ESPN’s Virtual Playbook is making the move off the virtual field and into the virtual booth thanks to proprietary software written by ESPN’s technical team led by Anthony Bailey, ESPN VP of emerging technologies. Combined with off-the-shelf hardware the software forms a system that is expected to make its debut sometime next spring.

While many networks are reining in their ancillary programming — moving pre-game and halftime shows from the event site into a network studio — NBC Sports is running a reverse. The network’s Sunday-night NFL studio show, Football Night in America, will now include an on-location component. Every Sunday this season, host Bob Costas will host the show from a set at the Sunday Night Football game site. Before they take the booth to call the game, broadcasters Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth will join Costas live at the stadium for each week’s show.

Reality Check Studios and RC-Gear will help NBC Sports enhance its Sunday-night Football Night in America coverage via Uppercut, a proprietary software package that will provide touchscreen control of a Grass Valley Kayak production switcher, Vizrt graphics, and an Evertz VIP multiviewer and 32×32 router.

With the newspaper industry in free fall, the pool of talented, available writers in NFL cities is filling rapidly. Prior to the kickoff of this NFL season, CBS Sports took advantage. Rapid Reports, a new CBSSports.com feature, puts 32 of those writers to work filing short-form updates from each NFL team’s training camp, practices, and, eventually, game-day sidelines.

Each year, executives at ESPN determine a handful of company priorities for the upcoming 12 months. Each network employee is given a list of those priorities -- some even carry the list laminated on a key chain -- and is invited to contribute to those priorities. Topping that list for 2009? Preparations for next summer’s World Cup in South Africa, where ESPN will be hosting wall-to-wall coverage that will extend far beyond the confines of the pitch.

Neil Sedaka sang that breaking up is hard to do, but, in the pro-audio realm of sports broadcasting, it’s breaking in that’s the challenge. A combination of inertia and the need for a familiar interface to enable itinerant users to work on equipment can make OB-truck builders, in particular, reluctant to make changes in their purchasing patterns.

While many networks are reigning in their ancillary programming - moving pre-game and halftime shows from the event site into a network studio - NBC Sports is running a reverse. The network’s Sunday night NFL studio show,Football Night in America, will now include an on-location component. For each Sunday this season, host Bob Costas will travel to the site of that week’s game and host the show from a set at the Sunday Night Football game site. In this week’s SVG Audible, Costas and NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol discuss the new format of the show and what to expect this season. Click through to launch the SVG Audible player or to subscribe to the SVG Audible in iTunes.

Topping this week's Venue News & Notes is the announcement that FedEx Field will host a Big Ten game between Indiana and Penn State on Nov. 20, 2010, the second college-football game to be played at the stadium next year as part of an effort by the Washington Redskins to attract high-profile college-football games to their home in Landover, MD.

ESPN is moving into Beantown. ESPN announced this week that Boston will be the next city to be featured in the network’s expansion of local sports sites, joining Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York. ESPNBoston.com, slated to launch September 14, will be ESPN’s home for New England sports news and information, online video, and original and customized content integrated from ESPN’s platforms.

The Sports Video Group is pleased to announce our newest sponsor, Burst. Burst designs, engineers and installs creative, integrated systems for sports venues, broadcast and cable facilities, universities, and places of worship.

The Sports Video Group is pleased to welcome our newest corporate sponsor, Phizzle. Phizzle offers an easy to use Web-based mobile platform for marketers to launch and manage real-time mobile marketing campaigns.

Orad and Vitec Group’s Vinten Radamec will demonstrate an integrated solution at IBC2009 at the RAI Centre in Amsterdam Sept. 11-15 combining Orad’s ProSet HD/standard-definition virtual studio solution and Vinten Radamec’s new Fusion FP188VR robotic pedestal and Fusion FHR120VR robotic-only head.

During the August 16 football match between FC Tokyo and Yokohama, J SPORTS and broadcast production partner TeleTech utilized STATS’ SportVU tracking technology to measure and analyze game action, implementing two dozen different on-air graphics. This was the first such use of the tracking technology within a live Japanese broadcast.

PMTV and the Philadelphia Eagles Television Network (ETN) have teamed up again to bring viewers network-level coverage of the Eagles’ preseason games. Game coverage includes two home games (8/13 vs. Patriots, 8/27 vs. Jaguars) and one away game (9/3 at Jets). PMTV is also providing the mobile unit, TV crew, transmission, telcom, and closed captioning services for the Aug 27 visiting Jaguars Broadcast.

MultiDyne Video & Fiber Systems will feature its new openGear solutions, new accessories for the SilverBULLET, new features for the DVI-6000 and EOS-4000, HDMI-ONE DVI/HDMI fiber link with HDCP, HD-3500 3G video with audio and data, COMMS-2000 two- to four-wire intercom bridge, and Fiber-Comms intercom fiber link at IBC2009 at the RAI Centre in Amsterdam Sept. 11-15.

