Mlb Steps Up To The Plate

摘要

There's new grass on the field at MLB Network-literally. Opening Day for the 2009 Major League Baseball season is still more than three months away, but opening day for MLB Network, the league's new 24-hour cable service, comes Jan. 1, when it launches to some 50 million cable and satellite homes. The finishing touches are being put on the high-definition production and technical headquarters in Secau-cus, N.J. Its centerpiece is the whopping 9,600-square-foot Studio 42, which is designed as a half-scale replica of a baseball field. There's synthetic turf on the infield, and a 25-foot out-of-town Scoreboard that will display real-time updates; it's modeled after the Scoreboard in Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park. Studio 42 (so named to honor Jackie Robinson; neighboring Studio 3 tributes Babe Ruth) will be used as a demonstration center by MLB Network analysts (and former MLB players) Al Leiter, Joe Magrane and Harold Reynolds, and is one of many indications of the network's attempt to swing for the fences. The 140,000-square-foot network facility, which once housed NBC Universal's cable news network MSNBC, includes 38 nonlinear editing suites and is the early foundation of a file-based digital archive that MLB is creating from the league's vast trove of film and tape archives.