Given the lack of a marketable local team to draw fan interest and the fact the games were rained out Saturday, officials at Bangor television station WABI are feeling a lot better.

Better about their choice not to air any state championship baseball games on Channel 5, that is.

This is the second straight year WABI, which has aired high school baseball playoff games at least since the 1980s, has opted not to carry any live postseason high school baseball broadcasts. And unless things markedly differ, viewers shouldn’t expect that to change in the foreseeable future.

“I think it’s relatively very unlikely we would do games like these,” WABI program director Steve Hiltz said, referring to spring season high school state championships. “You never say never, but it’s iffy at best.”

Hiltz said two main factors make spring playoff broadcasts unwieldy: First is the uncertainty that any local team from the Greater Bangor or Penobscot County area will even advance as far as the state game. Second is baseball’s comparative lack of popularity when stacked up against playoff football and tournament basketball games.

“That’s not to say baseball isn’t popular. It’s just there are certain premier events worth taking because of their popularity, but these games don’t really fall into that category,” Hiltz explained.

And what determines popularity? The two primary forces at work, at least as far as TV executives are concerned, are advertiser and viewer interest.

That’s what makes the first factor (which teams are playing) so important. For instance, Hiltz admitted that many of this year’s matchups would have been tough sells to advertisers. With Class A and C games in Standish and WABI preferring to air nearby games, that would leave the Class B (Foxcroft Academy vs. Maranacook of Readfield) and D (Lee Academy vs. North Yarmouth Academy) games in Bangor to choose from.

Class D games aren’t usually highly coveted because they involve teams from the smaller towns in Maine. That means smaller populations of fans, less interest and fewer potential advertisers than local Class A and B teams like Brewer and Bucksport.

The only way around this handicap would be for WABI to wait until state-game opponents are decided and then scramble to put crews and equipment together – plus sell advertising spots – to broadcast a game.

“I think the only way to do it would be on the fly like that because we’d have to know which teams are involved before proceeding further,” Hiltz said. “And that would be a lot of work to do in a short amount of time.”

Going by last week’s playoff schedule, WABI would have had one or two days to plan and put together a game broadcast.

That leaves it up to one last factor: weather. And if it rains, as it did Saturday, all that effort would be all for naught.

Given the fact Hiltz received only a couple calls from viewers asking about game coverage the past week, who he said were “curious, not complaining,” he and WABI may have made the right call, at least for this season.

NESN ratings hit the heights

Regional television cable/satellite service New England Sports Network set a ratings record for itself with a 13.2 average rating in the Boston demographic market last month.

The record-breaking broadcast was of the Boston Red Sox’ victory over the New York Yankees Friday night, May 24. It broke the previous record of 11.2, which NESN reached for a Sox-Orioles game Sunday, April 7 of this year.

The game broadcast also set a record for NESN in the Providence, R.I., market with a 13.2, smashing the old mark of 10.6 set on April 12 for a Red Sox game.

NESN’s postgame show, Extra Innings, also did well with a solid 5.7 average rating. It did even better in Providence with a 6.7.

A rating for a program calculates the percentage of all TV households – both those using TV and those not using TV. It is the percentage of TV households watching a telecast, and each point represents 1,008,000 homes.

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