WZON repeating an hour of `Babe’

The Fabulous Sports Babe show may have shrunk from a four- to three-hour format, but Bangor radio listeners can still hear the caustic commentator for four hours each weekday.

However, that fourth hour is more like a bad case of deja vu because Bangor radio station WZON (620 AM) is rerunning the first hour of the Sports Babe show from 1 to 2 p.m. each day.

Before she jumped from ESPN Radio, the Babe show ran 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each weekday. After the network switch to ABC Radio, her show was downsized to a 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. slot about a month ago.

The switch left WZON with three choices:

“From 1 to 2, we could switch to another network for an hour, going off the air, or replaying the first hour of her show, which a lot of people don’t get a chance to catch,” said Dale Duff, WZON’s program director.

Duff said ESPN Radio is in the process of starting up a new afternoon program, but said it’s anywhere from 30 to 60 days away.

“It’s just something we have to do until they add this new show,” he said.

WZON listeners must have wondered if they’d entered a time warp last Thursday as the Babe show reran an old pre-Super Bowl show for the entire time slot.

“That’s what they ran. I was surprised, too,” said Duff. “We got a lot of calls and there wasn’t much we could do about it. We did call and let them know we weren’t too pleased.”

Duff wants listeners to know although WZON decided not to sign on for another season as a New York Giants radio affiliate, the Sports Zone hasn’t totally dropped the Giants from its programming.

“We’re getting three or four Giants games from CBS Radio and maybe another couple from Westwood One,” said Duff. “We didn’t re-up with the Giants because of the way the Patriots schedule worked out. We’d have only had 10 Giants games max.”

WZON has been a Giants affiliate station for the last two years.

The University of Maine hockey team will usher in SportsChannel New England’s Hockey East television schedule this season. The Black Bears also will appear at least twice on SportsChannel New England this winter.

The regional cable network released its 15-game Hockey East schedule this week and the Black Bears will be involved in at least two of the nine regular-season broadcasts. Three of the six games are “wild card” games, meaning SportsChannel will pick the games (on Feb. 20 and 28, and March 7) involving the hottest teams a week or more before the air dates.

SportsChannel will also televise as many as six Hockey East playoff games, from the quarterfinal round to the championship game on March 21.

This season’s TV schedule, which starts with Maine at Boston College on Saturday, Jan. 10, is the first year in a three-year, 48-game TV contract. The new deal comes on the heels of New England Sports Network’s decision to end a 13-year broadcast relationship with the conference this spring due to financial losses.

Outdoors enthusiasts may want to tune in to a new show called Spirit of the Sport on Dover-Foxcroft station WDME (103.1 FM). The show’s host is John Quaintance, who has hunted and fished around the world.

The show airs Thursdays at 9:10 a.m. and Saturdays at 7:30 a.m.