After a three-month, roller coaster period of negotiations with Boston television stations, the Boston Red Sox have signed a broadcast deal with Boston television station WABU (Channel 68).

Boston reached a one-year agreement with Boston University-owned WABU for 75 regular-season games and five spring training games, Red Sox executive vice president John Buckley told the Associated Press Tuesday.

Terms of the deal, expected to include a network of eight affiliate stations in New England, were not announced. Maine Broadcasting System members WLBZ in Bangor and WCSH (Ch. 6) in Portland are two of those stations.

“I just heard about that this afternoon. I haven’t spoken to them [WABU],” said Mike Marshall, WCSH’s program director. “I don’t have any idea what the ground rules or status of negotiations would be yet.”

“We don’t know anything about what they want or what they’re looking for, but we’ve had a good working relationship with WABU over the last two years, doing college [University of Maine] hockey and football broadcasts here and down there,” Marshall added.

For the past 21 seasons, WSBK (Ch. 38) was the team’s flagship station. Does the switch affect the stations’ desire to continue Red Sox affiliation?

“Heck, we like the Red Sox. They’ve been a good program to carry,” said Marshall. “It’ll be a little tougher to schedule with us having the Olympics this year, but would we like to have the Red Sox on again? Yes, we would.”

An agreement earlier this month that would have put the games on WLVI (Ch. 56) fell apart.

Kevin Dunn, who operates KSA Communications in Natick, signed papers giving him telecast rights for nearly $14 million a year. He said Channel 56 would be the flagship for the 80 games. But the Red Sox pulled out of the deal when Dunn’s partnership appeared to be coming apart.

Like time, the search for new sports directors at Bangor television statations WLBZ (Channel 2) and WVII (Channel 7) marches on.

The field of finalists to succeed Portland-bound Lee Goldberg for the job at WLBZ may have actually increased from the original four.

“I’m not going to comment on how many finalists there are,” said WLBZ news director Michael O’Neil.”I’ve had a tremendous field of finalists to choose from. We’ve had candidates from all over the country and Maine.”

Although O’Neil originally hoped to name someone in late December, he says the search has not hit a snag: “I’m not going to put a timetable on naming someone. We’re pretty flexible on that.”

Over at WVII, the search to replace Dan Hannigan, who resigned last month, is proceeding quickly.

“I’m closing in on a couple of people,” said Miles Resnick, WVII’s news director, Wednesday.

Resnick would not identify any of the people under consideration for the sports job, but did divulge that one of them is local.

“I would say, give or take, February 1-10 would be a good time for us to name somebody,” said Resnick. “We’ve gotten 40 tapes from people and we’ve had calls from California, Florida, and Texas.”