BOSTON – Transportation to the T.D. BankNorth Garden: Anywhere from $10 to $100. Floor-level admittance to a Boston Celtics game: $350 or more.

A chance to rub elbows with famous pro athletes courtside and get a head start on a potentially lucrative, exciting, and unique career: Priceless.

That’s the chance Fox Sports Net New England is offering to boys and girls in New England this winter.

For the third straight year, FSNNE is hosting an open casting for all students ages 13-18 as part of its New England FanCaster program, which has selected 60 students over the last two years to tape an introduction to a regular feature run during Boston Celtics home game telecasts called Heroes Among Us.

Heroes Among Us is a video feature done to honor a community hero on the Garden’s parquet floor. The taped introduction details some of the honoree’s more notable accomplishments and efforts.

“We’re very proud of FanCaster and the opportunities it provides area students to get an early look inside the broadcasting business, but also because of the way it ties in with the Heroes Among Us program,” said FSNNE marketing and communications manager Skip Perham. “It’s an invaluable experience for a young, prospective broadcaster.”

FSNNE, which is celebrating its 25th year of continuous Celtics TV coverage, received more than 400 entries the last two years from students all over New England.

The FanCaster experience also features a tour of the FSNNE high-definition production truck, a chance to meet the FSNNE Celtics broadcasters Mike Gorman, Tommy Heinsohn, and Greg Dickerson; and a behind-the-scenes look at how FSNNE prepares for that day’s Celtics telecast.

“This is a wonderful program for kids looking to get in the broadcasting business,” said Gorman. “It’s great for kids who don’t necessarily know what they want to do too, because it might open up a whole new career direction for them to follow.”

Students interested in participating in the FanCaster program must send an entry form and a videotape (VHS format) of themselves reading an audition script to FSNNE. Finalists will be selected based on their television presence and the quality of the video. FanCaster “tool kits” can be found online at, and downloaded from www.FSNNewengland.com. Teachers and school officials without web access can obtain information by calling 781-270-7252 or 781-270-7251.

Entries and VHS tape auditions must be labeled with the student’s name, age, school, home phone number, and address and sent to FSN New England FanCaster, 42 Third Ave., Burlington, MA, 01803.

This year, the first five of 41 fancasters have been selected. Each selection involves a rolling deadline, but the last day to apply for the program is April 1, 2006.

NBA gets good rating

The National Basketball Association has announced that household ratings for NBA games on Turner Network Television (TNT) and ESPN during “Premiere Week” were up 8 percent (1.3 United States rating vs. 1.2 last year). That translates to roughly 100,000 more households tuned in to games that week compared to last season’s opening week.

In related news, NBA.com set the all-time daily traffic record to the site during premiere week on Thursday, Nov. 3 with more than 31.2 million page views and almost 3.7 million total visits. The new mark eclipsed the old one of 23 million page views and 3.4 million visits on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net