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The most ballyhooed name change of the year became official Friday morning when a Los Angeles County Superior Court commissioner approved the former Ron Artest's request to become Metta World Peace. Amid labor discord that threatens to delay, if not wipe out, the NBA season, there is World Peace. Photos: Famous name-changers He is 6 feet 7, wears No. 15 for the Lakers and once participated in the infamous "Palace brawl. " Anyone now making his acquaintance will be meeting Metta World Peace.

Half a century ago, Walt Disney leased a horse ranch in Placerita Canyon to shoot episodes of "The Adventures of Spin and Marty" from the classic ABC series "The Mickey Mouse Club. " Disney liked the property so much, with its rich variety of meadows, oak groves and mountains, that his production company began buying up land, eventually accumulating 890 acres. Over the decades, the storied Golden Oak Ranch, located in an unincorporated area of northeast Los Angeles County, has been used as backdrop for countless Disney TV shows and movies, including "Old Yeller" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. " Now Walt Disney Co. is moving closer to transforming part of the historic movie ranch into one of the largest high-tech production developments in Los Angeles in the last decade -- and the public will soon get its first say on the project.

In ABC's new thriller "Missing," a former CIA agent whose child has been kidnapped springs out of retirement with guns, martial-arts skills and primal parental passion blazing. If that sounds familiar, well, it was also the plot of the 2008 film "Taken," which had Liam Neeson tearing through Paris to extricate his daughter from the clutches of a sex-trafficking ring. In "Missing," the gender roles are reversed. When Michael (Nick Eversman), a student studying abroad in Rome, goes missing, his mother, Becca Winstone (Ashley Judd)

Even an A-list star like Johnny Depp was no match for"The Avengers" at the box office this past weekend, as the superhero adventure dominated ticket sales yet again and flew past $1 billion worldwide. After its $207.4-million debut broke the record for the biggest opening - not adjusting for inflation - "The Avengers" raked in an additional $103.2 million in its second weekend of domestic release, according to an estimate from distributor Walt Disney Pictures. The film featuring Marvel comic book characters such as the Hulk, Iron Man and Thor sucked the life out"Dark Shadows," leaving Depp's vampire comedy looking pallid with a lackluster $28.8-million start.

Los Angeles will gay anybody up. In the two months since I moved here, I've bought a yellow convertible Mini Cooper, a pair of Guess jeans and started using one of those fitness balls as my desk chair. This is a town so gay that Republicans don't even run for mayor. So when ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson told Time magazine, in a story about the preponderance of gay TV show creators, that "if being gay makes you that talented, I'm going gay," I had to give it some serious thought.

I broke it to Kobe Bryant after Sunday's Lakers thriller. It's now Jordan Hill's team. "Well, he's got the right first name for it," says Bryant, yuks all around after a game that would have been remembered for Ron Artest's vicious assault if it weren't for such an improbable and stirring victory. Winning cures so many ills and covers up so many problems but unfortunately does not wipe out a suspension that is surely to come with the playoffs about to begin.

'ABC World News With Diane Sawyer' Where: ABC When: 6:30 p.m. weekdays Rating: Not rated

Thursday night, retiring ABC anchor Charles Gibson was feted by colleagues in a Lincoln Center reception hall overlooking the Hudson River. Among the hundreds on hand, one person was conspicuously absent: Diane Sawyer, who succeeds him tonight on the network's flagship evening newscast, "World News." She was already on assignment, headed to Copenhagen to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for an exclusive interview to kick off her tenure. It was a move that speaks volumes about her ambitions for "World News" -- a post she has long sought.

Dan Harris, an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, has a firsthand grasp of how digital journalism could transform the future of network news. Working without a camera operator or sound technician, he and his producer, Almin Karamehmedovic, have used hand-held digital cameras to track American sex predators in Cambodia, sneak up on silverback gorillas in the Central African Republic and document child exorcisms in Congo. "There's never been once when I missed the bigger crew," said Harris, who lugs equipment and mikes-up interview subjects himself, much as he did when he started as a local reporter in Bangor, Maine.

When she took over anchoring ABC's evening newscast last month after 11 years of rising before dawn to host "Good Morning America," Diane Sawyer thought she would finally get to catch up on her sleep. Charles Gibson, Sawyer's predecessor on "World News" and her former co-host on "GMA," had promised her, "Oh, you won't believe the difference," she recalled. So much for that. Sawyer kicked off her tenure by traveling to Copenhagen to confront Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about his nuclear ambitions.

