According to ESPN, local sports do matter — and they’re an arena worthy of significant expansion. In three short months, ESPN has received enough positive feedback from its hyper-local ESPNChicago.com initiative to launch three more city-specific sports sites. ESPNDallas.com will roll out this fall, followed by ESPNNewYork.com and ESPN LosAngeles.com in the first half of 2010.

Last night’s Colorado Rockies telecast on FSN Rocky Mountain will become the answer to a TV technology trivia question for geeks for years to come: at what broadcast event did the Grass Valley production switcher make its broadcast debut? The switcher, introduced at NAB, is the centerpiece of a Mobile TV Group’s 25HDX unit. “The great thing about it is I’ve seen several technical directors walk up to it and feel very comfortable with it,” says Phil Garvin, Mobile TV Group owner and manager. “It’s fulfilled the promise that it would be very user friendly like the Kalypso but with additional power beyond that.”

It might seem as though the players got all of the home runs out of their systems the night before this year’s All-Star Game nail-biter last week, which stayed interesting until the final out. But even though the American League took the title and World Series home-field advantage for the 12th year out of 13 (the 2002 game ended in a tie), there were some new wrinkles when it came to audio.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the parents of the late ABC Sports cameraman Richard Umansky can move to trial. According to a report in The Chicago Tribune, the lawsuit claims Camp Randall Stadium’s facilities director Barry Fox failed to comply with state and federal safety rules that required the platform to have a railing. Fox testified in a deposition that he was in charge of ensuring the stadium followed Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules.

Topping this week’s Venue News & Notes is the announcement of a blast from the past, in a new home. The first-ever college football game in the new Yankee Stadium will be held Nov. 20, 2010, and will feature Notre Dame versus Army. The game was officially announced this week at a news conference at the stadium, confirming weekend reports. Irish coach Charlie Weis called the announcement “a special moment for me.” He recalled going to Yankees and New York Giants games as a kid at the old stadium, which closed last season.

In Sunday's New York Times, Richard Sandomir, TV sports columnist, looked back at Walter Cronkite’s career in sports broadcasting, highlighted by coverage of the 1960 Winter Olympics from Squaw Valley, CA. Sandomir says the coverage — preserved and available to watch at the Paley Center for Media, in Manhattan and in Los Angeles — shows Cronkite as comfortable in a ski sweater as he was in a suit and tie at the CBS News anchor desk.

The Sports Video Group is pleased to announce that our one of our newest sponsors, NetApp, has upgraded to the platinum level. NetApp brings together the world’s most creative and dedicated people to help clients affordably store, manage, protect, and retain one of their most precious assets — data.

Dave Diels joined Utah Scientific in the newly created position of regional sales manager for the northwestern United States and western Canada, where he will be tasked with expanding sales with new and existing customers, as well as developing dealer networks.

Harris recently completed the expansion of an existing D-Series playout-automation system at Macquarie Southern Cross Media’s transmission facility in Canberra, Australia, to support the launch of 24-hour HD sports channel ONE HD, which began airing on MSCM’s regional stations July 2.

Panasonic Broadcast slashed prices on its AG-HMC40 AVCCAM handheld camcorder from the $3,199 the company announced at NAB to $2,295 and announced that the camcorder will ship with free EDIUS Neo 2 video-editing software from August-March, a $199 retail value.

Nucomm announced an upgrade of its ChannelMaster 7 series split-box portable microwave-link system, with new features including DVB-S modulation, new tripod/mounting hardware, and a new user interface.

JVC Professional Products rolled out the ProHD Media Storage Kit, a complete storage solution for the SDHC media cards that are used to record footage from its new GY-HM100 and GY-HM700 camcorders.

VISLINK’s Law Enforcement and Public Safety business unit will provide strategic video-surveillance services for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa under terms of a $1.5 million order announced Tuesday.

PGA.com’s coverage of the 138th Open Championship from Turnberry in Scotland posted traffic increases, and totals included 85 million page views, up 44% from last year’s British Open, and 624,000 daily unique visitors, up 48% from the 2008 tournament.

