Apple reveals the Friday Night Baseball presentation teams
Melanie Newman becomes only the second woman to lead play-by-play duties for a national broadcast team.
Following several years of courtship, Apple begins has announced the broadcast and commentary teams who will host its “Friday Night Baseball” series from April 8.
All at the Friday night game
The games will be available on the company’s Apple TV+ app, supplemented by a range of new exclusive programs such as “Countdown to First Pitch” and “MLB Daily Recap,”.
“Friday Night Baseball” live pre- and postgame coverage will be hosted by Lauren Gardner, along with a rotating group of analysts and former Major League Baseball (MLB) players, including Carlos Peña, Cliff Floyd, and Yonder Alonso.
Who are the broadcasters?
The broadcast team for the first two games broadcast consists of:
- Melanie Newman (play-by-play), Chris Young (analyst), Hannah Keyser (analyst), and Brooke Fletcher (reporter) will call the New York Mets at the Washington Nationals at 7 p.m. ET.
- Stephen Nelson (play-by-play), Hunter Pence (analyst), Katie Nolan (analyst), and Heidi Watney (reporter) comprise the crew that will call the Houston Astros at the Los Angeles Angels game at 9:30 p.m. ET.
Game assignments for “Friday Night Baseball” broadcasters will be announced on a weekly basis. In her new role with “Friday Night Baseball,” Newman becomes the second woman to lead play-by-play duties for a national broadcast team; she joined the Baltimore Orioles’ broadcast team in 2020.
Who can watch the games and what to expect
Scheduled games are available to anyone with internet access, for free, only on Apple TV+. Users can find step-by-step instructions to access “Friday Night Baseball” across devices.
Produced by MLB Network’s Emmy Award-winning production team in partnership with Apple, “Friday Night Baseball” each game broadcast will employ state-of-the-art cameras, including high-speed Phantoms, and high-resolution Megalodon cameras. What this means to fans is vivid, live-action shots, and immersive sound in 5.1 with spatial audio enabled.
“Friday Night Baseball” will also incorporate new on-screen graphics that include innovative new probabilities-based forecasts of different situational outcomes, plus highlights and live look-ins from around the league integrated right into the broadcast.
[Also read: Apple TV+: It’s all about the customer experience]
Throughout the “Friday Night Baseball” broadcasts, fans can enjoy on-screen callouts about batters’ walk-up songs from Apple Music, test their knowledge of baseball trivia with help from Siri, and more. And, in a first for MLB games, “Friday Night Baseball” will feature rules analysis and interpretation from former MLB umpire Brian Gorman.
Lots of additional programming (in some places)
In addition to two marquee games on Friday nights throughout the regular season, fans in the US and Canada can enjoy new 24/7 live programming with MLB game replays, news and analysis, highlights, classic games, and more.
Each Thursday, fans can tune in to “Countdown to First Pitch” for a preview of the week’s upcoming games, and every morning to “MLB Daily Recap” for highlights from across the league, both available only on Apple TV+, as well as the “MLB Big Inning” whip-around show featuring live look-ins and in-game highlights every weeknight.
Additionally, fans will be able to watch full games, as well as condensed game replays, on demand on Apple TV+ after the completion of the live broadcasts each week.
In Apple News, fans can easily follow their favorite teams and watch personalized MLB highlights right in the News app, while Apple Music features exclusive playlists of batters’ walk-up songs from teams featured each week.
And it’s free for a while
The series will be available subscription free for a limited time on Apple TV+ in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the UK.
Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
