The promising start to spring that was heralded by unusually warm temperatures earlier this month and late last month hasn’t lived up to early billing.

Cold temperatures, regular rain showers, and two snow storms have forced postponements that are leaving local stations scrambling to reschedule high school baseball and softball broadcasts.

“We usually don’t start our broadcast schedule until May, which is good because it’s been tough with the weather we’ve had lately,” said George Hale, station manager/sports director for Bangor radio station WABI (910 AM).

Bangor all-sports station WZON (620 AM) has already had two broadcasts scrapped due to postponements, and with three more scheduled in the next three days, station officials are keeping their fingers crossed.

“We’ve only done one game so far with the postponements and all,” said WZON program director Dale Duff. “I would say we’re doing about 12 to 15 regular season games and then we’ll do playoff games right through the states [championship games].”

Other stations providing local high school sports coverage are WALZ (95.3 FM) in Machias and WDME (103.1 FM) in Dover-Foxcroft.

50,000 watts of power

Weather has been wreaking havoc for local stations in other ways, too.

Officials at Winter Harbor radio station WNSX (97.7 FM) have been trying to install a new transmitter for the last four days, but snow storms on Friday and Sunday have put their plans on hold.

“They were going to try again today, but last night’s snow made that impossible,” said general manager Keryn Smith. “If it doesn’t snow again, it’ll probably be up and running in a week.”

The new transmitter will go up on a site used by the old WMDI station at Tunk Lake, where snow and mud have made the route to the site impassable. Once installed, it will increase WNSX’s power from 1,000 to 50,000 watts.

Smith said weather hasn’t been the only problem for WNSX.

“It’s been kind of a long-running tale of woe,” he said. “We originally had enough wattage to broadcast at more than 1,000 watts, but Bangor Hydro couldn’t deliver us enough power to broadcast at peak level. So we used a couple of generators to make up the difference, but one of them blew and we had to run at reduced power.

“I think at one time we might have even blown a transmitter that blacked out a portion of the county too, but I don’t know for sure.”

Smith said WNSX’s facility will use a single phase transmitter instead of the standard three phase power system. A rotary phase converter will transfer the three-phase into single phase power for the transmitter, which should significantly upgrade WNSX’s signal strength. WNSX will basically duplicate Bar Harbor sister station WLKE’s coverage, from Bangor to the coast and along the seaboard into Calais and Atlantic Canada.

WNSX is one of nine local stations owned by Clear Channel Communications and one of only three that won’t be moving into a single facility in Bangor as part of Clear Channel’s ongoing modernization effort of all station facilities.

“We just signed out a new building at Target Industrial Park and we’ll be moving six stations [Bangor’s WABI and WWBX, Dexter’s WGUY, Howland’s WVOM, Searsport’s WFZX, and Belfast’s WBFB] there,” Smith said.

Only WNSX, WLKE and Ellsworth’s WKSQ will remain at their current locations.

Celtics first in line

Rockland all-sports radio station WRKD (1450 AM) has a problem, but it’s a good one.

With the Boston Celtics still playing in the postseason and the Portland Sea Dogs and Boston Red Sox in the early stages of their regular seasons, WRKD has had to come up with a batting order of sorts to determine which teams get priority when they’re all playing at the same time.

Simply put, the Celtics are up, the Sea Dogs are on deck, and the Red Sox are in the hole.

“If the Celtics are playing, they get first preference, then the Sea Dogs,” said program director Don Shields. “We’ll join the Red Sox in progress if they’re still playing.”

A season on the rink

New England Sports Network will debut a one-hour Front Row behind-the-scenes special on Boston College’s 2002 hockey season Sunday at 9 p.m.

“A Season Inside: Boston College Hockey” will document the 2001 season from training camp’s opening day to the season-ending loss to the University of Maine in the Hockey East Tournament.

NESN cameras follow team players and coaches on the ice, in the classroom, at home, on road trips, and inside the locker room.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 1-800-310-8600, 990-8205 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net.