ESPN2 will lead up to its inaugural coverage of the U.S. Open with the Olympus U.S. Open Series, consisting of 10 events hard-court tournaments, with nine of the 10 to be produced in HD and air on ESPN2 HD.

The 40th Annual World Series of Poker, presented by Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, will make its return to ESPN July 28 and air every Tuesday through Nov. 10.

GlobeCast Australia will deploy encoders and decoders from TANDBERG Television for all of its HD contribution and distribution requirements, including distribution of the 2009 Ashes Series Test Cricket to the Southern Hemisphere.

The San Francisco Giants have remained in contention in the National League, helping to boost Comcast SportsNet Bay Area’s ratings for Major League Baseball games involving the club.

The National Football League and ESPN will use the Oct. 12 Monday Night Football game featuring the New York Jets visiting the Miami Dolphins to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15).

Civolution acquired watermarking business Software & Technology Solutions from Thomson, and the provider of technology and services for identifying, managing, and monetizing media content said the purchase will allow it to “offer a broader and richer portfolio of content-identification and tracking technologies to enhance its current technologies, products, and services.”

When business is slow, best to break out some heavy artillery. The first auction for pieces of the old Yankee Stadium, begun in May, ends this Sunday. Brandon Steiner, whose sports memorabilia company is handling the sale for the team, is pumping up the final week with the help of Yankee legend Reggie Jackson. Part ambassador, part customer, Jackson's been at Steiner's side for part of the past week, touting the value of the old stadium while taking some treasured mementos for himself. His charitable foundation will get some proceeds, though he's not getting any freebies.

A group of computer scientists at the University of Washington has developed a way to make electronic messages “self destruct” after a certain period of time, like messages in sand lost to the surf. The researchers said they think the new software, called Vanish, which requires encrypting messages, will be needed more and more as personal and business information is stored not on personal computers, but on centralized machines, or servers. In the term of the moment this is called cloud computing, and the cloud consists of the data — including e-mail and Web-based documents and calendars — stored on numerous servers.

The X Games are heading overseas following an agreement between ESPN and Canal Plus, reports Ian Mundell of Variety.

The recent economic woes have taken their toll on TV sports, as well, with even the stalwart National Football League no longer representing a lay-up, John Consoli of MediaWeek reports.

ESPN and Univision are immersed in preparations for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, which will be the most-watched television event ever, topping the 214 million who tuned into the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reports.

ESPN and ABC wasted the gift of a classic finish to this past weekend’s British Open, with announcers including Mike Tirico, Paul Azinger, Curtis Strange, Andy North, Tom Weiskopf, and Judy Rankin talking too much and balls being called “perfect” before they stopped rolling in imperfect spots, Michael Hiestand of USA Today reports.

Soccer fans are irate that NBC Universal chose to air the English-language version of the World Cup qualifying match between the United States and Mexico Aug. 12 on mun2 rather than offering it on a more widely distributed cable network, reports John Consoli of TVWeek. The Spanish-language feed will air on Telemundo.

The long-awaited bout between current pound-for-pound boxing champion Manny Pacquiao and World Boxing Organization champion Miguel Cotto will take place Nov. 14 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, reports R. Thomas Umstead of Multichannel News.

Filming will begin this week on ABC reality series Shaq vs., in which Cleveland Cavaliers center and National Basketball Association superstar Shaquille O’Neal will compete against other superstar athletes in their own sports, AP reports.

With the Statue of Liberty serving as the backdrop, active duty, reserve and retired military personnel, along with their dependents, will be admitted free of charge to The Barclays at Liberty National, tournament officials announced on Tuesday.

Without much trouble, you could probably puzzle out what the two most talked about stories are today....but can you also deduce why The Worldwide Leader hasn't mentioned either one? One is obvious; the other is not so easily explained away.

"Not sure what to say yet but this picture should do the trick." With that, more than a half-million followers on Twitter got a look at the first candid moment from Stewart Cink. Post-first major. Post-media blitz. Post-midnight, too. About 15 minutes after it, Turnberry time.

Jeff Gordon believes it may take a while to win back fan support at Indianapolis after last year's tire problem in the Allstate 400.