It seems organizers of the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe race Saturday aren’t the only ones with concerns over low water and lack of rain this spring.

Officials at both Bangor television station WABI (Channel 5) and all-sports radio station WZON (620 AM) radio are busy making contingency plans in case conditions force race organizers to set up more mandatory portages than usual.

“We’re still hopeful it will be a normal telecast based on the conditions,” said WABI program director Steve Hiltz. “If they have to portage [get out of canoes/kayaks and carry them from one point on the river to another and then get back into the water] around the falls, and the race was slowed down, we’d probably start our coverage later at 11 a.m. instead of 10 a.m.; and getting live shots in the downtown area will be tough.”

For the sixth straight year, WABI will broadcast two hours of race coverage. Most of it will be live, but pre-taped footage from some of the earlier action at the start and some of the whitewater areas of the race course will also be used during the telecast.

WZON will provide almost 31/2 hours of live race coverage starting at 8:30 a.m. This is the eighth time in the last nine years WZON has covered the race.

“We’ve got it down to a pretty good science now,” said WZON program director Dale Duff, who also covered the race live another 10 years as the sports director for Bangor TV station WLBZ (Ch. 2).

WABI will employ approximately 15 people for the broadcast with four broadcasters and three or four cameras. WZON will use 10 people, eight of whom will be broadcasting at various points along the race course, and a mix of land phone lines, cell phones, and a Marti transmission device.

“Broadcasting from some of the areas along that river can be pretty tough because for whatever reason, you can’t get a strong signal out of there,” said Hiltz.

It’s for that reason and the likelihood that weather could affect the race that senior producer John Beaulieu already has had people out to test live shots and camera positions at various locations.

The basic rule for a live broadcast like this? Expect the unexpected, or at least do as much as you can to lessen the chances for the unexpected to occur.

“Something always seems to happen or go down,” Hiltz said. “We had a power outage due to a bad generator the first time we did this, and you always worry about the weather.”

WZON purposely treats the race with a degree of humor, focusing on the colorful characters and race participants connected with the Kenduskeag.

“It is a race, so we do feel it’s important to at least acknowledge the fastest kayak or the fastest canoe, but with the rest of it, we just try to have some fun,” Duff explained.

Both stations have learned some lessons as they’ve gone about broadcasting the race the last few years.

“I think the thing we’ve learned the most is the best places to shoot from and get good angles,” said Hiltz. “The best lesson we’ve learned the hard way? To have a backup generator.”

WDME puts Sox back on

For only the second time in six years, a run that’s gone on for more than two decades was threatened as Dover-Foxcroft radio station WDME (103.1 FM) wasn’t able to carry the Boston Red Sox home-opener.

Two weeks later, their Red Sox relationship remains intact as some technical snafus related to the movement of WDME’s studio facilities from Dover-Foxcroft to Bangor (and sister stations WZON and WKIT) have been resolved.

“It didn’t look good for awhile there, but now it’s all taken care of. The studios are all down here and everything’s all set up,” said WZON general manager Bobby Russell. “It was just a technical problem we had to solve.

“We didn’t know if we’d have the equipment connected in time, but now that we do and we’re all moved into the Bangor studio, the Red Sox are back on WDME.”

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