Spring is in the air as Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association came to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement last week, preserving the 162-game season and opening a condensed, four-week spring training. That means fans will be able to return to the ballpark to root for their favorite players and their favorite teams. Broadcasters will be back in the booth with something to talk about.
Since 1992, New York Yankees fans have had a familiar voice behind the microphone, first on the radio on WABC for five World Series championships, and from 2002 to present, on the YES Network. From the time he was nine years old, all Michael Kay ever wanted was to be a broadcaster for his favorite team, the Yankees, and now, he has been living out that dream for the last 30 years.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world in early 2020 and resulted in a truncated 60-game major league season being played, it accelerated sizable industry changes, such as the practice of broadcasting away games remotely. For Kay, making that adjustment was more about the timing than it was about redeveloping chemistry with his rotation of game analysts, and while they were able to eventually settle in a routine, Kay never had any doubt that they would one day return to traveling for road games. Rather, the doubt he had was related to if they would call all of the road games in-person, or whether they would only travel for select matchups. Kay put the speculation to rest, confirming that the YES Network plans to send its broadcast team to all Yankees’ road games for the 2022 season.
“We’ve [been] told that we’re going to be traveling [for] every single game,” said Kay. “I think we made due with what we had to do because of the circumstances – nobody expected [the pandemic] to happen; nobody could ever have forecasted that would happen, but we got through it.”
While he serves as the full-time television play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees, there is no sole analyst that is scheduled to do every game with Kay this season. While the YES Network still has former major leaguers David Cone, Paul O’Neill and John Flaherty as analysts for the 2022 campaign, longtime network analyst and former all-star outfielder Ken Singleton announced his retirement from broadcasting late last season. As a result, the YES Network added two more analysts to the rotation – in Carlos Beltrán and Cameron Maybin.
When he was first getting his start broadcasting Yankees games though, Kay worked in radio directly alongside John Sterling on WABC. Sterling has been calling Yankees games since 1989, and Kay affirms that working alongside him helped advance his understanding of broadcasting.
“Working with John, I think, prepared me or anything because he always wanted it to be like a conversation between two friends, and the listener on the radio was kind-of eavesdropping on it and being part of [as] the third person that’s really not contributing but listening in,” explained Kay. “He keeps you on your toes – you never know where he’s going to come from, and I think that keeps you sharp. You should expect anything, and you should expect anything.”
The year 2002 served not only as Kay’s first year as the television play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees, but also his first year as a radio host for ESPN Radio in New York. The Michael Kay Show was not Kay’s first foray into radio though, as he had briefly hosted shows on WABC and, while in college, at Fordham University’s radio station WFUV.
The difference came in not only working with co-hosts Don La Greca and Peter Rosenberg, but also in balancing his duties as an on-air host in the number one media market in the country and a play-by-play broadcaster for the most accomplished franchise in the history of professional sports.
So what does a typical workday look like for Michael Kay during the baseball season? Typically, Kay leaves his home at noon to get to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, N.Y. by 1 p.m., from where he hosts his radio show, which is simulcast on the YES Network, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. The moment he finishes on the radio, Kay enters the television booth to call that night’s Yankees game, and usually will make it home between 11 and 11:30 p.m.
Kay’s show airs on 98.7 ESPN New York. The station currently has a local early morning show with DiPietro & Rothenberg from 5 to 8 a.m., but then transitions into national programming, including Keshawn, JWill and Max, Greeny, and Bart & Hahn until 3 p.m., when Kay takes the air until 7 p.m. In the New York City media market, Kay is uncertain if it is most ideal to have a programming lineup situated in that fashion.
“I don’t know if that’s the perfect way to have it done with lead-ins and things like that because if something happens in New York City, you want to be able to turn on the radio and know that you’re going to have it covered,” explained Kay. “In one of our national shows – and they do an unbelievable job – they may not be talking about a New York thing at that point…. But they do about as great a job as localizing as they can but I still think radio, especially sports radio, is hyperlocal.”
Much like the Subway Series rivalry between the Yankees and the New York Mets, the ratings battle between 98.7 ESPN New York and WFAN is closely followed among those in sports media, especially in the afternoon slot with Kay’s show going head-to-head with Carton & Roberts. The Michael Kay Show has picked up some wins in the ratings; however, Kay knows the ratings do not tell the whole story about the show’s true accumulated audience on all platforms. In fact, the Nielsen ratings do not measure podcast listeners or those watching the YES Network’s simulcast of the show. Kay says that has formed the basis of an industry-wide critique regarding their dependency in the future, especially with the growing proclivity towards cross-platform integration.
