Spring must officially be right around the corner as the Boston Red Sox television schedules are rolling in.

The spring training preseason schedule includes eight TV broadcasts – five on Bangor station WBGR (Channel 33) and three on New England Sports Network.

Grapefruit League action breaks onto the tube first on Friday, March 15, as WBGR airs a 1 p.m. game between Boston and the Florida Marlins.

WBGR’s other preseason broadcasts are March 16, 21, 23 and 26. NESN will air three games: March 17, 24, and 30. All games start at 1 p.m. except on March 30, which is at 2:30 p.m.

Exactly 107 stations or television outlets in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont will be airing Red Sox telecasts produced by Sox flagship station WFXT (Ch. 25) in Boston. Ninety of those stations or cable outlets are located in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts native Sean McDonough is back for his 15th season as Red Sox play-by-play announcer for WFXT and former Red Sox second baseman Jerry Remy will team up with McDonough for a seventh straight season as color analyst.

On NESN, former Pawtucket Red Sox TV announcer and New Hampshire native Don Orsillo is back for his second season doing play-by-play. This will be Remy’s 15th season as NESN’s analyst.

NESN’s regular season broadcast Sox schedule starts Wednesday, April 3 with Boston’s second game of the season, a home contest against Toronto at 6 p.m. It’s the first of 86 (43 home, 43 away) regular season games NESN will carry in its 19th season of Red Sox coverage.

WABI, WFXT’s local Red Sox affiliate, will air 17 Sox games, starting with an April 6 afternoon game at Baltimore. WABI can take as many as all 67 games in WFXT’s package, but usually only takes 10-20 due to programming limitations, but the other 50 games will be aired in the Bangor area by WBGR as the result of a four-year cooperative arrangement between WABI and WBGR.

The remaining nine games of Boston’s 162 will be seen on either ESPN, ESPN2, or the Fox Network. Fox games are seen locally on Adelphia channel 27.

Bill Russell – Here and Now

If you missed NESN’s Front Row special on Boston Celtics legend and NBA Hall of Fame member Bill Russell Monday night, don’t worry. “Bill Russell – Here and Now” will be rebroadcast Friday at 10:30 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. The one-hour special focuses on Russell’s life after his retirement from pro basketball, specifically his current life and how he views the game today.

Russell is interviewed along with many of his friends, former teammates, and opponents like Jim Brown, Satch Sanders, Bob Cousy, Tommy Heinsohn, and Elgin Baylor. Celtics coach and patriarch Red Auerbach is also interviewed along with current NBA players like Paul Pierce, Antoine Walker and Shaquille O’Neal.

Beavers on the web

The University of Maine-Farmington women’s basketball team will make history Wednesday. According to the UMF department of athletics, Wednesday’s radio broadcast of the Beavers’ NAIA National Tournament first- round game will be the first Internet broadcast of a UMF sporting event. The 9:30 a.m. game against Cardinal Stritch University of Wisconsin will be broadcast by WUMF (100.5 FM) and the feed is available on the Internet through a link on the UMF athletics web page at www.umf.maine.edu/~athletic.

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