Harris said it plans to begin localized manufacturing of television-transmitter products in Brazil, and the communications and information technology company is focusing on the Campinas region, the “Brazilian Silicon Valley,” located 80 miles northwest of Sao Paulo.

Artel Video Systems has appointed Gary Schutte to the position of Vice President of Sales. Schutte will join Artel in an executive role responsible for leading the sales team as it strengthens and expands existing direct customer relationships and fosters new partnerships with systems integrators and resellers. In addition, his operational talents and experience will be utilized in developing marketing plans and product development roadmaps for the DL4000 Video Transport platform.

At IBC 2009, stand 1.C61, Harmonic Inc. will showcase its solution portfolio for video delivery to a variety of devices, including the TV, PC, iPhone, and other mobile devices. Harmonic will introduce enhancements to its ProStream stream processing platform, Carbon Server transcoding software, and MediaPrism software suite for multi-screen video delivery.

The National Football League’s New York Giants hope practice makes perfect, and XOS Technologies hopes it helped to make the team’s TIMEX Performance Center perfect by integrating several audio-visual and sports-technology components just prior to the kickoff of the 2009 NFL season.

Pittsburgh-based NEP Broadcasting’s NEP Supershooters unit purchased four FOR-A FVW-500HS Video Writers for its HD production and support trailers, which will allow users to draw in real time over standard-definition or HD video through a touch-screen interface.

Nucomm, part of The Vitec Group’s RF Extreme business unit, will display its CamPac 2 HD/SD COFDM microwave transmitter at IBC2009 at the RAI Centre in Amsterdam Sept. 11-15. The CamPac 2 was designed for wireless camera applications, such as sports coverage and electronic newsgathering.

Act 1, a video production company based in Westerville, Ohio, that undertakes diverse international assignments, recently transitioned to tapeless high-definition acquisition with the purchase of four Panasonic P2 HD camcorders.

Panasonic introduced its new solid-state AJ-HPM200, a P2 HD mobile recorder/player featuring new editing, recording and AV/IT connection functions, and multi-format compatibility including optional AVCHD support.

NBC Sports extended its multiyear partnership with U.S. Figure Skating through the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and the pact includes live primetime and afternoon coverage of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, as well as live afternoon coverage of the annual international Skate America competition, for the next four years.

Love means zero in tennis scoring, and there is zero love between Tennis Channel and Cablevision Systems right now. The cable operator’s move to add the channel under National Cable Television Cooperative terms angered Tennis executives, who discovered that Cablevision just joined the NCTC Wednesday, reports Richard Sandomir of The New York Times.

Golf Channel posted its highest-ever rating for the final day of The Solheim Cup international women’s golf tournament Sunday, earning a 0.93 Nielsen Media Research household rating for an average of 956,000 viewers, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reports.

NBC Universal is nearing the launch of a sports-video site in India, modeled after Hulu and based on live streaming of cricket. paidContent reports that the company is running closed trials of cricket streaming in the country.

Comcast SportsNet juggled its programming lineup in anticipation of a busy fall season for Philadelphia-area sports. The regional sports network will begin airing a one-hour edition of Daily News Live at 5 p.m. starting Tuesday, Sept. 8, followed by SportsNite at 6 p.m.

CBS said its ad inventory for the upcoming U.S. Open tennis tournament is close to 90% sold, at rates that are flat compared with the 2008 U.S. Open, reports John Consoli of Mediaweek. The 2009 U.S. Open will run from Aug. 31-Sept. 13, with CBS’ coverage starting Sept. 5, for a total of some 37 ½ hours of match coverage.

China Unicom Ltd. said this week it will sell Apple Inc.'s iPhone in China this year, ending months of rumor about when the hit phone would make its long-delayed debut in the world's most populous mobile market.

If I were to tell you that Apple’s app economy was worth more than $2.4 billion a year, you would laugh hysterically, shake your head and walk out of the room, yes? But according to mobile advertising startup AdMob, there are some $200 million worth of applications sold in Apple’s iPhone store every month, or about $2.4 billion a year.

A key gauge of Ireland's economic health isn't found in the island nation's business districts or trading floors, but on the football fields of the rural west, where rosters of amateur clubs are getting so thin that villages are struggling to find talented players to field 15-person teams.

While TV ratings can suggest the relative popularity of leagues and teams, they're complicated yardsticks. Whether teams play in good time slots with strong TV lead-ins, and which networks show them, can muddy whether their TV ratings clearly reflect fan interest. Not so in the unfettered online world. Which leads to the obvious question: What's up with Ball State's football team?