Local TV stations won’t air state HS football contests

Due to the current economic climate, the lack of a broadcast partner to help bear some of the cost, and the uncertain nature of the games’ participants, it’s all but a certainty that none of the three state championship football games will appear on television either locally or statewide.

That wasn’t the case up until last fall, when Bangor television station WABI (Channel 5) snapped a five-year string in which it aired the Class A state game.

“Over the years we’ve done a lot of local sports programming and this [football] was part of it, but we felt we had to cut back somewhere,” said WABI program director Steve Hiltz. “Some of that has to do with all the pre-emptions we do with the network [CBS] in the course of the year and just, in general, the cost of doing these things. The return on the investment hasn’t always been there.”

This will be only the third time in the last 14 years that WABI won’t be televising a game.

“I don’t see it happening unless something really jumped out at us like all these advertisers calling and saying ‘Here, I’ll give you lots of money to do that,’ ” Hiltz said. “We’re just not in a good position to do that right now.”

WABI isn’t the only station casting a more critical eye at fall playoff broadcasts as officials at fellow CBS affiliate WGME and new Warner Brothers (WB) affiliate WPXT (Ch. 51) in Portland plus Lewiston United Paramount affiliate WPME (Ch. 35) echoed similar concerns with the bottom line.

Chief among those concerns is the current economic climate, the loss of local ad revenue from the wall-to-wall network coverage of the recent terrorist attacks, and the high cost of producing and broadcasting games like these.

From 1995 through 1999, WABI and WPME jointly aired the Class A state game. WABI produced and broadcast the game while WPME paid a simulcast fee to air the game’s signal in the Southern Maine market.

“We did ‘A’ games quite often because we had a southern partner and that made it possible to keep the broadcasts going,” Hiltz said. “Looking back at those figures without that extra support made it tough for us to do it on our own.”

Another factor is the volatile nature of the game’s participants and its timing. It’s hard to pre-sell ad space for a November state game because it takes place so late in the year, when most advertisers’ dollars have already been spent.

Hiltz said it’s much easier to sell ads for a game broadcast early, as opposed to beating the commercial money bushes for a game only seven to 14 ad shopping days away.

Plus, since nobody knows who will play in the games until mid-November, many businesses are reluctant to commit ad money to a game which may not feature any teams from their local areas.

“When you make these types of plans, you make them early,” Hiltz explained. “But if you make plans early and get everyone on board, how disappointed are they if it isn’t Bangor, Waterville or Skowhegan in the game? I mean, Oxford Hills is a great team, but they’re not in our area or our advertisers’ area either.”

The trend is the same for most other stations with a history of local sports coverage. Bangor NBC affiliate WLBZ (Channel 2) hasn’t aired a high school football game since the 1995 Maine Shrine Lobster Bowl Classic.

Former WPME program director and current corporate official for WPXT-WPME Doug Finck said the high cost of broadcasting local games may lead to a shift away from local affiliate stations doing the games and to games done by high school visual arts classes and clubs and appearing either on cable TV public access channels and possibly even the Internet. The cost would be much lower in these cases because labor would not be a significant cost since most of the work would be done by volunteers.

NESN’s Wild World of Winter

New England Sports Network will debut a new series – Dan Egan’s Wild World of Winter – Thursday at 10 p.m. (time approximate after a Boston Bruins game). Egan, a New Hampshire native, hosts the one-hour program about winter recreation activities such as skiing, winter camping, snowboarding, and ice climbing. It will feature some of the best area resorts plus equipment reviews and expert guest hosts.

Andrew Neff’s On the Air column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net.