Whether it be baseball, basketball, football, or hockey, one voice is a consistent presence behind the microphone, bringing fans all the action locally in the New York-Metropolitan area, domestically across the United States, and internationally all around the world.
Versatility is a coveted asset across many lines of work in today’s media job marketplace and in the realm of play-by-play announcing, Kenny Albert seems to have set the standard.
Calling all four major sports on a near-regular basis for both regional and national sports television networks — including NBC Sports, Turner Sports, MSG Networks, and Fox Sports — Albert has seen firsthand the shift in the industry from the perspective of a broadcaster. But that’s not all. He calls games on the radio as well, working in various capacities for the New York Rangers, the team with which he got his start in professional broadcasting alongside his father.
Albert was exposed to sports broadcasting from a young age by virtue of growing up in a family of sportscasters, with his father Marv and uncles Steve and Al building careers in the profession. Upon being gifted a toy tape recorder for his fifth or sixth birthday, Albert began to prepare for what quickly became his primary career aspiration; that is, to be a professional play-by-play announcer.
He remembers bringing his toy tape recorder to sports venues including Madison Square Garden and Shea Stadium once of age, and prepared for each game by looking over the rosters and keeping up-to-date with the latest statistics. His big break as a broadcaster later came as a sophomore at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, New York by means of volunteering to fill an unaddressed vacancy.
“Cox Cable of Great Neck came to my school to film a girls basketball game,” said Albert. “They had two cameras [and] a small production van, but no announcers. I volunteered and they clipped a microphone onto my shirt [and] I did the game.”
By the end of high school, Albert had turned his volunteering into a job, working 75 to 100 games all over Long Island in sports such as lacrosse, hockey, basketball, baseball, football, and soccer, with his friends serving as color analysts. In college, Albert was a member of WNYU Radio at New York University and continued to call games on the radio. Yet he believes the experience he had in high school positioned him to be ahead of the pack in a profession with substantial levels of competition.
“I felt like I really had a three-year head start on anybody else at that time who wanted to do play-by-play,” said Albert. “There weren’t really any opportunities until college back then in the ‘80s. The three years at Cox Cable were just such an unbelievable experience to get three years of practice and reps under my belt.”
After graduating college with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism, Albert became the radio voice of the Baltimore Skipjacks in the American Hockey League and quickly made his jump to the pros beginning in 1992 as the television play-by-play broadcaster for the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals.
From there, Albert continued to find and add new opportunities to call professional games in football, baseball, and basketball, both on the radio and on television – and he continues to call games in both mediums today. Being conscious of the audience and how it is consuming the game is central to understanding the differences in calling a sporting event for one medium as opposed to the other.
“On radio, obviously you have to be more descriptive [because] the listener can’t see what’s going on. The description is the key. Location on the ice, on the court, on the field, etc.,” Albert explained. “You have to give the time and the score a lot more often on radio. On TV, it’s up on the upper lefthand corner of the screen, which wasn’t the case before I started working professionally. [Also,] you definitely don’t have to talk as much [on TV]; you can leave more time for the color analyst to come in.”
In broadcasting events across many professional sports, Albert has worked with over 225 color analysts, a figure he surmises might just be the record for a play-by-play announcer.
Whether it be Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Eddie Olczyk, Tim McCarver, or Jonathan Vilma, getting their perspectives on the game at hand is essential in creating and maintaining a seamless broadcast. Since the play-by-play announcer does not need to describe as much of the action occurring on visual broadcast mediums, he is able to afford his partner in the booth, whoever it may be, more time to talk in those instances.
Albert, in his opinion, says hockey is the least difficult sport for him to call, partly because he has been doing it for 32 years, but also due to its rhythmic style of play – especially on the radio.
“You’re just into the flow really for the entire 60 minutes,” he said. “People always ask me about the names and the pronunciations and the fact that the players change on the fly, but to me, it’s almost like riding a bike because I’ve been doing it for so long.”
Conversely, Albert believes baseball is the most difficult sport for him to call since the style of the broadcast is more conversational in nature and because he does not call baseball games on a regular basis. “If it’s a game every week, or 10 [to] 15 games over the course of the season – which is what I’ve usually done – because there is so much downtime, [hopefully] you have a great color analyst that can fill in a lot of that time,” he explained.
While Albert calls baseball the least out of the four major U.S. sports, one of his most memorable moments as a broadcaster was being behind the mic for José Bautista’s iconic bat flip in Game 5 of the 2015 American League Division Series at Rogers Centre in Toronto with the background noise of 49,742 impassioned fans.
He also recently called the 2022 NHL Winter Classic from Target Field in Minneapolis – home of Major League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins – at a game-time temperature of -5.7 degrees Celsius. Despite the frigid temperature, Albert’s experience calling the game was “magical,” especially since it was played at night with natural, aesthetic touches in a setting seemingly made for television, including eight frozen ponds formed in the outfield.
