MLB Network left the comfort of fiber connectivity behind and traveled to Cooperstown, NY, this past weekend for coverage of the 2009 Major League Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. The network pulled together the production in six weeks and, with the help of NEP Supershooter 17, Metrovision’s uplink truck, and Skype, delivered a top-quality event for fans of Joe Gordon, Rickey Henderson, and Jim Rice as well as for baseball fans in general.

Sports broadcasting is a crowded place these days. There are the big ones — ESPN, FSN, MSG, Speed, and a few others — and they are being joined by a fast-growing host of cable networks dedicated to sports broadcasting, from the Golf Channel to Surf TV, YES, Fuel TV, the Tennis Channel, and even Black Belt TV, the go-to net for martial-arts fans. And while live sports broadcasting is at the heart of all these outlets, the truth is that there simply isn’t enough live action going on in all these niches to fill their 24/7 universes. Postproduction is the workhorse that helps satisfy these channels’ voracious appetite for content.

The Tour de France ended Sunday in victory for Spanish rider Alberto Contador, but he shared the spotlight with teammate Lance Armstrong, who won a podium place on his comeback; Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, who came in fourth, and record-setting Manxman Mark Cavendish. This was reflected in Eurosport’s HD coverage, which dedicated a team to following seven-time winner Armstrong, and in UK digital broadcaster ITV4’s adding two live transmissions during the second week to follow British riders.

The Eighth World Games ended Sunday July 26 with an extravagant closing ceremony at the impressive Kaohsuing stadium in Taipei City, Taiwan, with both HD and SD coverage available to broadcasters around the world.

HTN Communications build a new technical operations center earlier this year and the new facility reached another achievement this July as HTN Communications provided transmission services to ESPN for the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Festivities, including the Home Run Derby, showcasing its seamless “point-to-multipoint” high definition transmissions. More high-profile events are planned to be announced in the near future.

Tennis Channel will use a Spectra Logic Spectra T950 robotic tape library with six LTO-4 drives and 950 activated slots to store and protect 946 hours of video footage, or 50 terabytes, the two parties announced Monday.

Spectra Logic recently won digital-storage contracts with two large programmers: NASCAR Media Group and Discovery Channel.

The DakStats graphics system from Daktronics continues to find believers in sports venues big and small, as the scaleable system can be customized to best meet the needs of a facility. According to Jon Grann, Daktronics Sports Software Product Manager, the system brings realtime data in from STATS, Inc. and Elias Sports Bureau, making it easier than ever to help fans in the stands keep up with the action.“We have a number of high school, college and professional sports customers that use these types of graphics,” he says. “The graphics can be configured to work on nearly any sized LED video display.”

EVS Broadcast Equipment will demonstrate its new product innovations for the broadcast field and its latest upgrades, all based on the XT[2]-LSM, at IBC in September. Among the offerings is new MULTICAM10 software with advanced capabilities to all existing XT[2]-LSM. This includes full control of Ultra-Motion and Hyper-Motion HD cameras, new Offside Line Creator and add-on graphic tools available for the first time on all standard RemoteLSM controllers.

SportsMEDIA Technology has been training for ESPN’s coverage of X Games 15 from Los Angeles July 30-Aug. 2, but the provider of graphics, statistics, and video-enhancement software and services hasn’t been attempting to land a 720 off a half-pipe.

LG CNS has appointed Tony Turiello to the position of Senior Account Executive of Business Development. In his new role, Turiello will focus on expanding sales of LG CNS solutions in diverse areas such as digital billboards, sports, entertainment, gaming, spectaculars, mobile applications and new building construction and renovation projects. LG CNS’ multimedia technologies include indoor and outdoor high-resolution LED video systems, integrated digital signage solutions, architectural and solid-state LED lighting systems, high-efficiency solar-panel systems and many other emerging technologies.

NFL.com’s latest Tools of the Trade video feature goes behind the scenes with New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin to show off some of the software he uses to coach the Giants — provided by XOS Technologies.

Shown in prototype at NAB 2009 and launching at IBC 2009 in full production form, Gekko’s new Kedo is the world’s first focusable single-source LED based spot lamp. Developed in collaboration with some of the world’s leading luminaire designers, according to the company Kedo is capable of generating millions of individual colours as well as a range of high-accuracy broad-spectrum whites, particularly appropriate to the world of image capture.

It may not have been much of a game, but Mexico’s 5-0 throttling of the United States during the Gold Cup tournament Sunday drew 5.4 million viewers to Univision, marking the network’s most viewers ever for a Gold Cup match, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reported.

Universal Sports pedaled into an exclusive four-year multimedia deal covering three-week road-cycling stage race the Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain), starting with this year’s race, which begins in Assen, Netherlands, Aug. 29 and wraps in Madrid Sept. 22.

SportsNet New York’s Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez didn’t do what many announcers on team-owned regional sports networks tend to do. Rather than shying away from Monday’s controversy in which New York Mets general manager Omar Minaya announced that director of player development Tony Bernazard had been dismissed and blamed New York Daily News reporter Adam Rubin, claiming that Rubin had been angling for a player-personnel job in the Mets organization, all three SNY on-air voices were critical of the organization, Christian Red of the Daily News reported.

ESPN’s Films and Movies division, Andell Entertainment and NFL Films will pay homage to the man the Super Bowl trophy is named after with Lombardi, a drama about late Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi, Variety’s Mike Fleming reports.

