The collapse of the RSN model has led to unintended consequences for those who cover the team.
The Miami Heat were one of more than a dozen NBA teams previously under contract with Main Street Sports Group, operator of the FanDuel Sports Networks, before financial troubles forced the company to wind down earlier this year, leaving those teams without local rights payments and scrambling for new broadcast homes. Miami struck an over-the-air deal with independent station WPLG in early June to carry the team’s local telecasts starting with the 2026-27 season.
That new arrangement with WPLG won’t include two familiar names, though. Kelly Saco and Jeremy Taché aren’t making the move, according to the Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson, who notes that the Heat organization holds both reporters in high regard but didn’t have a role for either of them once the broadcast changed hands.
Taché, also a producer on The Dan Le Batard Show, reacted to the news with a lengthy tribute on social media.
“In 2022, the Miami Heat broadcast took a chance on me,” Taché wrote. “I had very little experience on a live sports broadcast. In fact, I’d done one… ever. But the Heat saw something in me that I hadn’t yet seen in myself and brought me into the fold. I have spent the last 4 seasons loving every last second of my job, getting to broadcast heights I never quite thought I’d reach.”
“Now that I’m no longer with the broadcast team, it’s not like I’m going anywhere,” he added. “I’ll be covering the team in some new and exciting ways that I hope you’ll all stay tuned for, but in way too many words, I just wanted to make sure I said a proper ‘thank you.’ Forever a Heat lifer.”
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Both Saco and Taché still have Marlins sideline work to fall back on. They’ve each spent years doing double duty on Marlins broadcasts alongside their Heat work, and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon. Saco, a seven-time Emmy winner and Miami native, has been part of the Marlins’ TV coverage since 2018 and became the first woman in franchise history to work as a radio analyst when she joined that broadcast the following year. Taché, for his part, is in the middle of his sixth season covering the Marlins,
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.