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EXCLUSIVE: Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences COO Ric Robertson is  taking what’s being internally called a “sabbatical” from June through August. I have learned this is an unusual paid leave even though the Academy is complaining about a financial crunch. Normally, its staff are restricted to 30 days of unpaid leave (and then only with approval). “He has worked here for 31 years. Doesn’t he deserve it?” an insider told me. “He didn’t tell us what he’ll do. Maybe work on his golf game.” Robertson’s upcoming sabbatical has prompted AMPAS staff to wonder whether he will be pushed out and/or look for another job. In April 2011, he was passed over for Bruce Davis’ executive directorship and now reports to AMPAS CEO Dawn Hudson, who was brought in over him. Insiders tell me that Robertson was primarily responsible for this year’s online voting debacle, which Hudson dumped in his lap when the Academy finally decided to implement Oscar balloting electronically — something Robertson and Davis resisted for prior years. (Grumbles one insider: “Dawn gives him anything messy that she doesn’t want to deal with or anything that means a lot of real work or anything that has a potential for failure, like the electronic voting.”)In November, the Academy had to extend its registration period after member complaints. Then AMPAS had to back down and send an old-fashioned paper ballot to any member who had paid their dues but hadn’t registered for online voting. (The Academy initially required a one-time registration for online or paper ballots.) Then, because of elaborate security steps necessary to avoid hackers, a large and very vocal group of AMPAS members complained that they were locked out of the system and had to waste 2-3 days trying to vote online. The Academy sent members a detailed but overly complex E Voter Guide that proved more confusing than helpful. Sources have been predicting for some time that Robertson would leave AMPAS, and yet he has stayed. He joined the Academy in 1981 and became the organization’s second-in-command in 1989 when he was appointed Executive Administrator. In that position he oversaw the Academy’s public programming, library and film archive as well as its public relations, marketing, legal affairs, and numerous awards-related events and activities. One reason he was passed over for the top job was because AMPAS staff members were so unhappy they were beginning to take the first steps to unionize by exploring how to join up with IATSE. (And how embarrassing would that have been to the Hollywood bigwigs?) I’d be unfair not to point out that Robertson has his admirers. But I’m not — not since he yanked Deadline’s press credential to cover the 2011 Academy Awards because I posted exclusive spoilers. (He threw a hissy fit and successfully lobbied then-Academy President Tom Sherak to ban Deadline from the Oscars press room.)

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Fox has officially announced that Kelly Rowland and Paulina Rubio will join Simon Cowell and Demi Lovato as judges on the third season of The X Factor. “It’s taken more than a decade, but I’m delighted to finally be on a panel with three girls (I think!),” Cowell said. “Paulina and Kelly both have great taste and massive experience in the music industry, and together with Demi, this is going to be a fun panel. It just feels like the time to do something different.” Rowland was a judge on Season 8 of the U.K. version of X Factor.

Christopher Abbott has signed with WME. Abbott made headlines recently with his decision to abruptly leave HBO‘s comedy series Girls, on which he played Allison Williams’ boyfriend Charlie for the first two seasons. Abbott, who continues to be repped by Parseghian Planco, co-stars in Burma, which debuted at this year’s SXSW where it received jury recognition for Best Ensemble. He will next be seen in Mona Fastvold’s The Sleepwalker.

Ray Richmond contributes to Deadline’s TV coverage.

Showtime and the producers of The Big C end Cathy Jamison’s personal cancer saga in hospice care tonight with its fourth and Hereafter season finale. Executive producer and showrunner Jenny Bicks naturally declined to divulge whether Cathy (Laura Linney) dies tonight, though she and fellow exec producer Darlene Hunt co-wrote. The mini-series’ four last episodes span a year in the life of the lead character, each separated by roughly three months. The finale follows Angelina Jolie’s shocking May 14 announcement that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy, which spurred a slew of press calls to Showtime and the Big C team. Bicks, herself an early-stage breast cancer survivor, told Deadline. “It has really drawn attention to us in a way we couldn’t have anticipated,” she said. “I hope we’ve done something to help more people recognize that cancer isn’t any longer this thing you whisper about behind a closed door. And it isn’t necessarily a disease you necessarily have to die from.”The Big C started in 2010 as a half-hour Showtime dramedy starring Laura Linney as a woman with terminal melanoma. It evolved into this four-hour mini-series farewell as a means of wrapping up the storyline and giving more time to the creative team for each episode. Bicks explains: “We never really fit into a box. When you’re writing a half-hour, even for cable, you invariably need to rush certain elements. We had always wondered what it would be like to present in an hour-long format. We just got to live in these moments a little bit more. But it didn’t fundamentally change our DNA.” Showtime’s entertainment prez David Nevins deems successful this unusual experiment in series evolution – a “spin-on” rather than a spin-off. “It slightly changed the tone of the show, but only slightly. It gave people a new peg for writing about it and worked well for us.”

Bicks is adamant that if Linney isn’t nominated for an Emmy in the made-for-TV movie/mini acting category this year, “Then there is no God.” (Linney was nominated for an Emmy for 2011 but failed to win.) It’s rare, if not unprecedented, that a show and its performers would be eligible for Emmy attention in comedy series categories one year and longform the next. But Bicks doesn’t believe that TV Academy voters pay much attention to category. “They just look at the name and the performance.”