This will be Turner Sports’ third season broadcasting the MLB Playoff games. It’s also the year that the sound will really come together, according to Tom Sahara, senior director of remote operations & IT at Turner Sports. “The first year,” he says, “were just getting it on the air, getting used to it. Last year was a trial by fire, of sorts, with some decisions getting made late in the [season].”

In the next two weeks, Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium will begin the serious of work of moving into a 40,000-sq.-ft. home in the Olympic International Broadcast Center in Vancouver, but much of the hard work has already been done, thanks to the construction of a 13,400-sq.-ft. Broadcast Simulation Centre in Toronto that served as an equipment-staging area and more.

Sports fans want their video content on multiple screens beyond their televisions, and AEG Worldwide has formed a division to evolve in lock-step with that multiscreen market. AEG Digital Media is the newest AEG subsidiary, a multiplatform, multimedia production company that merges AEG Productions with Webcast company Incited Media. The new entity will offer digital-media services for distribution across television, mobile, and broadband platforms — with a particular emphasis on sports.

An intimate, soccer-only stadium rising in a careworn former industrial city is expected to be the crown jewel of Major League Soccer and one of the keys to a local redevelopment project. At more than $200 million, the new home of the New York Red Bulls professional soccer team will be the costliest MLS stadium ever built when it opens in March beside the Passaic River in Harrison, NJ. MLS Commissioner Don Garber said it “will be the premier soccer stadium in America.” Austria-based energy-drink maker Red Bull GmbH is paying for everything at the stadium, located just north of Newark’s largely Brazilian and Portuguese Ironbound neighborhood, about 10 miles from New York City. It designed the 25,000-seat doughnut-shaped facility along European lines, with an emphasis on getting fans close to the field — some as near as 21 feet…

NBC’s Sunday Night Football remains red hot. The National Football League franchise is off to the best start in its four-year history on the network, averaging 20.8 million viewers and topping the list of network primetime shows for all four games.

Vizrt’s Viz Engine 3.3 once again powered graphics within a one-operator system developed by Berlin-based netventure for the HD production of the Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour 2009. The Red Bull XFighter series is one of the largest freestyle motocross contests. This year’s series made five stops around the globe, beginning in Mexico, moving on to Canada and the US and ending in London. All of the Red Bull X-Fighter series broadcasts were produced in HD and seen live on the ESPN Network in the U.S. The tour began in late March and concluded on August 22 in London.

Broadcast equipment and production services provider Bexel has purchased two new LDK 8300 high-definition, Live Super Slo-Mo camera systems from Grass Valley that are in use by NEP Supershooters during the live production of ESPN’s Monday Night Football HD (720p format) telecasts each week during the season.

Riedel Communications will provide a comprehensive intercom solution for new broadcast and media-production facility MediaCityUK, which is being constructed just outside Manchester city in the United Kingdom.

ESPN.com launched its SweetSpot Blog Network, which will eventually contain a local-market blog for each of the 30 Major League Baseball franchises, with a charter group representing teams that will participate in the 2009 postseason (the Detroit Tigers visit the Minnesota Twins in a one-game playoff Tuesday).

Major League Baseball Advanced Media will debut Postseason.TV, which will feature multiple live camera angles for both online and mobile viewing from each playoff and World Series game, reports Eric Fisher of SportsBusiness Journal.

MLB.com is partnering with Fox Sports and Turner Sports, the rights holders to postseason baseball games, to deliver a new web and mobile video product, Postseason.TV.

MLB Network, Major League Baseball’s cable network, is getting ready for the Fall Classic, Eric Fisher of SportsBusiness Journal reports.

Major League Soccer will end its six-year partnership with Major League Baseball Advanced Media and bring its league and team sites in-house, reports Tripp Mickle of SportsBusiness Journal.

U.S.-based TV networks are expected to respond to Rio de Janeiro beating out Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics Games by negotiating down rights fees for those games and the 2014 Winter Olympics from Sochi, Russia, reports Michael McCarthy of USA Today.

DirecTV brought back its Ultimate Displaced Fan Search promotion, which seeks the most devoted and passionate National Football League fan who lives far from his or her team’s market, reported Greg Tarr of TWICE.

“The embarrassing finish has created political tension stretching from the White House to Mayor Richard Daley’s office to the Chicago 2016 committee,” the Chicago Tribune’s David Heinzmann, Philip Hersh, and Todd Lighty wrote of the city’s failure in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

TBS will throw the first pitch of its Major League Baseball postseason coverage with what is technically considered a regular-season game, as the cable network will air Tuesday’s one-game playoff with the Minnesota Twins hosting the Detroit Tigers and the winner being crowned American League Central division champions, reports Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News.

Will Keith Hernandez be back in the SportsNet New York booth next season, analyzing New York Mets Major League Baseball games?

Cable operator Charter Communications reached a deal to offer broadband sports network ESPN360.com to its high-speed-data subscribers, Kent Gibbons of Multichannel News reports.

Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback of the National Football League’s Pittsburgh Steelers, and his offensive line traveled to the Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Monday night for a different sport.

Marshall Grossman of Los Angeles-based law firm Bingham McCutchen, who is representing ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, has a bone to pick with the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University, Georgia Garvey of the Los Angeles Times reports.

When Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers Saturday night and were eliminated from contention for the National League West title, Fox breathed a sigh of relief, as its telecast of the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys at Denver Broncos would not have to go head-to-head with a meaningful Rockies game on FSN Rocky Mountain, Dusty Saunders of The Denver Post reports.

After 17 years as the TV voice of Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds, play-by-play man George Grande signed off for the last time Sunday, John Fay of The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Bob Verdi of the Chicago Tribune writes that the International Olympic Committee did Chicago a favor by awarding the 2016 Summer Olympic Games to Rio de Janeiro.

The main reason for the elimination of Chicago in the first round of the International Olympic Committee’s selection process for the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games was resentment toward the United States Olympic Committee, writes Philip Hersh of the Chicago Tribune.

When it comes to HDTVs, it appears the recession is not dampening the public’s interest in owning a high-def set, but it is impacting how much gets spent, according to a new forecast from SNL Kagan.

George Bodenheimer, co-chairman of Disney Media Networks and president of ESPN and ABC Sports, will receive the President’s Award from the Association of Cable Communicators during its Beacon Awards Gala Monday, Oct. 26, at the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center, Multichannel News reported.

Tune in now or find young people tuning you out as they look for other places to get their information, one of the most powerful people in media told the Olympic movement this week. Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP Group, said the International Olympic Committee and its partners need to give people information in the format they want if they are to truly make the Olympic movement relevant.

Band Pro and Media Distributors will open the doors of their office in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City Oct. 15 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for a production acquisition and workflow solutions open house.