I am not sure what Michael Kay was looking to accomplish by ripping SNY for taking calls during a Mets/Rockies game earlier this week. If it was to bring attention to himself then mission accomplished, but I think it showed why he has a problem wearing, as YES spokesman Eric Handler puts it, “two different hats” due to the reputation that YES has as a biased network.
Let me be clear, and this shouldn’t be news to anyone: every network in this country, sports or otherwise, censors the news in some way, shape, or form. I don’t care if it’s FOX News, SNY, YES, or WFAN. The current mentality of Corporate America is command and control. Every network has business relationships that prevent them from being 100% unfiltered. They also won’t, and can’t change, because suits in companies don’t respect the intelligence of their customers, in this case viewers. Fascism is alive and well in a majority of boardrooms of American companies. So Kay is behind the eight ball due to no fault of his own.
What I will say for SNY, for all their faults (dearth of programming, brokered time infomercials) is they do a great job in keeping opinion as fair as possible despite being owned by the New York Mets. We talked about this last summer during the Omar Minaya debacle on this site. SNY’s foray into the blogosphere was a risk, but I never get the feeling that Cerrone, Berg, or any of the other guys that cover baseball are muted in any way. I understand that YES has their own blog relationship (River Avenue Blues), but I have my doubts whether YES would feel comfortable with them doing some of the things we have seen over at SNY network. Maybe one day I will be proven wrong, but do you think Bob Raissman gave YES the moniker Al-Yankzeera for no reason (see more proof here)? Do you remember the David Cone situation from just a few months ago?
This brings me to Kay. Yes, he gets away from his “vanilla coverage” of the team while on ESPN Radio. Again, I always have felt he goes after the Mets harder than the Yankees. I take his opinion on the Mets less serious because of his Yankees affiliation. You sometimes get the feeling Kay enjoys taking the Mets to task because of the “Yankee superiority” that comes when you work with the 27 time World Champions. Suzyn Waldman suffered from this when she did a midday talk show on WFAN, although she didn’t work nearly as hard as Kay on hiding her bias.
Can Michael Kay be a great talk show host? Yes, he seems to be fearless when it comes to stating an opinion (I loved when he took on the pompous Mike Francesa last year). Will he ever get the respect from everyone he deserves? No, not as long as he has his gig on YES. His ESPN show will be marginalized because of the pinstriped color glasses he puts on when leaving the studio. You know what would change this? Rip YES the next time it’s warranted. Bet you 50 bucks (yes I will pay up) you won’t. I understand why (not all your fault), but please stop pretending you can conduct yourself freely. It’s insulting to anyone who has spent 5 minutes in a corporate environment to believe you can handle all Yankees topics equally as the Mets.
Kay made some interesting comments about SNY and the in game calls, unfortunately he never will get the respect he deserves thanks to YES. The guy does a tremendous job with CenterStage and has a decent talk show, but his personal branding is Yankees and the corporate kool aid that YES, unfortunately, makes part of his working agreement.
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