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Sports of all stripes

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Times Staff Writer

TURN on TV sports this fall and you will see more evidence of an evolution in progress: traditional lineups (the baseball playoffs and World Series, football, basketball and hockey) cheek-by-jowl with nontraditional ones (extreme sports, professional poker).

Viewership trend lines tell some of the tale: Cornerstones like the NFL and NBA still pull in throngs, but audience drift, especially among the young, is toward strategy and risk of the Las Vegas and X Games varieties. Look for ever more dramatic camera angles and tech tricks -- DirecTV, for example, will offer a channel on which fans can watch eight games on one screen -- as the old guard tries to compete.

What happens when a sport appears to be all but extinct on TV? Look no further than hockey, making its return to the ice after a season-long lockout. When the season begins Oct. 5, fans will have to seek it out on Comcast’s Outdoor Life Network instead of ESPN -- the sport’s home for more than a decade -- which dropped it because of low ratings. The NHL hopes to create higher-scoring, faster-paced games by allowing the “two-line” pass for more scoring and shootouts to avoid regular-season ties.

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Some highlights of fall TV sports and games:

* “Monday Night Football” will begin its 36th and last season on ABC Thursday, Sept. 8 at 6 p.m., then continue Monday nights with announcers John Madden and Al Michaels. The season opener will pit the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots against the Oakland Raiders. Next season, the show will move to ESPN.

* The Dew Action Sports Tour will continue next weekend with a lineup of X Games-inspired extreme sports competition in skateboarding, BMX and motocross events. The show will air Friday and Saturday on the USA Network from midnight to 1 a.m. and Saturday and Sunday on NBC from 1 to 3 p.m.

* CBS’ Sunday afternoon NFL schedule begins next Sunday with ex-Oakland Raider Rich Gannon joining the announcing team as a game analyst. ESPN’s “Sunday Night Football” kicks off its first regular-season game next Sunday at 5:30 p.m., and “The NFL on Fox” debuts next Sunday with eight games at 10 a.m.

* The “World Series of Poker Main Event” begins Oct. 11 on ESPN, with nearly 6,000 players who slapped down $10,000 to buy into the No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em championship. The series will air every Tuesday at 5 p.m. until the champion is crowned Nov. 15, winning an estimated $7.5 million first-place prize.

* Racing fans can keep up with veterans Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace and newcomer Tony Stewart with NASCAR on NBC, and the champion is crowned at the Ford 400 Nov. 20 live at 4 p.m. from the Homestead-Miami Speedway.

* “The Takedown,” on Court TV, follows a team hired by Las Vegas casinos to try to beat the odds while flying under the radar of their security systems. The series airs Wednesdays at 11:30 p.m. through September, then moves to Tuesdays.

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