Speaking the language of the fast growing and increasingly desirable Latino audience, Walt Disney Co.'s ABC News and Univision Communications are teaming up to launch a 24-hour English-language news network. The yet-unnamed cable channel, announced Monday, is expected to launch during the first half of next year. The two companies plan to get a head start this summer with a website and content for social networks and mobile devices devoted to covering the U.S. presidential election — which some analysts say could be decided by Latino voters in battleground states.

Soon, anyone who wants to know how much a political candidate spent on a commercial will be able to find out with the click of a button. The Federal Communications Commission voted Friday to require local television stations to publish on their websites detailed information about political advertising, including the cost of specific commercials. Although such material is already required to be made available to the public, anyone seeking to know what candidates are spending, and on what programs, typically has to visit a local television station and make a request to see what's known as the "public files.

When actress Kerry Washington was preparing for her role as Olivia Pope, the high-octane Beltway "fixer" on the new ABC series "Scandal," one of the first things she did was launch a Google search for Judy Smith, the real-life crisis consultant on whose professional life the series is based. Washington was somewhat perplexed by how little came up on the D.C. insider who had navigated through some of the thorniest public relations challenges of the past 20 years on behalf of her clients, including Monica Lewinsky, former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig and NFL quarterback Michael Vick, to name a few. There were no interviews and rarely even media mention of the public relations powerhouse.

I broke it to Kobe Bryant after Sunday's Lakers thriller. It's now Jordan Hill's team. "Well, he's got the right first name for it," says Bryant, yuks all around after a game that would have been remembered for Ron Artest's vicious assault if it weren't for such an improbable and stirring victory. Winning cures so many ills and covers up so many problems but unfortunately does not wipe out a suspension that is surely to come with the playoffs about to begin.

Sutton Foster appears to be putting her Broadway experience to good, or at least remunerative, use in "Bunheads," the new series on ABC Family that is set to premiere June 11. The network has released a first clip from the comedy-drama in which the Tony-winning actress not only demonstrates her dancing chops but also her experience enduring cattle-call auditions. Foster, 37, left the current Broadway revival of "Anything Goes" to star in the TV series, in which she plays a former Vegas showgirl who gets hitched and moves to a coastal town where she finds a job working as a dance instructor for her mother-in-law.

It's morning for America - "Good Morning America,"that is. In a shift that could remake morning TV, ABC'sa.m. extravaganza finally overthrew NBC's"Today" last week, ending its archrival's 16-year perch atop the weekly ratings. "GMA," hosted by George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts, drew an average of 5,147,000 total viewers last week, just 13,000 more than "Today," according to early data released Monday from Nielsen. While "GMA" has beaten "Today" before now on individual days, it hasn't done so in the weekly averages since 1996.

The most-watched Oscar telecast since 2005 gave ABC its first weekly ratings victory during the official television season since September 2008, according to figures released by the Nielsen Co. With Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony averaging 41.7 million viewers, the most for an entertainment program since the 2005 Academy Awards, ABC averaged 12.09 million viewers for its prime-time programming from March 1 through Sunday. That was its best showing since the week of Sept. 22-28, 2008, its last weekly victory during the official television season.

ABC's decision to revamp "This Week" seems like another case of fixin' what ain't broke ("ABC Eager to Meet 'Press' Challenge," by Elizabeth Jensen, July 28). George Stephanopoulos is a terrific interviewer and follows up his questions where Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" often fails to. Alitta Kullman Laguna Hills

"NYC 22," which premieres Sunday on CBS, is about rookie policemen in the upper reaches of Manhattan. The newsworthy particulars are that it is the work of Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions; that it was created by Richard Price, who wrote the novels "The Wanderers" and "Clockers" (made into movies by Philip Kaufman and Spike Lee, respectively), the De Niro film "Mad Dog and Glory," Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money" and several episodes of "The Wire"; and that its Price-penned pilot was directed by James Mangold ("3:10 to Yuma")

Although I never thought I would say these words in this lifetime, what I really missed was Celine Dion. While watching "Titanic," ABC's ill-paced, sanctimonious and overly stuffed four-part miniseries airing this weekend, it is impossible not to compare it with the James Cameron film of the same name. Completely unfair to screenwriter Julian Fellowes (creator of "Downton Abbey") or anyone else associated with ABC's "Titanic," but as the more than 1,500 folks who lost their lives on that fateful night 100 years ago could tell you, life is often completely unfair.