Reds TV pregame and postgame host Annie Sabo says she’ll return for a fourth season next month.
“I’m happy to be back with the Reds and look forward to the end of March,” Sabo tells me, referring to the Reds’ Opening Day game Thursday, March 27, against the San Francisco Giants.
A week ago, on Feb. 13, I reported that Sabo was not returning because she was conspicuously absent from the Reds new “Cincinnati Reds Broadcasters” web page with pictures and profiles of the eight men who did games or adjacent shows last year — but not Sabo.
“The time the article was published, I had been informed I was coming back,” says the daughter of Reds Hall of Famer Chris Sabo.
As of 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Sabo still is not listed on the Cincinnati Reds Broadcasters webpage.
The link to “meet the broadcast team” profiles TV play-by-play announcer John Sadak; analysts Chris Welsh, Barry Larkin, Jeff Brantley and Sam LeCure; dugout reporter Jim Day; Reds Live host Brian Giesenschlag; and radio play-by-play announcer Tommy Thrall.
Sabo says she will do about 40 games this year, about “as much as I did each of the first two seasons (2022-23) with the Reds.” That’s 25% of the team’s 162-game regular season schedule. Last year she did “75-ish” games, or nearly half the Reds games, says Sabo, who lives in Florida with her husband and young daughter.
Her involvement with the Reds could be announced soon when FanDuel issues a media release about its Reds’ spring telecast schedule, how to watch games this season, and possibly Opening Day plans, I’m told.
The Reds TV season opens 3:10 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, when the FanDuel Sports Network Ohio picks up the Los Angeles Angels’ telecast of the Reds-Angels game, as I reported two weeks ago.
The Reds TV crew will make its season debut a week later, on Wednesday, March 5, calling the Reds-Rangers game from Goodyear at 3:05 p.m. No other spring telecasts have been announced.
Baseball returns to WLW-AM (700 kHz) at 3:05 p.m. Saturday, when the Reds open exhibition play against the Cleveland Guardians in Goodyear. The pregame show starts at 2:35 p.m. A split squad game against the Giants also at 3:05 p.m. Saturday will not be broadcast.
The makeup of the Reds TV announcing team was up in the air in the off season when the team cut ties with Fan Duel in November and gave TV production and distribution rights to Major League Baseball, then canceled those plans in January for a one-year deal with FanDuel. (After the Reds’ 2024 baseball season ended, Bally Sports Ohio rebranded as FanDuel Sports Network Ohio. The parent company, Diamond Sports Group, was renamed Main Street Sports after Diamond emerged from bankruptcy in November.)
Sabo, who grew up in Montgomery, is a 2015 University of Michigan graduate. She has worked as a TV sports anchor/reporter in Corpus Christi, Texas, and at WFLA-TV in Tampa, where she also covered the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea for Nexstar TV stations and did in-game stadium reports during Tampa Bay Buccaneers games. She left Tampa in 2019 to be a Bally Sports pregame/postgame host in Minneapolis for two years, and worked for the Big Ten Network in 2021.
The Reds gave FanDuel Sports Network Ohio TV rights “to all in-market games that are not exclusively televised nationally, as well as 30-minute pre- and postgame shows. In addition, the agreement includes rights to distribute programming direct-to-consumer (DTC) in-market. Fans will now be able to stream games on the FanDuel Sports Network app by authenticating with their pay TV credentials or purchasing a DTC subscription.“
FanDuel is offering streaming of Reds games for $19.99 a month or $189.99 for the year.
The Reds and FanDuel have not announced if the Opening Day game at 4:10 p.m. March 27 with the San Francisco Giants will be simulcast by a free, over-the-air Cincinnati TV station as in past years.
Stay tuned.
