PBS bulks up hoop coverage East, West tourney aired simultaneously

Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation (Maine PBS) added a few new wrinkles to its tourney broadcast coverage last week.

In addition to teaming up with Bangor television station WABI (Channel 5) for coverage of the upcoming Class B state championship games, Maine PBS also offered simultaneous coverage of the Western Maine Tournament.

Maine PBS also streamed the audio feed from its tourney coverage on the Internet from a link on its Web site. To listen to games on the Internet, people just need to go to MainePBS.org and click on the link to high school basketball located near a picture of a referee with a ball. On the basketball page, the live webcast link is located on the top right corner.

“We started doing this last year, as a matter of fact, and even though we didn’t promote it, we had people from as far away as Texas and other states e-mailing us to thank us for the coverage,” said Maine PBS media coordinator Rhonda Morin.

Producer Ed Fowler said things went very well on all fronts last week, as the regional tournament wound down from 48 teams at two different sites to six.

“I just talked to him this morning and he said for the most part, things went smoothly,” Morin said.

WABI program director Steve Hiltz said WABI supplied a remote satellite truck to help Maine PBS better manage and coordinate both tournaments’ broadcasts. He said it’s another example of his station teaming up with others to better serve the community.

“We’ve been working with MPBN as we’ve gone about converting our facilities for digital television. That was one of the first real partnerships we’ve had with them and this kind of sprung up from that,” he explained.

Through an arrangement worked out with Bangor’s Adelphia cable system, Maine PBS’ Western tourney coverage aired on cable channel 12 while the Eastern games were shown on channel 13.

In all, Maine PBS aired 36 games over four days and still has six to go with Friday’s Class B state games – which will not be seen in the Bangor area on Maine PBS’ channel 12 of Bangor, but will be shown on WABI – as well as the C and D state games on Saturday.

Tourney madness

Yes, it’s a hectic week and no, you don’t always know what day it is or even who the teams are until the opening buzzer sounds, but even with that in mind, some things overhead on radio and TV last week still offered grist for the head-scratching mill.

During a morning girls broadcast, two local announcers remarked how they hoped the game wasn’t a blowout because they didn’t have the names of five girls who were added to one team’s roster. Also, a girl from the other team was wearing a number different from what she was listed for. In both cases, neither announcer could tell who the players were because they hadn’t checked the rosters at the scorers’ table first.

When one announcer asked his partner how many points a player had, he was told the unofficial total was 14 points. He emphasized it was unofficial because, as he explained it, he found himself forgetting to keep track of baskets and free throws at certain times during the game because he was so fixated by the action on the court.

Another broadcaster violated one of your mother’s biggest rules as the announcer was trying to talk with his mouth full or nearly full. It was obvious as listeners could clearly hear chewing and sucking noises that totally distracted them from the call of the action.

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