Blue Ox `network’ collapses> Fledgling franchise on just one station

For the second time in their two-year history, the Bangor Blue Ox are having trouble with their radio reception.

The Blue Ox baseball radio network has collapsed again.

Last year, a planned partnership between Dexter station WGUY (102.1 FM) and WMDI (107.7 FM) fell through about a week before the season started, leaving WGUY the flagship station by default.

This year, WGUY is again the only station airing Blue Ox games now that sister station and Blue Ox network partner WIGY (97.5 FM) is in the process of being sold.

“WIGY is operating under a time brokerage agreement and is in the process of being sold to Tryon-Seacoast Communications,” said WGUY general manager Dan Priestly.

Blue Ox officials are wondering if they’re victims of a derivative of the Curse of the Bambino.

“It’s my curse because all I want to do is to be able to say you’re listening to the Blue Ox radio network. It’s just bad luck,” said Blue Ox announcer and media relations director Sean Bigham.

Priestley said it was an easy decision to sell WIGY, which had been on the market about three months without drawing much interest until May, because about 80 percent of its coverage area was the same as WGUY’s.

“WIGY was basically a duplication of coverage area and effort,” Priestley explained.

The offer to buy took him by surprise.

`The agreement took effect around late May. This all came about quite out of the blue. Out of nowhere came some real hardball offers from this group,” he said.

Bigham said the Blue Ox have not immediate plans to seek a replacement and that the team really has no recourse in the matter.

“I think we found out the second week of the season. We just said `OK, I guess there’s not much we can do.’ Why cry over spilled milk?” he said.

Unlike the Marines, the Sports Zone is looking for one, not a few, good man or woman.

Sports and program director Dale Duff is looking for a candidate to fill a new full-time position with the Bangor all-sports station as WZON (620 AM) prepares for an expanded, three-year broadcast commitment to University of Maine sports.

WZON began advertising the position, which involves multiple duties: field reporter, play-by-play broadcaster, and sports talk show host/producer.

“We’re going through the early process,” said Duff, who said the new position resulted from WZON’s commitment to broadcast a wide variety of UM sports including ice hockey, men’s and women’s basketball, football, and baseball.

“We’d like to have someone hired by the fall,” said Duff.

The new position brings to five the number of full-time employees on the WZON staff.

Duff said the 1997-98 sports year will be one of WZON’s busiest as he estimates the station will broadcast almost 300 live events – 120 of them being UMaine games.

Both Duff and Zone Corporation general manager Christopher Spruce admitted they are also playing with the idea of expanding Duff’s morning show and/or the afternoon show hosted by Dan Hannigan.

“We keep talking about expanding the morning show into the 9 to 10 a.m. hour,” said Spruce, who added that the new full-time announcer/reporter will probably pick up some morning and afternoon show duties.

“There’s nothing in the works now and it would premature to say anything,” said Duff. “But we’re always looking to expand our sports coverage.”

But rather than simply being studio banter, the possibility of expanding their local sports talk blocks – which currently run 6-9 a.m. and 4-6 p.m. every weekday – has become feasible from a funding and personnel standpoint.

The chances of expansion may be more promising in light of published reports that the syndicated Fabulous Sports Babe Show, which WZON carries, may drop an hour and go from a 10 a.m.-2 p.m. format to 10-1.