Some NBA fans in Greater Bangor were tempted to try to shoot a 3-pointer with their TV sets Sunday afternoon when they couldn’t tune in to the start of a game between the top two teams in the Eastern Conference.

Rather than witness Shaquille O’Neal’s dramatic return to the Orlando lineup as NBC’s broadcast of the Chicago-Orlando game was beginning at 5:30 p.m., WLBZ (Channel 2) viewers were confronted with a repeat of “Perfect Strangers” instead.

Due to Maine Broadcasting System’s desire to run its 6 p.m. newscast on time, both WLBZ and sister station WCSH (Ch. 6) in Portland elected to fill in the time between the end of the San Antonio-Los Angeles Lakers game and the start of the 6 p.m. newscast with syndicated shows rather than the first quarter of the Bulls-Magic game.

“I think the feeling was people are going to get more upset if we show the first 30 minutes of a game, dump out for the news, and then come back. We thought that might be too much of a tease,” said Sarah Dingey, WLBZ’s director of programming.

As a result, viewers didn’t pick up the game until 6:30 p.m. – midway through its second quarter – and missed O’Neal’s last-minute return to a thunderous ovation from the Orlando crowd. O’Neal took a leave of absence after his grandmother died last week.

“I’ll tell you, I would have been upset myself if I had been waiting for that and missed it,” said Dingey.

Two years ago, WLBZ didn’t show any of the late games in the NBC pro basketball tripleheaders. After being bombarded with viewers’ complaints, station officials elected to show the games – and not the news – last year.

But the 6 p.m. ratings numbers changed their minds.

“Last year, we had an 11 rating for the game when we didn’t do the news. Our competition had a 21 when they usually get a 10.0. We usually got a 22 for our news,” said Mike Marshall, program director at WCSH.

So along came the current plan.

“This year we got a 27.0 for our 6 p.m. news,” he added. “Our competition had a nine. So when you look at that, you really can’t argue with the numbers.”

The numbers didn’t keep them from re-evaluating the plan this year, however.

“We looked at not showing the third game at all, not showing our news at all, or showing the news and then joining the game in progress,” said Dingey. “We even thought about doing the news at 5:30 to get to the late game quicker, but we wanted to be on when people are used to having us on.”

So MBS officials used the same game plan this year, with an added provision: pay more attention to the importance of the matchups.

So the Bulls-Magic game wasn’t important enough?

“It may have been a big game, but it was regular season and it wasn’t like the game when Michael Jordan made his return. We showed all of that game because that was the news of the day,” said Marshall.

Marshall said WCSH got very few phone complaints, probably because it explained the situation on a “crawl message” at the bottom of the TV screen.

WLBZ, which did not use a crawl message, received at least a dozen calls about the game.

MBS will use the same approach for upcoming playoff tripleheaders April 28, May 5, and May 12.

“If it’s the seventh game of a playoff series, then we’d have to decide whether to do the whole game, or do it as we have with the news on at 6 p.m.,” said Marshall.

While there is potential for conflict for WABI-TV (Ch. 5) in Bangor on Sunday when it televises both the Boston Red Sox and The Masters, programming director Steve Hiltz said Wednesday that he is not expecting a problem.

“The Red Sox game [against Cleveland] starts at 1 [p.m.] and The Masters starts at 4,” said Hiltz. “Last week, the Sox game finished 10 or 15 minutes early. I’m not anticipating any difficulty.”

However, if the Red Sox game should run long, or go extra innings, then WABI will stay with the game and pick up The Masters in progress, said Hiltz.