If you think scrambling around for footage and interviews all day, editing all the material you’ve collected, and then delivering all that information during daily 6 and 11 p.m. sportscasts sounds like a stressful way to make a living, try doing the same thing for three daily sportscasts.

Since March 19, that’s exactly what WVII television sports director Nate Long has been doing as he does two daily sportscasts (6 and 11) plus another for fellow Bangor station WCKD-TV (10 p.m.). Until weekend sports anchor John Chandler was hired in early May, Long was doing it all by himself.

“Yeah, that was fun,” Long said with a chuckle. “I know it’s a lot easier with two people.

“The biggest difference is just having to have everything ready an hour earlier, but just that one hour is a huge difference for sports where you have so many games starting at night.”

Both Long and Chandler said it comes down to budgeting time and streamlining the process as much as possible.

“You have to take into consideration the handicaps you’re working with,” Chandler said. “Sometimes I’ll have just finished my last edit and 15 seconds later, I’m on the air.”

Chandler said one way to free up more time is to get regular features like Athlete of the Week done ahead of time. That leaves just the late-breaking sports events to worry about.

The time crunch will get worse in the fall, especially on Friday nights as the duo tries to cover as many as 10 or 12 games in a 100-mile radius, and the winter as most basketball games start as early as 6 p.m. and as late as 8 p.m.

“I think we’re looking at sending out extra people or just camera people to get footage because it’s too much for just two people to get,” Long said.

Despite the obvious hurdles and extra headaches accompanying the 10 p.m. newscast, Long and Chandler both agree it’s a good thing.

“I think here in this market it’s a good idea,” Long said. “Hopefully we’ll find a way to make it a little less stressful for everyone involved.”

WCKD (Channel 30) is a low-power UPN (United Paramount Network) affiliate which is being leased by WVII from Bangor PAX and Warner Brothers network Bangor affiliate WBGR (Ch. 33). WVII, which holds an option to buy WCKD for a preset monetary figure at the end of the current five-year lease, provides all the programming for WCKD, which also airs any Fox Network sports programming not being carried in the Bangor market.

“We carried the All-Star game Tuesday night and we must have had 40 or 50 calls and e-mails from people wanting to know how to watch it all day,” said Mitch Lambert, WVII’s general manager.

WCKD, which will also air World Series and Super Bowl games, can be viewed on channel 30 on non-cable, non-satellite TV sets and on channel 10 on local Adelphia cable systems.

Lambert said the response from viewers to WCKD’s 10 p.m. newscast has been good.

“We’ve gotten some real positive responses from people who get home too late for the 6 o’clock reports and go to bed before 11 p.m.,” Lambert said. “We’re estimating, although we’re just starting to do the research, that we’re getting about 2,000 viewers and that’s about what we thought we’d have.”