Channel 7 transmitting at full power

Bangor’s ABC affiliate, Channel 7, WVII-TV, returned to the air Friday morning fully recovered from an antenna-destroying fire in February with a new transmitter that sports some new technological features.

Through the device, WVII will become Bangor’s first commercial station to broadcast in stereo. The station plans to limit use of stereo to its ABC programs, except for news and some children’s shows. Channel 7 plans to convert some of its syndicated program library to stereo masters for broadcast.

Plans also call for the station to provide a secondary audio program, or SAP, to viewers in the future. Most new television sets include features allowing reception of stereo and SAP broadcasts.

“The fire loss was devastating,” said WVII Vice President and General Manager Bernard Chase, “but we felt that we had to ensure that we not only came back on the air with as good a signal as before, but that we commit additional resources to improve our facilities and our ability to deliver a superior product to the viewers.”

WVII went off the air on the morning of February 9 after an electrical fire in one of the transmitter cubicles of the station’s Blackcap Mountain antenna in East Eddington started a blaze that engulfed the antenna’s building.

Cablevision of Bangor soon lent a hand to the station, providing WVII broadcasts to its 27,000 subscribers by the following afternoon. WVII erected a temporary transmitter on Feb. 19, covering a majority of its original broadcast area.