NBC Universal will make English-language Hispanic-targeted cable network mun2 available free-of-charge as a preview for all of its distribution partners Aug. 12, when the United States travels to Mexico City to take on Mexico in the Rumbo al Mundial World Cup Qualifier at 3:55 p.m. ET, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reports.

Does size matter? Disney is trying to answer that question, at least when it comes to advertising. The company ran a test to see how people responded to ads of different sizes, and it will unveil some findings, including some surprises about new forms of online ads, in a presentation to about 200 advertisers in New York Tuesday, Brooks Barnes of The New York Times reported.

ESPN is trying something different for its telecast of the Los Angeles Dodgers at St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball game Monday night, keeping play-by-play man Dan Shulman in the booth but stationing analysts Orel Hershiser and Steve Phillips in the camera wells next to each dugout, reports Michael Hiestand of USA Today.

B&C reports that French conglomerate Thomson, which announced a major deal in July 2008 to provide Comcast with low-cost digital set-tops known as Digital Transport Adaptors (DTAs), has won more business from the U.S. cable giant. The company announced that it will provide Comcast with advanced cable gateway devices to support next-generation broadband Internet and voice services.

All Things D reports that when Time Warner reports its second-quarter earnings tomorrow morning, before the markets open, most Wall Street analysts are not expecting much from the media giant, as it continues to slog toward a rejiggering of itself. Time Warner which owns assets like the Warner Bros. movie studio, the AOL online unit, the HBO and Turner cable television networks and Time Inc. magazines–is expected to earn 37 cents per share, compared to 72 cents a year ago, according to a poll of analysts from Thomson Reuters (TRIN).

In the city of Chicago, revenue for 2009 may fall $250 million short. Some city workers, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, must take 15 unpaid vacation days. And more than 400 city workers were recently laid off.

Legendary Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully had a frigid start to his career, literally. Scully showed up to Fenway Park in Boston Nov. 12, 1949, to call a college football game between Maryland and Boston University and found that he would be working from the ballpark’s roof, rather than from a booth, Jerry Crowe of the Los Angeles Times reports.

Alanna Rizzo took an interesting route to her current gig as a sideline reporter with FSN Rocky Mountain and co-anchor of the regional sports network’s Rockies All Access, Dusty Saunders of The Denver Post reports.

The New York Times today takes a look at the ongoing controversy over Amazon’s decision to remove copies of e-Books from owners of the Kindle. In fact Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos called the decision “stupid” and apologized for the move. But as the article lays out, digital rights management has created a new dynamic between consumers and the vendors of digital media like books and movies.

Advertising budgets for mobile channels are expected to buck the downward trend and exhibit strong growth over the next five years, according to a new report from Juniper Research, with mobile ad spending projected to reach $5.7 billion dollars by 2014.

To go HD or not was the big question for Mobile Video, one of the largest production facilities here, as the DTV transition deadline and the 2008 elections loomed large. Any revamp would have to provide a path forward for Mobile’s diverse clients in an all-digital environment, and migrate us from an analog facility to one based on 1080i. TV Technology reports on the company’s use of Harris for most of the core equipment, including the Platinum routing switcher with 3 Gbps frame and cards.

NY Newsday columnist Neil Best says give an early Sports Emmy to SNY for Most Timely Use of a Split Screen, providing the most amusing and dramatic moment of yesterday’s I-don’t-believe-what-I-just saw news conference at Citi Field. Just as Omar Minaya turned on Adam Rubin, surreally making life even more miserable for the Mets, the network showed the Mets’ GM on one side of the screen and the flabbergasted reporter on the other.

Army Television is a division of the Headquarters department of the Army that produces studio and live events from within the Pentagon and throughout the national capitol region. We produce an average of two events every day, and manage the entire process in-house. Our on-site auditorium and production studio have corresponding control rooms which are also tied to our graphic editing stations.

RGear Worldwide is a service provider that specializes in communications infrastructure for TV shows and broadcast operations. Our latest projects include two high profile reality TV shows: TV Land's "The Cougar" and ABC's "The Bachelorette – Season 5."

NASCAR.com says race fans will be able to take part in the voting process for the inaugural NASCAR Hall of Fame. This is the first time a major sport has allowed fans to be part of a Hall of Fame election process. Beginning today, July 28th, fans can log-on to http://www.nascar.com/hall to cast their vote for up to five legends for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Online fantasy-sports startup OpenSports closed its second round of financing, $4 million, and issued $6 million of option to Fox Sports, Rafat Ali of paidContent reports.

Yahoo! asked Microsoft for several hundred million dollars upfront, which stalled negotiations between the two companies, but they are coming close on other parts of a potential agreement to make Microsoft’s Bing Yahoo!’s search provider, Michael Learmonth of AdAge.com reported.

Interface Media Group (IMG), a full-service production and post production house in Washington, D.C., has increased its ability to handle any project – especially the increasing amount of live high-definition work – by adding Sony’s new MVS-6000 production switcher to its line-up. “Our goal was to add a live switched studio component to the HD work we were already doing,” says Jeff Weingarten, president of IMG. “This is the final piece we needed to be fully capable of doing HD live or live-to-tape work out of our stages.”

New Line TV Company, a telecommunication company headquartered in Miami, Florida and serving cable systems in the United States, Canada, Central and South America, and Puerto Rico has chosen Genesis Networks for both the fiber backhaul and satellite distribution needs of FRANCE 24, a well known 24/7 international news channel. The worldwide video fiber network provided by Genesis Networks allows New Line TV Company to bring France 24’s English and French versions directly from Paris for cable distribution on a Genesis satellite platform serving the Americas and Hawaii.