Dover-Foxcroft radio station WDME (103.1 FM) will embark on its 31st season broadcasting high school football next week.

Foxcroft Academy’s Sept. 4 home game with Old Town will kick off the station’s 15-game regular season schedule.

WDME has added a new wrinkle this year: regular season broadcasts of girls soccer and field hockey for the first time. This swells its fall sports broadcast schedule to 29 total regular season contests (eight boys soccer games, three girls soccer, three field hockey).

WDME officials also recently learned their station has won its first sports-related Maine Association of Broadcasters Award for sports play-by-play.

“We’re real excited because we’ve never won an MAB new award for a sports broadcast before,” said station sports director Bob Robinson.

Robinson (play-by-play), Andy Conway (color), Al Lunn (statistics), and producer Steve White took third place for coverage of the Stearns-Foxcroft playoff football game last year.

All-sports radio station WZON (620 AM) in Bangor will usher in its second full season of University of Maine football coverage on Thursday, Sept. 3.

Rich Kimball and Bob Lucy are back for another season as play-by-play and analyst, respectively.

WZON program director Dale Duff said there are no major changes planned for the station’s Black Bear coverage.

“It’s going to be kind of the same approach with a few production improvements,” said Duff.

WZON will air a special one-hour show before Thursday’s game against the University of Buffalo in Portland. It will include a review of last season and a 1998 preview.

Glenburn television station WBGR (Channel 33) will be broadcasting several high school football games this season. Station owner James McLeod said he has tentative plans to start the schedule off with Bangor’s home game against Gardiner on Friday, Sept. 4.

Speaking of Bangor High School, Bangor radio station WABI (910 AM) will again air all of the Rams’ football games – home, away, and possible postseason – this season.

Howie Long, former Villanova and Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders defensive end, has signed a five-year contract to remain as Fox Sports’ NFL studio analyst.

Long, who won an Emmy Award – a first for a studio analyst, according to Fox Sports – will again team up with Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw and James Brown for Fox’s fifth season of NFL coverage, which starts Sept. 6.

This year, the trio will be joined by former Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Collinsworth, who has signed on as an analyst.