“We had [the window] open at the start because we wanted to feel the elements and experience what it was like for the fans and for the players,” said Albert. “We did keep the window closed in the broadcast booth for a good portion of the game… We were still able to see the ice and see all the monitors in the booth the same as if the window were open. It was a fantastic experience.”
Albert has called other big events as well, including the Stanley Cup Finals, the Winter Olympics, and NFL divisional playoff games. From the days practicing with his toy tape recorder and growing up around family members in the profession, he understood the importance of preparation and professionalism in trying to establish a career for himself in the booth.
“That’s the goal for any play-by-play broadcaster is to continue to work big events, playoff games, [and] championships,” said Albert. “There is a lot of travel and a lot of preparation involved, but it’s just so much fun.”
As the landscape of sports media continues to shift, in spite of its apparent acceleration due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of emerging technologies, new platforms for content dissemination, and modification of best practices to maximize cost-efficiency have resulted in a paradigmatic deviation from the norms that had been associated with travel and preparation.
Pertaining to travel, Albert and nearly every other play-by-play announcer in the country has experienced the process of calling games remotely to ensure the health and safety of themselves and network crew members. While the decision, which had been in consideration among sports networks prior to the pandemic to cut travel expenses, impacts the range of vision and subsequent understanding of action away from gameplay, Albert sees its implementation as a “new normal” towards which the industry will have to lessen its intransigence.
“To me, I feel like no matter the sport, I [can] probably see about 85 percent on the monitor of what I would [see] if I were at the arena,” said Albert. “You don’t get the emotions or the feel of being there, but it’s probably not as bad as I expected when we started… It does save the wear and tear on the body a little bit for those of us who have been traveling for a long time. That’s probably one positive that’s come out of it.”
Information overload is an offshoot of the development and expansion of the internet, directly affecting the preparation process for play-by-play broadcasters. When Albert started working for the NFL on Fox in 1994, he would receive a shipment of VHS tapes every Wednesday with the games of the teams they would be covering that week, and any news clippings or supplementary materials were received through fax. Following the advent of the internet, Albert received articles through email, began to tape games on television, and see action from all across the country with DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket.
“It really wasn’t that long ago, but thanks to technology, it’s made the preparation on one hand a lot easier, [but] on the other hand there’s so much information available [that] you could basically 24/7 try to find various nuggets and read that extra article in order to get ready for that week’s or that night’s game,” said Albert.
The role of the traditional play-by-play announcer is also changing with the introduction of concurrent presentations during national games, such as the Monday Night Football “ManningCast,” Statcast Edition of the MLB Home Run Derby, and the forthcoming Sunday Night Baseball with Kay-Rod. Though he hopes the role in which he has been employed for over three decades staves off extinction, Albert is cognizant of the ongoing evolution of the industry geared to satisfy consumer demand while minimizing the opportunity cost associated with such evolution in the process.
“I think with a telecast such as the ManningCast, it’s a unique perspective hearing from two guys who were among the top quarterbacks of all time,” said Albert. “Hopefully, the role of a play-by-play announcer on the traditional broadcast doesn’t go away and is around for a long, long time. But I think with so many channels out there with people watching things on their phones and on computers and on [tablets], and all of the technology available now that wasn’t [around] 10, 20, 30 years ago [that] there’s definitely a place for the alternate broadcasts, for sure.”
Whether they want to be a play-by-play announcer, analyst, sideline reporter, or talk show host, Albert’s advice is the same for prospective broadcasters: Come prepared, be versatile in whatever you do, and find opportunities in places where they may seem sparse.
“When I was growing up, we had seven channels; there was no cable [and] no satellite,” said Albert. “There are just so many opportunities out there these days. [While] I was at college at NYU, we had to fight for air time to broadcast the men’s and women’s basketball games because the radio station was the only outlet. These days if you’re at school, you can go broadcast a lacrosse game or a soccer game and put it out there on the internet. It’s just another way to get reps and get practice even if it’s not through the traditional means of a campus radio station.”
Albert has never genuinely “worked” a day in his life and he certainly hopes to keep it that way. Whether it has been on the radio or on television, rinkside or perched behind home plate, at the venue or in a studio, his ability to broadcast different types of sporting events professionally on multiple broadcast platforms both locally and nationally has afforded him various opportunities in sports media. He hopes he can continue to be the voice behind more memorable moments as his career progresses within a dynamic, growing industry.
“I never feel like I’m going to work,” said Albert. “I hope I never lose that feeling.”
Derek Futterman is an associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, email Derek@BarrettMedia.com or find him on X @derekfutterman.
