Ever since the Bangor television station made its broadcast debut last year, WBGR Family 33TV has made sports an integral part of its programming.

Big East college football and basketball, local high school football and basketball, and even high school cheerleading have been aired in the 13 months the station has been on the air.

Now general manager James McLeod has added a weekly, half-hour sports show focusing on high school sports. High School Sports Weekly is a scaled-down version of ESPN’s Scholastic Sports America with in-studio guests, news and interviews.

The first show was aired Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

“We’re very excited about this because it will continue to show our dedication toward covering the local high school sports scene,” said McLeod.

The show will be hosted and produced by former NEWS sportswriter John Nash, who is also the sports director at WBGR and a game broadcaster for Bar Harbor radio station WMDI (107.7 FM).

“Ideally, I’d like to make it look like Scholastic Sports America, but right now, a lot of it’s going to be done in the studio,” said Nash. “In the long run, I think we could make this an hour. There are so many schools and so much we could do, it would easily fill an hour.”

Nash said he’d also like to put together a number of sports specials totally separate from the show: like a preview to the LTC football playoffs.

WBGR is broadcast on UHF band channel 33 and also airs on Cablevision (Ch. 30) and Frontiervision (Ch. 12).

Don Perryman will be trading in his control board for a keyboard as he moves from full-time duty at Bangor radio station WZON (620 AM) to the Piscataquis Observer.

Perryman will still host his Sunday morning Press Box show on WZON, but no longer will handle daily news reporting and production duties. Instead, he will be a staff writer-reporter for the weekly Observer.

“It’s kind of the best of both worlds. I get to write and still do some radio stuff,” said Perryman, who starts his new job Oct. 9. “I’m a writer at heart, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m going to be reporting, writing news and sports – a little bit of everything.”

Perryman likened the move to a return to his roots as he used to work at the now-defunct Bucksport Free Press, the Republican Journal, The Register, and the Penobscot Times. He has also been writing a column for The Weekly since it started up three years ago.

Local TV and radio stations did very well at the recent Maine Association of Broadcasters annual awards ceremony.

In the radio division, WZON of Bangor (620 AM) won two firsts and a third in the two sports categories. WZON’s broadcast of the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race won best sports feature/program and its coverage of Eastern Maine basketball was voted best sports play-by-play entry.

WZON also took third in the feature-program category with a Ricky Craven special program. Maine Public radio won a second place in this category for a feature titled “Ice Boat Championships.”

Also in play-by-play, Rockland station WMCM (103.3 FM) won second and third for broadcasts of the UMaine women vs. George Washington and Lincoln Academy vs. Orono, respectively.

In the TV division, WABI’s Tim Throckmorton garnered first place in the sportscast category.

In sports play-by-play, Lee Goldberg (formerly of WLBZ in Bangor and now at WCSH in Portland) was second for the UMaine-George Washington women’s game.

A feature on UMaine athlete Greg Logan by Mike Schoor and Dan Hannigan from Bangor’s WVII (Ch. 7) was third in the feature-program category.