A little more than two months after the deadline for request for proposals came and went, the University of Maine’s bid selection committee is still trying to select the Black Bears sports’ flagship television station for the next year or more.

WABI, one Bangor station with a particularly long history of Black Bear sports broadcasts, has submitted a bid, according to Channel 5 officials.

Another – WLBZ (Ch. 2) – has elected not to submit a bid due to scheduling complications and conflicts. Neither WLBZ nor sister station WCSH (Ch. 6) in Portland will be contestants in the TV sports rights derby for the second time in the last four years.

WABI and Portland station WPXT (Ch. 51) won the rights to UMaine sports in 1994 with a three-year contract containing extension clauses for two more years, which the stations exercised. In that time, the stations have carried Black Bears football, hockey, and basketball games. Before that, WLBZ and WCSH held the rights.

“Without knowing what the University has in terms of a game schedule, we couldn’t even begin to start putting it [RFP] together,” said Steve Thaxton, president and general manager of WCSH. “The number one reason is they’re not able to give us a definitive schedule and the number two reason is we don’t know what our network is going to be doing next fall.”

Thaxton says the timing of the RFP deadline is one of the major stumbling blocks for stations.

“It’s such an untenable system to be able to respond to that it almost leaves you no choice but to bow out,” he explained. “It’s much easier later on in the year like now, but even at this point, I don’t know if they have any assurances on which games are coverable or not.”

As far as the ongoing bid evaluation process, there has been no decision, according to UMaine director of purchasing Jean Meakin.

“It shouldn’t be much longer, but I can’t really say for sure how soon it will happen,” Meakin said.

It’s not known whether Bangor station WVII (Ch. 7) and/or Portland stations WPXT (Ch. 51) and WMTW (Ch. 8) have submitted bids. Attempts to reach officials at the stations were unsuccessful by presstime.

Both WCSH and WLBZ were poised to have a relatively large amount of air time available with TV rights to NBA games going from parent network NBC to Disney’s TV triumvirate (ABC, ESPN and ESPN2), but with NBC acquiring rights to the Arena Football League, that hole from late fall into the spring has shrunk considerably.

Thaxton would like to see UMaine’s current RFP system overhauled so that stations could bid on separate sports seasons.

“Oftentimes in other states, they’ll separate various sports where one station does football and another does basketball, and that’s kind of the only way commercial broadcasters can deal with it because it’s such a load of air time,” he said. “I would love it if we did it that way. I think it would be advantageous for everyone concerned to be able to refine the process so broadcasters could look at certain sports and not an entire package.”

Station of the year

In what is believed to be a first for the state of Maine, an all-sports station has been named the Associated Press Maine Radio Station of the Year.

That honor for 2001 goes to Bangor’s WZON (620 AM), which won 12 awards at last weekend’s AP radio awards banquet. WZON walked off the podium with three first-place awards, six seconds, two thirds, and an honorable mention.

The firsts were won for play-by-play (Dan Hannigan and Blair Marsh’s broadcast of the Maine-Minnesota NCAA regional hockey game), sports feature (on late Maine hockey coach Shawn Walsh), and sportscast (Sports Zone Fast Break). WZON also swept the play-by-play category with the UM-Minnesota game, a high school tournament broadcast, and the Maine-McNeese State football playoff game.

“It really is a high point for us because it reflects a total team effort,” said WZON program and sports director Dale Duff. “I think everyone we used on-air had a hand in one or more of our winning entries.”

Judges from Virginia evaluated all Maine entries.

Pawtucket on NESN

New England Sports Network will air six live Pawtucket Red Sox broadcasts this season, starting with Pawtucket’s 6 p.m. home game against Durham Monday.

Boston Red Sox pregame and postgame host Bob Rodgers (play-by-play) will team with former Boston Red Sox great Rico Petrocelli (color) for a third straight season of PawSox broadcasts.

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