

The KCBS-KCAL broadcast center lost power around 7:55 p.m. Friday. A backup generator kicked in and KCAL was able to start its newscast on time, but then the connection between the generator and the building failed, knocking the stations off the air just after 8:30 p.m. Read more

Local news personalities from five CBS O&Os are guest-hosting “The Talk” for one day each next week, filling in for Julie Chen, who is on vacation.

The five guest hosts are: John Elliot, a weathercaster at WCBS in New York, on Monday; Susan Koeppen, an anchor at KDKA in Pittsburgh, on Tuesday; Amelia Santaniello, an anchor at WCCO in Minneapolis, on Wednesday; Kate Bilo, a meteorologist at KYW in Philadelphia, on Thursday; and Paul Magers, an anchor at KCBS in Los Angeles, on Friday.

Chen returns to the CBS talk show on Monday, July 9. No word yet on who will guest host for the second week of her vacation.

>Update: “The Talk” will be in repeats the week of July 2, so there will be no guest hosts, a spokesperson for the show tells TVSpy.

Jim Lampley, who took a detour from sports reporting to anchor at KCBS in the late 80s and early 90s, doesn’t regret his time covering the news in Los Angeles.

“I have no regrets about everything I experienced as a television news anchor.  I think it was a very productive part of my process,” Lampley told mediabistro recently. “At the end of the day, that job was not as satisfying to me.  I didn’t get as much out of it as some of the other things in my career.  I had to do it to learn that so I couldn’t honestly say I was disappointed or regretful about that. I did what I did and it was good for me at the time.  It helped me grow.”  [FishbowlLA]

A year after being appointed to a corporate job with the Fox station group, longtime KTTV news director Jose Rios is retiring.

“Our dear friend and colleague led us to top ratings for a number of years,” KTTV anchor Jean Martirez said during the Fox O&O’s morning newscast on Thursday, announcing Rios’s retirement.  “Jose hired all of us.  I would walk on red-hot coals for this man.”

Rios spent two decades as news director at KTTV.  Last April, the Fox station group announced that he had been appointed to vice president of digital news applications, overseeing app development for all of the company’s stations. Read more

FishbowlLA reports that the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center is outraged over KCBS-KCAL’s decision to post the names, birthdates, and mugshots of eighteen men who were arrested in an undercover sting operation at a Manhattan Beach restroom.

This week KCBS and KCAL reported on the arrests, which were based on a range of offenses, including engaging in lewd conduct in a public place and  indecent exposure, and aired the Manhattan Beach Police Department’s collection of mugshots and personal information of the men arrested.  The images, names, and birthdates were then posted on the stations’ website. Read more

A meteorologist has filed a lawsuit against KCBS-KCAL, the CBS duopoly in Los Angeles, claiming he was passed over for jobs because he is not a young, attractive woman.

Kyle Hunter has worked as a meteorologist at several California stations, including KMIR in Palm Springs and KEYT in Santa Barbara, according to his bio. Most recently, he was a freelance meteorologist at KSWB in San Diego.

The Hollywood Reporter has details of the lawsuit:

Hunter claims he learned in 2010 that KCBS’ longtime weatherman Johnny Mountain would not have his contract renewed, so he informed the station that he would like to be considered for the job. But according to the complaint, the station wasn’t interested in him and instead brought in a younger female, despite Hunter being “far more qualified, and far more experienced, [than] the female hired to replace Mr. Mountain.”

The woman that replaced Mountain was brought in from KCAL, according to the suit, so Hunter assumed a position would be open at KCAL.  Read more

KCBS-KCAL reporter Kirk Hawkins is leaving Los Angeles for an anchoring job at WCCB, the Fox-affiliate in Charlotte.

Hawkins has been with KCBS-KCAL since 2008.  His last day is Friday and he’s set to start at WCCB at the end of the month.

Before joining KCBS-KCAL, Hawkins worked at WFTV in Orlando, KXLY in Spokane, and KCOY in Santa Barbara.

Hawkins will anchor WCCB’s weekend evening newscasts.

“I’m really excited to join the team at Fox Charlotte,” Hawkins said.