“I’ve always found it quite curious that you can judge the listenership of a radio show by maybe 10 people having a meter out of all the millions of people that are in our potential listening audience – but that’s the way they do business,” said Kay. “I think it is an extraordinarily inexact science, but unfortunately that’s the only way we have to keep score right now.”
With the velocity of the growth of aural consumption in the podcasting space, some professionals have predicted a phasing out of terrestrial radio in exchange for on-demand consumption. Live radio shows have percolated into that space through posting individual segments and entire episodes on-demand as podcasts, with some radio stations, such as ESPN Cleveland, transforming it into part of a larger audio network of subscription-based content. Kay knows that while the growth of audio-based podcasts cannot be ignored, it lacks one major hallmark feature of terrestrial radio; that is, the ability to go live.
“People that predict the doom of radio because of podcasts – I just don’t see it because podcasts are not in the moment,” said Kay. “You just can’t react in real-time, and I think that’s the value of radio. When something’s breaking, you turn to a radio station to hear what’s going on; you don’t turn to a podcast.”
A 1982 graduate of Fordham University, Kay has worked through shifts in sports media from many different perspectives – a writer, play-by-play broadcaster, radio host, and a forthcoming role that will fuse all three into one. ESPN announced in early January that it had signed Kay to a contract to embark on a new, special viewing presentation to air on ESPN2 called Sunday Night Baseball with Kay-Rod.
Kay will be joined by former New York Yankees all-star infielder and World Series Champion Álex Rodríguez on this new kind of telecast which Kay says is a preview into how broadcasts may be done moving forward.
“We’re just essentially going to do a radio talk show while we’re watching the game,” said Kay. “[It’s] not quite the Manningcast, but somewhere between the Manningcast and a regular broadcast…. That’s going to be fun to do, and I’ll get a chance at seeing how I do nationally with those games.”
Not only will Kay and Rodríguez call eight games together during the 2022 season on ESPN2 as part of their special viewing presentation (including some Yankees vs. Red Sox games); they will also be the broadcast team for two exclusive ESPN MLB regular season games and contribute to coverage of one playoff series. Despite the new gig, though, Kay will not miss any of his regularly-scheduled Yankees games on the YES Network this season. Much like how he balances his radio show with play-by-play obligations during the regular season, Kay knows he will be able to handle both gigs on select Sundays throughout the year.
“If I do a YES [Network] game on a Sunday afternoon, and it’s not a Yankee game on Sunday Night Baseball that we’re doing, [I’ll] just get to the spot that we’re going to be doing the Kay-Rod cast and do it, so I can still keep the most important thing going – which is the Yankees – and try my hand at the national stuff,” Kay said.
The question to that respect is whether people will come back to baseball after a 99-day lockout filled with contentious negotiations and constant periods of disappointment for Major League Baseball fans. While the strife, which many fans labeled a fight between millionaires and billionaires, has come to an end for now, the game undoubtedly has work to do to reestablish its eminence as “America’s pastime.” Kay knows the game is up for the task, and will continue to grow its fanbase, especially amid the expansion of the postseason and new broadcast rights deals.
“I don’t see how people could be so ticked off that it’s going to drive them away from baseball,” expressed Kay. “If you walk away from baseball because of this labor dispute – which essentially was a lockdown during most of the winter where there wouldn’t be much going on anyway – then you were looking for reasons to get out. If you really love baseball, I don’t think they really did enough to alienate anybody.”
Kay grew up just 10 minutes away from Yankee Stadium, and constantly followed the team growing up, along with his favorite player – former Yankees shortstop Bobby Murcer – to realize his dream of being their play-by-play announcer. He says that broadcasting baseball nationally has, in essence, completed his lineup of career aspirations, and maintains that he is fortunate and blessed to be in the position that he holds today. For those in the pipeline; that is, the next generation of broadcasters, his advice within an exciting and new media landscape: Never punch a clock.
“You work when you can work. You get on the air when you can get on the air. The more reps that you can get, the better,” said Kay. “Take a job and run with it, and make-believe like you’re doing Game 7 of the World Series. That’s how you should operate.”
Aside from the small fraction of people with an innate talent to work in sports media, the majority of people have to work to earn their spot in this industry – and the primary things they can control, affirmed Kay, is their effort and treatment of other people.
“[If] you give top effort – 100% – when somebody else is giving 95%, the one who’s giving 100% is the one who’s going to get noticed and probably promoted,” said Kay. “I think the people that stand out are the people that treat people the right way and the people that work hard.”
