Local radio stations covering high school basketball > WZON and WHCF expect games to attract interest

With an abundance of high school basketball teams in the Greater Bangor area, two local radio stations are trying to capitalize on high school hoop’s popularity by adding high school games to their broadcast schedules.

The two Bangor stations _ WZON (620 AM), now known as Maine Talk Radio, and WHCF (88.5 FM) _ are betting that their schedule of local high school games will attract plenty of interest from listeners and advertisers alike.

“We had a lot of success with (high school) football,” said Greg Smaha, WZON’s general manager.

“So we’re hoping we do even better with high school basketball.”

WZON became Maine Talk Radio approximately seven months ago, after Hampden dentist John Tozer bought the station from Stephen King. The switch from hard rock to an all-talk-and-sports format wasn’t a popular decision.

“We had a lot of hard-core rock-and-rollers who were quite upset,” said Smaha.

“But we started polling listeners and found that there’s a lot of interest (in the new format).”

With WHCF, adding high school basketball broadcasts wasn’t part of a total format overhaul. It was just an addition to help diversify the existing format.

WHCF began its six-game December broadcast schedule on Dec. 1. WZON began a 10-game December schedule with two games on Saturday.

To further supplement its basketball coverage, WHCF will air a five-minute high school report by Hal Furrow each weekday at 7:10 a.m.

WZON is airing a sports show each Sunday night at 7 p.m. called “The Locker Room.”

This show will feature reports on local school sports, special guests and notes from around the sports world.

Neither station’s foray into the area of high school sports was decided on at the spur of the moment.

Jeff Danz and Tyler Potter at WZON have been gearing up for basketball broadcasts since October.

Danz started to work on the broadcast schedule in early October and, after five revisions, finally finished it in late November.

Both Furrow at WHCF, and Danz and Potter at WZON said that they believe their broadcasts will be well received by local basketball fans.

“We believe local coverage is important, especially here where there aren’t any local professional teams. You just have (University of) Maine sports and the local high school teams,” said Danz.

If high school coverage proves to be just as important to listeners as it is to Danz, this first-time venture into high school basketball may turn out to be a bonanza for both WHCF and WZON.