Bangor television station WABI (Channel 5) is bringing University of Maine NCAA regional hockey action to local viewers for a fourth straight year.

For the second straight year, Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation is teaming up with WABI to extend the live game coverage statewide.

“We’ll do it the same way we did the state championship Class B games,” said WABI program director Steve Hiltz.

That means MPBC will show game action on four of its five stations statewide: Presque Isle’s WMEM (Ch. 10), Calais’ WMED, Lewiston’s WCBB (Ch. 10) and Biddeford’s WMEA (Ch. 26). Orono’s WMEB (Ch. 12) will air normal public broadcasting programming such as Victory Garden, This Old House, and New Yankee Workshop since Penobscot County viewers can catch all the action on WABI.

“It was a great service which allowed the entire state to watch the quarterfinals and we had very positive feedback,” said MPBC media coordinator Rhonda Morin. “We’ve had great success with this cooperative effort and we’re pleased to continue this relationship to benefit Maine viewers.”

WABI and MPBC are splitting the $2,500 NCAA television rights fee and will air both Saturday’s noon game in Worcester, Mass., against Harvard and – should Maine win Saturday – Sunday’s noon game against Boston University.

The noon start for both games and the fact that the games are being produced by the NCAA make this an especially attractive telecast for WABI as the hockey games won’t interfere with CBS’ NCAA Tournament basketball coverage, slated to start at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

NCAA production of the games means WABI won’t have to send a broadcast crew, production equipment, or satellite trucks to Worcester to do the game. The NCAA broadcasts the game using its own announcers.

“This is a much, much easier and less-expensive situation for us with this being just a matter of a feed,” said Hiltz. “It’s entirely a turnkey operation.”

One complicating factor was Fox Sports Net New England’s decision to bid for the rights to the regional quarterfinal games.

“This is one of the things we have to kind of fight for. Because the NCAA is producing it, we knew a regional cable outlet could knock us out, and we thought that for us to lose it this year just because of that fact seemed rather unfair to us,” said Hiltz, who took great care to point out to NCAA officials that his station has produced several games on its own in the past and has a long association with UMaine sports. “I think in the end they agreed with us and respected our long association with this.”

As a result, Fox Sports Net New England was given rights to the regional telecasts, but will not air the Black Bear’s games in Maine.

“We’ve been told that [FSNNE] will not have it on in Maine, but even if they make a mistake and it’s on, we can just call the cable companies and have the channels blacked out,” Hiltz explained.

Saturday’s CBS broadcast of the NCAA Division II national championship men’s basketball game at 1 p.m. will likely be made available to Bangor station WBGR (Ch. 33), which takes many CBS sports telecasts WABI cannot.

The NCAA semifinals on April 4 will be aired nationally by ESPN2 while the April 6 championship game will be aired by ESPN.