It looks like the Boston Red Sox TV and radio booths are set for some changes in 2025. In 2024, the TV broadcasts on NESN were helmed by play-by-play voices Dave O’Brien (primary) and Mike Monaco, with a rotating group of analysts including Lou Merloni, Will Middlebrooks, Kevin Millar, and Kevin Youkilis.
On the radio side in 2024, the WEEI broadcasts saw veteran broadcaster Joe Castiglione call mostly home games in his 42nd season with the team. Will Flemming was in the booth for around 140 games, with Merloni there for around 70 games and Sean McDonough there for around 20. But those broadcast arrangements on both radio and TV look set to change in 2025.
That’s as per Sean McAdam of MassLive. McAdam wrote that sources tell him Merloni will become the primary TV analyst and work more than half of the team’s games on NESN, while Flemming will become the lead play-by-play voice on the radio side. That follows Castiglione’s retirement at the end of this past season, which wrapped up a remarkable career that saw him work with 17 different broadcasters. Castiglione previously said he’d hoped for Flemming to follow him in the lead role, and it looks like that’s now happening.
On the TV side, it’s interesting to see Merloni tabbed to increase his workload. Like the other three analysts from 2024, he played for the Sox (in his case, in three different stints between 1998 and 2003), but he stands out thanks to his work hosting various daily radio shows for WEEI from 2008-2022. WEEI didn’t renew his contract for daily shows at the end of 2022, and that led to him shifting more to broadcasting, including working in the TV booth for the first time (he’d previously worked on NESN pregame and postgame shows and on WEEI radio broadcasts, but not NESN ones). And his work there has clearly appealed to Red Sox and NESN figures if he’s going to become the primary voice there.
That rotating Red Sox TV booth placed 15th out of 30 teams in our reader-voted 2024 MLB local broadcaster rankings, receiving a 2.31 average grade (out of 4) and a B as their most common grade. In 2023, with largely the same group (but also Tim Wakefield working some games), they received a 2.37, but placed 16th. We’ll see how the reaction is to them going to a more standard setup with Merloni working more games.
[MassLive]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.