ESPN’s coverage of X Games 15 are getting a technical lift this weekend, thanks to the network’s new Los Angeles Production Center. “In years past, we would route the signals through a truck at the Home Depot Center,” says ESPN Senior Operations Producer Larry Wilson. “But with the infrastructure at the LAPC, we can simplify things and go straight out to [the ESPN Digital Center in] Bristol, CT.”

The acquisition of SportVu last year by STATS LLC continues to pay dividends and expand the company’s presence with broadcasters and sports leagues. Turkish broadcaster DigiTurk will use the system for soccer, tracking players and the ball. “They will use it in a lot of different ways,” says Brian Kopp, VP of strategy and development for STATS LLC. “They will create new and different graphics.”

Sky will launch the UK’s first 3D television channel next year. No date has been set for the start of the service nor have any details of programming been announced but Sky wants the channel to be on air by the end of 2010, with sport, entertainment and movies forming the basis of the first offering.

The 2009 SVG DSports conference, the industry’s leading event for sports production professionals involved in content creation and distribution via the Internet, mobile devices, and other platforms, will feature a keynote presentation by Rob Moore, EA Sports VP and CTO as he discusses the future of sports videogames and the ability to tie the virtual experience more closely to the actual event and TV coverage. The event will be held at the Doubletree Guest Suites in New York City’s Times Square on September 22.

Discovery Communications expanded the Omneon Spectrum media-server systems at its Discovery Networks Latin America/U.S. Hispanic headquarters in Miami, first creating a mirrored standard-definition playout system and separate SD ingest system, then adding a mirrored HD playout system and upgrading the ingest system to accommodate both SD and HD content.

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.

The Salvation Army USA Eastern Territory equipped its new Gregg Media Center with three Panasonic AG-HPX500 P2 HD camcorders in studio configuration, an AJ-HPM110 P2 Mobile recorder/player and AV-HS400A multi-format HD/SD switcher. More recently, the Eastern Territory Media Bureau purchased two AG-HPX300 P2 HD camcorders to handle its varied field production needs.

Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems has appointed Kevin Kimmel to the position of mixer product manager, effective immediately. In his new position, Kimmel will be responsible for product training, the implementation of marketing and support programs, and recommendations for mixer product design from the North American market to the research and development team in Japan. He will report to Marc Lopez, marketing manager, Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Inc.

Viewers of the 2009 Tour de France saw hundreds of racers cover over 2,200 miles between July 4th and July 26th, each vying for the finish line on Paris’ Avenue des Champs-Elysées. They also heard an amazing soundscape of determined cyclists straining to climb mountains, the rattle of bicycles bunching up in the peloton and the crowds cheering them along, thanks to Audio-Technica AT835ST M-S Stereo Shotgun Microphones, mounted to the cameras on five motorcycles that cover the miles-long pack of racers.

Dogan TV, a media group in Turkey, is migrating its television production capabilities to high definition with Grass Valley. As a central part of this long-term partnership with Grass Valley, Dogan TV will standardize on LDK 8000 Elite Multi-Format HD cameras, LDK 8300 HD Super SloMo cameras, and Kayak production switchers for all of its HD facilities.

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.”

Linear Acoustic has hired Robert Nicholas as director of business development for the EMEA market. An industry veteran with a background in audio engineering and technology product development, Nicholas has proven success working with major professional broadcast and pro A/V manufacturers and integrators in the region. Nicholas will work to further the Linear Acoustic brand and presence abroad, contributing to the company’s ongoing success overseas.

For more than 30 years, Madison Square Garden has been controlled by a succession of corporations, from Gulf and Western and its successor, Paramount Communications, to Viacom and then the partnership of ITT and Cablevision. In 1997, Cablevision bought out ITT for $650 million to gain full control of the Garden — ushering in a frequently bleak era for the arena’s two primary tenants, the Rangers and, especially, the Knicks.

Versus totaled more than 46 million viewers for its coverage of the Tour de France, up 41% from 32.8 million for the 2008 cycling event, and the network also posted a 67% increase in household ratings and a 98% leap in viewership to 529,926 from 267,722, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reported.

An administrative law judge for the Federal Communications Commission did not extend the deadline for the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to file its recommendation in the program-carriage complaint by Mid-Atlantic Sports Network against Comcast, Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton reported.

