Watchdog

The reality of being a Nets play-by-play man hit home for Ian Eagle several years into his term when he would run into people who would praise him for his work on WFAN and ask him what he was doing these days.

“Oh, I’m a pediatrician,’’ he jokingly recalled saying. “I’ve changed careers entirely. So I realized the Nets games were not resonating. That’s not the case anymore. People know we’re...

Tuesday’s Lakers-Nets game averaged 3.08 percent of area homes and 299,000 viewers – the best such figures for a regular-season Nets game in YES’ history.

Those numbers peaked at 4.47 percent and 451,000 from 9:45 to 10 p.m., heights that would have been unimaginable in the pre-Brooklyn era.

(For comparison purposes, Yankees games on YES averaged a 3.92 rating in 2012, the lowest since...

The YES Network announced a multi-year contract extension with Michael Kay, its Yankees play-by-play voice since the network launched in 2002.

Kay also will continue hosting the "CenterStage" interview show. Kay re-signed last fall with ESPN Radio, for which he hosts the afternoon drive time show in 98.7-FM....

With hockey on hiatus, the Knicks have picked up the winter sports slack, parlaying their fast start into large TV audiences.

Through their first 13 Nielsen-rated games on MSG, they averaged 3.22 percent of New York-area homes, up 68 percent from last season. (Three games could not be measured in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy.)

That does not include Thursday night's TNT tilt against...

The complex deal, announced Tuesday, that likely will give Fox Sports 80 percent ownership in the YES Network three years hence understandably left most fans confused.

It also left them wondering whether or not to care. Answer: Mostly no, unless you are happy for the Yankees that they were able to generate big dough for themselves before the potential change in tax laws in 2013.

The...

YES play-by-play man Michael Kay's contract is up, so after a couple of seemingly cryptic Twitter posts about his future after the Yankees' regular-season finale, viewers wondered whether he might be on his way out.

Not so, he said before Game 3 of the ALDS Wednesday.

Kay said he merely had been thinking of a phone conversation with Knicks announcer and fellow Fordham alum Mike Breen...

Last month I created a bit of a stir by quoting YES president Tracy Dolgin calling YES a "homer network," in the sense his announcers root for the Yankees to win. He argued there is nothing either wrong or unusual about that for a local telecast.

It's an interesting debate, so I brought up the topic to one of the most interesting analysts in YES' 10-year history: Jim Kaat, now of...