The Kings’ local TV home has a new look this season, but the people steering the ship are making it clear the goal is continuity, not a wholesale reset.
With the Angels taking control of the cable network and rebranding it ABTV, the channel is preparing to carry up to 72 regular-season Kings games. And while the name on the sign has changed, Executive Producer Ed Barnes said the broadcast approach is built around keeping familiar voices and familiar rhythms in place for fans.
That starts with the booth. John Kelly and Josh Schaefer are back on play-by-play, giving Kings viewers the same pairing they’ve come to know. Kelly, in particular, enters year two without the learning curve he faced when he first had to get up to speed on the roster and the day-to-day around El Segundo.
The bigger shift comes on the analyst side. Jim Fox is continuing to reduce his travel load, and ABTV and the Kings have already lined up four former players to handle those nights: Daryl Evans, Tony Granato, Alec Martinez and Jarret Stoll.
Evans remains a constant presence around Kings broadcasts, whether on television or radio, and he’ll keep handling road-game intermissions with Carrlyn Bathe. Granato worked select games last season, appears regularly on NHL Network and also does select Chicago Blackhawks games for the Chicago Sports Network.
Martinez, who retired after the 2024-25 campaign, is still early in his television work but brings the perspective of someone who was just on the ice and has faced many of the league’s top players, including current Kings. Stoll, meanwhile, is a familiar face through his intermission work with Patrick O’Neal and also serves as one of the team’s development coaches.
He did his first analyst games last season and will be back with Kelly on select nights.
Barnes framed the transition as something closer to a natural evolution than a hard pivot. He pointed to the change in captaincy from Anze Kopitar to Drew Doughty and said the broadcast team carries that same kind of recognizable feel.
“This is a face that you’ve seen for how long in a Kings uniform now?” Barnes said of Doughty and the familiarity the fans have gotten with him over the years. “You can kind of say the same thing about our faces that you’re going to see on ABTV with our Kings coverage.
“John Kelly and Jim Fox are back in the booth. Jim Fox has been doing this for a long time and has taught a lot of people around Los Angeles a lot about hockey and will continue to do so this year.
We have some great variety in the voices that we have in the analyst chair for the games and they touch on a bunch of different eras of Kings hockey. We have a connection to the Miracle On Manchester with Daryl Evans, a connection to the cup teams with Stoll and Martinez and then Fox/Granato connect to the greatest player of all time.
The mix that we have is a special group, I think we’re going to have some really entertaining and informative shows for Kings fans this year and it was something where we didn’t feel like we needed to fix something that wasn’t broken.”
ABTV’s Kings coverage already got rolling with the preseason finale against Anaheim, then moved into the regular season when LA played in San Jose last Saturday night. The next Kings game, Saturday against Edmonton, will also air on the regional network.
For viewers in Southern California, ABTV remains available on the same cable and satellite systems that carried FanDuel Sports West before the change: DirecTV Channel 692, Charter/Spectrum Channel 320, Cox Orange County Channel 64, Cox Palos Verdes Channel 53 and Fubo.TV.
The games can also be streamed live on DAZN with either a monthly or season-long subscription, and that package includes pregame and postgame coverage as well as other original programming from ABTV and the Kings. Fans who already have one of the listed cable or satellite subscriptions can sign in with their provider credentials and access DAZN at no extra cost.
Viewers outside the Southern California broadcast territory can still watch local Kings coverage through ESPN+ or DirecTV’s Center Ice package.
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