With the World Series behind us, the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies can finally join the rest of the league in gearing up for the 2010 season, and they won’t be alone. ESPN Senior Coordinating Producer Jay Levy and the rest of the ESPN team that covers baseball will be hard at work in the offseason gearing up for better coverage and new technologies. The goal? Continue to meet the growing expectations of baseball fans for solid, in-depth coverage.

With the final out of the World Series, the team at MLB Productions began their annual challenge of creating its World Series highlights film — and to get it done in 10 days.

SVG’s fourth-annual League Technology Summit, to be held December 14-15 at the New York Hilton, will be the biggest edition of the event to date. Visit the new LTS home page for a full agenda, including detailed descriptions of each panel discussion, bios of all of the day’s speakers, details on the remote production engineering workshop, information on hotel rooms and event registration, and more. Visit http://sportsvideo.org/main/leaguetechsummit/ today!

Lega Calcio, the Italian Football League, has awarded all international media rights for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 Serie A seasons to MP & Silva. The Singapore-based sports-media group won the contract to handle distribution on all platforms — including television, the Internet, and mobile services — after a tender process and a 18-2 vote in its favour.

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) has approved the ATSC Recommended Practice: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television. The ballot was approved by the ATSC membership on November 4, 2009; the same day the ATSC hosted a seminar on the topic of Audio Loudness at the Wiley Rein Conference Center in Washington, DC.

The recent audio installation at The Brit Oval cricket ground in south London has won a prestigious award recognising its contribution to controlling sound levels. The John Connell Award for Innovation was presented to acoustic consultancy the Sharps Redmore Partnership at the Noise Abatement Society’s annual “Noise Oscars,” held this year at the Houses of Parliament on Nov. 4.

Brazlian television service Rede Globo is moving into ultra-slow motion shooting for sports coverage after buying I-Movix’s SprintCam V3 HD system. The broadcaster, better known as Globo TV, is the largest network in Latin America and will use the camera for a variety of events, including football, volleyball and entertainment programming.

The 2009 World Series featured two of the East Coast’s largest media markets, and the television ratings scaled accordingly, notching some of the highest viewership baseball has enjoyed in five years.

Calrec Audio announced a 50% expansion of the digital-signal-processing capacity of its Omega with Bluefin console, to 240 paths from 160, with its increased channel count packaged as 72 stereo channels and 96 mono channels, allowing it to provide up to 36 full 5.1 surround channels.

Vizrt debuted Version 2.0 of its Viz Video Hub plug-and-play asset-management system, which includes extended support for archiving through a Tape Robot feature, which allows broadcasters to archive video assets directly within Viz Video Hub and serves as a long-term storage solution.

Alpha Video, a leading professional video systems integrator, has added Darren Whitten in its Broadcast Systems Group, effective immediately. Whitten brings more than 11 years of experience in audiovisual communications technology and systems integration to Alpha Video. His areas of expertise include: broadcast integration, post-production, and corporate sales through his time as the Regional Sales Manager at Digital Images, Inc. “What attracted me to this position is Alpha Video’s strength in the audiovisual market, and its recent tremendous growth in the Broadcast and Sports channels,” comments Whitten. “It was obvious to me that working with Alpha is a great match and a real opportunity.”

Audio-Technica announced that it will offer its “Experience More Freedom Rebate” through year-end on its 4000 Series, 3000 Series, and 2000 Series professional wireless systems.

NewTek is taking its portable production show on the road to New York City November 17 in a customized MINI Cooper outfitted with a miniature HD studio-on-wheels that underscores how the company’s latest products and technologies are shattering the barriers to HD live production and delivery.

To keep up with the demand from the AES in NY, Stagetec North America will hold an Open House in NYC from November 16-19. Dubbed the “Meet the Team and Products” event, the primary purpose of the four-day event is to give interested parties the opportunity to sit in front of Stagetec’s technologies for the live and broadcast audio industry, get a one-on-one demonstration, and meet the team behind Stagetec’s U.S. operation.

EchoStar Satellite Services announced agreements to deliver its ViP-TV video-transport service to three companies: Prattsburgh, NY-based North Penn Telephone; CT Communications, an independent telephone company in Ohio; and Wyoming digital-TV provider TCT WEST.

truTV and NFL Films teamed up on a new series for the Turner Broadcasting System-owned cable network, NFL Full Contact, which debuts Monday, Feb. 8 at 10 p.m. (ET/PT).

The National Basketball Association’s Boston Celtics are fast-breaking into social media, distributing exclusive locker room footage on YouTube, launching interactive stats-prediction game 3-Point Play on the team’s Facebook page, sending Twitter messages to 21,000 followers, and using Twitter to offer seating upgrades, reports Jenn Abelson of The Boston Globe.

Cable network History will use the Nov. 14 HBO pay-per-view boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto to promote the upcoming season of its Pawn Stars series, reports Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News.

Concept Enterprises introduced the first market-ready mobile-DTV tuner for automobiles, and the $499 gadget should be available in December, Amy Gilroy of TWICE reported.

Varto Technologies officially opened its new headquarters at 195 Hackensack St. in East Rutherford, NJ.

ESPN and Brazilian magazine publisher Spring Editora reached an agreement to launch Revista ESPN, a monthly, Portuguese-language version of ESPN-The Magazine. Revista ESPN will combine content from ESPN-The Magazine with cover features and stories that are unique to Brazil.

Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium will use 39 new SK-HD1000 multistandard, multiformat studio/field cameras from Hitachi Kokusai Electric America for its coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games and Paralympic Winter Games.

With Veteran’s Day on tap Wednesday, Fox and ESPN incorporated tributes to the military into their football coverage this past weekend, Michael Hiestand of USA Today reports.

NBC’s ad sales for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games are slightly behind projections, but Wayne Friedman of MediaDailyNews writes that the suddenly strong TV scatter market may change that.

NFL Network, the National Football League’s cable channel, topped the 50 million mark in terms of distribution, John Ourand and Terry Lefton of SportsBusiness Journal reported.

Industry sources told Eric Fisher and John Ourand of SportsBusiness Journal that the Yankees on YES in-market broadband New York Yankees live-game-streaming service offered by Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, and Cablevision Systems attracted approximately 6,000 subscribers.

Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News wonders why Bob Costas wasn’t selected to host Major League Baseball Network’s pregame and postgame shows for the 2009 postseason and World Series.

Setanta Sports will remain on the rugby pitch in the United States through 2014 after extending its exclusive U.S. rights to several premier club rugby competitions in the northern hemisphere, reports Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News.

The broadcast team for the National Hockey League’s San Jose Sharks, Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda, will move into a more traditional spot between the blue lines, reports David Pollak of the San Jose Mercury News.

Elias Sports Bureau executive vice president Steve Hirdt has covered every single appearance by the National Football League’s Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football throughout MNF’s 40-year history on ABC and ESPN, Dusty Saunders of The Denver Post reports.

Video-on-demand network Ski Channel reached a long-term distribution agreement with satellite-TV service Dish Network, reports John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable.

The German Super Cup will become part of the footballing calendar from next season for the first time in 14 years. That was decided at the annual general meeting of the German Football League (DFL) in Frankfurt.

With opposition to its $3 billion bid to acquire Tandberg ASA mounting, Cisco Systems (CSCO) is extending its offer for the video teleconferencing company until Nov. 18. And it’s leaving the terms and conditions unchanged. So shareholders who’ve balked at the offer have an additional eight days to mull it over. Should they decline to accept it at the end of that period, Cisco may walk away from the deal rather than increase its bid.