ESPN basketball analyst Dick Vitale recently revealed that a biopsy on the lymph node in his neck has come back as cancerous and that he will be having surgery next Tuesday. Vitale, who has been broadcasting for the network since 1979, had the biopsy on Wednesday of this week after a PET scan had detected the lymph node on his neck. Vitale posted the news on his X account Friday afternoon and thanked everyone for their prayers.

“With all the [prayers] I have received & the loving support of my family, friends & ESPN colleagues, I will win this battle,” Vitale said in his post. “[Praying] surgery on Tues. will be a success.”

After he had received an ultrasound on Monday, Vitale’s oncologist scheduled him for a biopsy. Throughout the week on social media, Vitale posted updates about his status and expressed his hope that he would receive a report that it was non-malignant. It is unknown how his forthcoming surgery will affect his ability to call college basketball games in the fall.

Vitale was recently declared cancer free after being diagnosed with vocal cord cancer last July. He received six weeks of radiation treatment and a four-hour vocal cord surgery thereafter followed by vocal rest, resulting in Dr. Steven Zeitels expressing optimism that he could return to work in the fall. Over the last several years, Vitale has fought against lymphoma and melanoma and tried to returning to the broadcast booth. During the 2022 college basketball season, he was able to resume calling games and received standing ovations from crowds at various arenas.

Over the summer, he planned to minimize what he did and engage in a gradual assimilation into speaking more. In a previous interview with Barrett Sports Media, he expressed his aspiration to call basketball games at the age of 100 and the motivation he feels from the winning formula of passion, pride and perseverance.

Vitale accepted the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at the 2022 ESPYS where he discussed the importance of raising money for research into cancer treatment and prevention. Earlier in the week, he expressed that he is more motivated than ever to raise money for children fighting cancer, stating that “no kid should go thru this.” He recently announced that the 20th anniversary of his annual Dick Vitale Gala will take place on May 2, 2025 with honorees including Dan Hurley, Michael Strahan, Hannah Storm, Nancy Lieberman, Grant Hill and John Calipari.

Earlier in the week, the New York Mets swept the first half of the Subway Series from the New York Yankees in two games at Citi Field. The Mets outscored the Yankees 21-9 in the games and attained a .500 record in the regular season for the first time since early May of this year. SportsNet New York (SNY), the television home of the Mets, averaged 411,000 viewers for the series, including its two most-watched games of the season. The two games averaged 247,000 households reached as well, a strong performance for the local television outlet. Additionally, the Subway Series resulted in an average of 3.1 million live minutes streamed, making the Tuesday and Wednesday contests the two most-streamed games of the season for SNY.

The first game of the series on Tuesday night garnered 243,575 households, the largest household audience for a Mets game on SNY since the 2023 season opener last March. Six out of every 10 viewers locally tuned into SNY to watch the Subway Series matchup on Tuesday as well. The network surpassed coverage on YES Network by 40% in total viewers, 47% in the age 18-49 demographic and 58% in the age 25-54 demographic.

Wednesday night’s game included an 87-minute rain delay in the fifth inning; however, it still posted strong numbers that eclipsed the previous game. The Subway Series broadcast attained 16,000 more viewers and 7,500 additional households compared to Tuesday. The Yankees game broadcast aired on Amazon’s Prime Video on Wednesday instead of YES Network, part of a media rights deal in which 21 Yankees games air exclusively on the platform this season.

Play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen, analysts Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling and field reporter Steve Gelbs called the action on SNY. For Cohen, Hernandez and Darling, the 2024 MLB season marks their 19th year working together, the most among any broadcast team in Mets history. Mets baseball on SNY will return to the air on Monday, July 1 for the first of a four-game series on the road against the Washington Nationals.

A note from John Ourand of Puck in his twice-weekly email about the sports business, The Varsity, says that Neilsen numbers show distribution of ESPN has fallen below 70 million homes for the first time since the early days of cable television. Ourand says the actual number is less than 68 million homes, whereas the subscriber numbers were once over 100 million homes.

In giving the stats for other major sports outlets, Ourand writes that “cord-cutting is impacting every pay TV channel: FS1 has dropped to 67.9 million homes, and FS2 is currently in 49 million homes. TBS and TNT have each seen their subscriber numbers shrink to 66 million homes.

“Meanwhile, the NFL Network has fallen below 50 million homes for the first time in recent memory, to 49.6 million, and NBA TV (36 million) and MLB Network (33 million) have seen their numbers fall even more dramatically than channels run by traditional media companies.”

Now, the sports television networks have to figure out how to reach the 60 million or so who do not subscribe to pay television. As Ourand points out, this is the reason ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery are getting set to launch Venu and why ESPN will launch a direct-to-consumer platform next year.