NASCAR Fans Get HOF Vote Courtesy of NASCAR.com
By: Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director | Published: July 28, 2009
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.

Chris Berman, Bob Ley, and John Saunders will host a 90-minute special edition of SportsCenter Sept. 7, the day before ESPN’s 30th anniversary, reports R. Thomas Umstead of Multichannel News.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ 3-2, 15-inning win Wednesday night over the guest Los Angeles Dodgers set a season ratings high for Fox Sports Midwest, pulling in a 13.4 household rating and 26 share in the St. Louis DMA.

Sony reported a 37.1 billion yen first-quarter net loss on Thursday, and maintained its forecast for a second year of losses as the global economic slump continued to weigh on its bottom line.

Motorola beat Wall Street expectations Thursday by eking out a small profit in its second quarter, but the struggling telecommunications company is pinning its hopes for revival on new smartphones priced far below most current smartphones like the iPhone.

Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp. sank to a loss last quarter as a companywide effort to cut costs failed to offset plunging demand. The maker of the Aquos line of liquid crystal display televisions Thursday reported a net loss of 25.2 billion yen ($265 million) for the April-June period, diving from a profit of 24.9 billion yen the same period last year.

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.

Jeremy Piven will be joining the WWE entourage on Monday night. Piven, whose three-time Emmy-winning turn as the uber agent Ari Gold drives HBO's Hollywood buddy series Entourage, will be the celebrity guest host on USA Network's presentation of WWE's Monday Night Raw live from the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut on Aug. 3 at 9 p.m. (ET).

Forbes.com reports that despite escalating competition, Motorola appears confident that its upcoming smart phones–based on Google’s Android operating system–are winners. Two analysts think they know the reason behind the company’s boldness: Motorola, they say, has figured out a way to push updates from social networking Web sites directly to a user’s phone.

Reps. Bob Filner (D-Calif.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) wrote to new Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski to express their concerns about Cox Communications’ decision not to sell San Diego Padres Major League Baseball games to competitive video providers, John Eggerton of Multichannel News reported.

Yelling “Play ball!” at a Major League Baseball stadium may not necessarily lead to the start of a baseball game, as The Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Dodger Stadium and the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field may follow in the footsteps of the New York Yankees’ Yankee Stadium and host college-football games, Jack Carey of USA Today reports.

Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno laughs at Twitter, saying, “The fans have got to put something on those—what do you guys call those things, Twittle-do, Twittle-dee?” Twitter has hosted feuds between Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco and San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawn Merriman, and between cyclists Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador. And ESPN Page 2’s Tim Keown wrote, “But from a journalistic sense, it seems like Twitter—and whatever technology comes next—is becoming a place that you can be wrong without consequences.”

RAI withdrew from the bidding for rights to Italy’s Serie A soccer league due to a lack of cash, leaving Paybox Sky Italia and Mediaset to carve up the spoils of a $1.27 billion deal that runs through 2012, Michael Day of Variety reported.

AmberFin has released Version 4.6 for its iCR ingest, Transcode and automatic QC software. New features include compression pre processing, motion compensated frame rate conversion, live in and out capture for scheduling live recordings, transcoding during ingest, and two-pass VC-1, WM9, and h.264 to optimize image quality.

Verizon Communications is offering subscribers who sign up for certain triple-play packages that include DirecTV satellite-TV service access to the NFL Sunday Ticket National Football League out-of-market package free-of-charge, reports Todd Spangler of Multichannel News.

CBS College Sports Network will air The Tony Barnhart Show every Tuesday from 9 p.m.-10 p.m. during college-football season, kicking off Sept. 8, Alex Weprin of Broadcasting & Cable reported.

The 15th X Games began Thursday night on ESPN, but without the late Jeremy Lusk, the moto X freestyle rider who was killed in a crash while competing in Costa Rica in February, and without skateboarder Shaun White, who opted to skip this year’s event and focus on the Winter Olympic Games, during which he will compete in snowboarding.How will this affect buzz and ratings? Louisa Ada Seltzer of Media Life takes a look.

The 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Las Vegas Hilton, and the Sands Convention Center is no longer a part of the event, the Consumer Electronics Association announced Wednesday, as reported by Steve Smith of TWICE.