• Scott Bessent, the founder of the hedge fund Bessent Capital and a protégé of billionaire George Soros, has taken a loss on the sale on his duplex co-op at One Sutton Place South. The four-bedroom, 11-room spread, which Bessent bought for $12 million in 2007 and listed for $12.5 million last October, has been sold to Joshua and Juliet Berkowitz for $9.5 million. The apartment was once home to Patricia Kennedy Lawford, the younger sister of JFK. [Cityfile]
• Brian Brille, Bank of America's former head of investment banking and its newly appointed Asia-Pacific chief, has gone into contract to sell his apartment at Trump Park Avenue. The 5,473-square-foot pad, which Brille bought for $8.6 million in 2007 and put up for sale last month, had been listed for $14.75 million by Corcoran's Carrie Chiang and Loy Carlos. [Cityfile, Corcoran]
• Radio host Alan Colmes has put his triplex penthouse in the Silk Building on East 4th Street up for dale. Colmes first listed the two-bedroom apartment for $1.995 million in March, but pulled it off the market in September. It's now listed for $1.895 million. [NYM, Corcoran]
• New Jersey Nets rookie Terrence Williams has finally found himself a home. Williams is paying $7,000-a-month to live in the same Palisades, NJ, townhouse where Vince Carter formerly lived. [NYT]

CNN's least likable anchor is celebrating his birthday today: bigot and birther enthusiast Lou Dobbs is turning 64. Former cable news personality (and now radio host) Alan Colmes is turning 59. Actress Nia Vardalos is 47. Karen Brooks Hopkins, president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, turns 58. Actor Kevin Sorbo is 51. Jessica Lucas, a member of the cast of the new Melrose Place, is turning 24. Ross Matthews, the guy better known as "Ross the Intern" from the old Tonight Show, is 30. And the WWE's Stephanie McMahon, daughter of wrestling mogul Vince McMahon, celebrates her 33rd birthday today.

Sean Hannity gave Alan Colmes a new Rolex and Tom Cruise gave Katie Holmes a new baby, reportedly. Disturbing relationships can still be fruitful.

Liberal abuse-target Alan Colmes stopped by the Comic Strip holiday party last night and apparently just stood, grinning, directly below his '80s standup headshot(?!), in the lobby, for hours. Merry Christmas. [The Comic's Comic]

• The bloodletting at CBS is underway. [THR]
• Macmillan Publishing and FSG are both trimming staff. [AP, NYO]
• Ad spending for the first nine months of this year fell 1.7 percent. [WWD]
• Katie Couric, Campbell Brown, and Rachel Maddow will appear in the next issue of Vogue. [TVN]
• Sean Hannity's Alan Colmes-less show begins January 12th. [NYT]
• The Disney Channel is taking its act to Russia next year. [NYT]
• The most amusing corrections published this year. [Regret the Error]

As if spending the last eight years as Sean Hannity's punching bag on Fox News wasn't humiliating enough, watch the crew of Hannity & Colmes break into laughs as Alan Colmes announces his plan to leave the program at the end of the year. Your colleagues will miss you dearly, Alan.

♦ Graydon Carter says Vanity Fair plans to go ahead with its annual Oscar party, but "the party will be a much more intimate affair than in years past; we're going to scale back the guest list considerably." [DH]
♦ No replacement is planned for Alan Colmes: Fox News plans to have Sean Hannity serve as solo host of the nightly show. [NYT]
♦ Ted Koppel is parting ways with the Discovery Channel. [NYT]
♦ Looks like OK! has been cutting back on copy editors. The cover of the new issue misspells Ashlee Simpson's name. [HuffPo]

Back in 1996, cable news was still innocent, and even an evil Republican genius like Roger Ailes had to make a pretense of political objectivity. So Fox News Channel was careful to seek a token "Liberal To Be Determined" to balance Sean Hannity when the conservative pundit helped anchor the network's debut. These days CNN, MSNBC and Fox all carry unabashedly slanted shows on their lineups, so Fox apparently feels no compunction about giving Hannity formal title to the show he's always had his way with: The host will go it alone following co-host Alan Colmes' previously-announced departure, two sources told the Times.

Alan Colmes, television's most beloved representative of the liberal Lizard People, has finally decided to leave the Hannity and Ineffectual Lizard Person show behind. Colmes will abandon his longtime partner Sean Hannity, who probably won't notice that he's just bullying a mop in a suit now, and develop his own weekend show. Maybe on the weekend show he'll invite a rotating series of louder, more charismatic alpha conservatives to shout him down or ignore him outright? Otherwise it'll just be an hour of Colmes trying to get a word in edgewise against dead air. Beckettian, really. [TVNewser]

♦ Alan Colmes, the "liberal" who supposedly serves as co-host of Hannity & Colmes with Sean Hannity, is leaving the Fox News program at the end of the year. [HuffPo]
♦ A daily news program hosted by Christiane Amanpour is in the works at CNN. [NYT]
♦ Despite screwing up nearly everything he touches, NBC golden boy Ben Silverman may see his contract renewed in the next few weeks. [NYM]
♦ USA Today has announced plans to cut staff. [E&P]
♦ Twilight was No. 1 at the box office this weekend, raking in $70.5 mil. [LAT]
♦ Forbes is not being sold to a shady Russian billionaire. [SAI]

♦ The Times has the skinny on "Martin Eisenstadt," the supposed McCain consultant who leaked info to the press. (He's an aspiring filmmaker, not surprisingly.) In the meantime, MSNBC's retracted its story. [NYT, AP]
♦ You might be enjoying CW's Stylista, but the ratings thus far haven't been especially encouraging. [NYO]
♦ Two new cast members, Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott, will join Saturday Night Live beginning this weekend. [NYT]
♦ Showtime is developing an hour-long show by Stan Lee about a gay superhero. [Variety]

It's Lou Dobbs' birthday today! CNN's resident immigrant-basher is 63. (If you're interested in hiring a mariachi band to show up at CNN's offices and sing for him, go here.) Dobbs isn't the only cable news personality who will be blowing out candles today. Hannity & Colmes' Alan Colmes is 58. Others celebrating: Brooklyn Academy of Music President Karen Brooks Hopkins is turning 57. My Big Fat Greek Wedding's Nia Vardalos turns 46. Actor Kevin Sorbo is 50. And the WWE's Stephanie McMahon, better known as the daughter of Vince McMahon, turns 32.

Alan Colmes is famous as a nightly sacrifice victim to the Repubican Gods who run Fox News Channel. Al Franken once called him the "zeta male" of the duo Hannity & Colmes and joked that Colmes' duties included making coffee and cleaning Fox honcho Roger Ailes' private bathroom. But something has transformed the little runt. Maybe he's taken heart in the nation's mounting hatred of all things Republican. Or maybe the John Edwards scandal has energized him. Or perhaps he just really, really hates John McCain. Anyway, here's a great clip in which Sean Hannity almost beats him to death. Click the video icon. [YouTube via Wonkette]

Harris Poll asked TV viewers, both Democrat and Republican, to name their favorite and least liked news personalities. The results of the survey, crunched and displayed on our chart, are fascinating.

That dude Alan Colmes who is the nominally liberal half of FOX News' duo Hannity and Colmes has what is described as a "secret" blog by the Huffington Post. On it, he posts reader mail, uses his full name, and talks about the show. Ah, we get it, secret like "We didn't know about it so it was a secret!" Also, there's a Bob Dylan video on the blog which we guess means he really is a liberal. [Inside Cable]