SNY Cancels Its Studio Shows and Lays Off Much of Its Editorial Staff in a Dark Day for the Mets Network

SNY, the television home of the New York Mets, cancelled two of its studio shows and laid off much of its editorial staff on Friday, gutting the network’s news operation in a single day. The games themselves are untouched, but the daily studio and digital coverage Mets fans have watched for twenty years is gone.

What did SNY cancel?

SportsNite, the daily sports news and highlights show that launched with the network in 2006, and Baseball Night in New York, the half-hour studio show on Mets and Yankees news, rumors and insights. Both were cancelled effective immediately on Friday, November 6, The Athletic first reported and the New York Post confirmed. SportsNite was the only daily New York sports news studio program among the three regional sports networks in the market, Sports Media Watch reports. The network’s own statement was brief: “As part of our regular review of our business, operations and programming, SNY has decided to cease broadcasting Baseball Night in New York and SportsNite.”

Who lost their jobs?

Much of the editorial staff, according to The Athletic, which first reported the cuts. The two most visible names were Baseball Night in New York host Sal Licata and SportsNite host Eamon McAnaney, both let go on Friday. The exact number of employees affected was not disclosed. The reaction from inside the building was immediate: Jon Alba, a SportsNite contributor and host since October 2023, called it “an incredibly tough day” and said the job was “the best gig I’ve ever had.” Writer Danny Abriano confirmed he was among the editorial staff laid off.

Is SNY going away entirely?

No. This is a cut to the studio and the website, not to the games. SNY will continue to produce pregame and postgame shows for the Mets and the Jets, keep its midweek Jets program, and keep airing Mets Hot Stove and the WFAN Carton Show simulcast. The broadcast booth is intact: Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling remain under contract, and SNY’s exclusive Mets rights run through 2035. What is gone is the layer around the games, the daily studio shows and the written coverage that filled the hours between them.

What happens to SNY’s website?

It stops being a news site. The network’s website has already been altered to carry programming information rather than articles about the local teams, and it will become a promotional and informational platform focused on scheduling, similar to the YES and MSG Network sites, the Post reports. That is the sharpest signal of what changed: SNY is no longer trying to be a newsroom. It is keeping the rights and the broadcasts and dropping the journalism that surrounded them.

Why is this happening now?

The official answer is a regular business review. The wider context is a regional sports network model under strain. The Wall Street Journal reported in April that SNY was exploring a variety of deals, including an outright sale, and had hired bankers at Moelis to find new financial backers, Sports Media Watch reports. CNBC reported earlier this year that Comcast sold its stake in SNY to Charter Communications. The network is owned by Sterling Entertainment Enterprises, controlled by the Wilpon and Katz families, who formerly held majority ownership of the Mets. The other two New York RSNs, MSG and YES, do not air daily sports news-style programs either, so SNY’s cut follows a pattern rather than starting one.

What happens next for Mets fans?

The winter will look different. The Mets are chasing the biggest free agent on the market, Tarik Skubal, with the Mets very interested according to Jon Heyman, and the network that used to argue about it every night no longer has a nightly show to argue on. Mets Hot Stove survives as the offseason studio outlet, and the games return in the spring with the same booth. What does not return is the daily studio habit: twenty years of SportsNite, and a Baseball Night that spent a decade as the place Mets and Yankees rumors got their first television airing. Other networks have made the same trade before. A broadcaster was hired and fired on the same day in Portland last month, and the World Series ended with the Brewers beating the Rays while the biggest contracts in the sport kept climbing. The money in baseball is still there. At SNY, the newsroom that covered it is not.