As its relationship with the University of Maine enters its fifth decade, Bangor television station WABI may be ready to shake things up a bit.

The recent renewal of a contract for exclusive local television rights to Black Bear sports with UMaine may herald a new direction in the way sportscasts are scheduled, promoted and distributed throughout the state.

Channel 5 will not only invite all stations in other Maine markets to partner up for UMaine sportscasts, it will extend that invitation to stations beyond the state’s borders.

“We’re optimistic someone will have interest to our north and south,” said WABI-TV general manager Mike Young. “And if there’s a station in New Hampshire or elsewhere that wants to take a Maine-UNH game, for example, we’ll be happy to partner up there, too. We may even be able to reciprocate, where we’d get a game or two from them in return when Maine hockey’s on the road playing their team.”

For three of the past five years, WABI has paired up with Portland’s WPXT (Ch. 51) and WPME (Ch. 35), a station WPXT programs under a local marketing agreement, to do many UMaine sportscasts. For the last two years, WABI and Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation aired games jointly.

Those stations would be logical stations on WABI’s short list along with Portland’s WMTW (Ch. 8) and another occasional partner, Presque Isle’s WAGM (Ch. 8).

Others? Well, as ironic as it would be, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for WABI to team up with Portland’s WCSH (Ch. 6), which aired UM games exclusively for eight years (1989-1997) along with Bangor sister station WLBZ (Ch. 2).

“It’s not out of the question I suppose. It seems so unlikely because of the relationship within the marketplace, but why close doors? We can’t afford to do that,” said WABI-TV program director Steven Hiltz said. “We would love, for a lot of reasons, to see statewide coverage of UMaine and the university would love to see that.”

WABI used to air UM games with fellow CBS affiliate WGME in Portland, but WGME has lessened its commitment to UM and high school sports in recent years.

WABI’s new deal with UM is for three years with an additional two option years, which can be triggered at any time during the contract period.

WABI’s TV association with UMaine sports goes back to 1953, when it began airing live UM sports broadcasts and has continued fairly steadily aside from that eight-year period WLBZ and WCSH were exclusive UM TV flagship stations.

The sports WABI will concentrate on are football, hockey and men’s and women’s basketball. So far, the only sports schedule almost totally nailed down is football, but WABI is already searching for possible partners.

“We’re looking right now and we’ve had conversations in public. After we get our schedules put together, we hope we can talk with people more about it,” Hiltz said. “We’ll probably put it out and let everyone know what we have.”

A cherry-picking approach is also possible, where various stations hook up with WABI for certain sportscasts.

“If someone says they can only do a couple, we might have multiple broadcast partners,” Hiltz said. “That’s something we’ve done in the past.”

Rescheduling the schedule

A 21/2-hour rain delay during Saturday’s Boston Red Sox game against Seattle caused Bangor’s WABI-TV to drop the game broadcast and send Hiltz back to the drawing board to come up with another revised schedule.

Hiltz had just finished a revision after a rainout wiped out a Saturday, April 28 telecast. A road game at Toronto on July 13 was added to keep WABI’s Sox regular season telecasts at 17.

“I added a date to make up for one we lost and now I guess I have to go through the schedule again,” said Hiltz, who explained that WABI ran a movie and switched to CBS golf coverage rather than go back to the Sox in order to preserve its 6 p.m. newscast.

The late start guaranteed that the Sox game would have run over the newscast time slot, something WABI doesn’t like to pre-empt.

Return to glory, and ratings

The Boston Celtics are back, both in terms of success and popularity.

Sure, a recent ESPN poll shows the Red Sox and Patriots are still the top dogs in New England pro sports, but the Celtics are showing they’re on the comeback trail.

Boston’s deciding game-five victory over Detroit in the second round of the NBA playoffs last week achieved an all-time high rating on Fox Sports Net with a 10.12 household TV rating. That means 234,000 TV homes had the game tuned in. The broadcast won the overall primetime ratings in the Boston market and became the highest-rated Celtics telecast in Fox Sports Net’s 21-year association with Boston.

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