Soccer fans tell WVII it dropped the ball

Local fans of “The Beautiful Game” were disappointed on Sunday as they woke up early, settled in on their couches, and prepared for the final day of World Cup soccer competition.

That’s because the championship game – a 6:30 a.m. battle between Brazil and Germany – wasn’t aired on local ABC affiliate WVII-TV of Bangor until early in the afternoon.

Local soccer fan Mike Jeffrey, the former varsity boys coach at Brewer High School, was among those who woke up early and didn’t get to watch the game live.

“I looked all over the place for it and couldn’t find it, so I went outside and started working,” Jeffrey said. “I got a lot done, by the way.”

Mitch Lambert, the vice president and general manager of Bangor Communications, said he was out of town for much of last week, and the decision was made in his absence to show just the 12:30 p.m. tape-delayed broadcast of the game.

The reason: WVII has been showing “Soul’s Harbor,” a religious program, from 8 to 9 a.m. on Sundays for about 20 years, and did the same on Sunday.

“I can tell you this: We’ve been bombarded with e-mails and calls today, and I guess I would say rightfully so,” Lambert said.

Lambert said the station didn’t do enough work to inform the public of its decision, which led to some disgruntled viewers.

“I’ll guarantee you it won’t happen again, because I always take the live feed [on sporting events],” Lambert said.

Some Bangor-area viewers were angered when they tuned in to watch the game and found an infomercial on calcium supplements running instead.

Lambert said the decision not to air the game live had nothing to do with the infomercial that filled the time before Soul’s Harbor.

“Those infomercials at 6:30 in the morning don’t pay anyway,” he said. “But ‘Soul’s Harbor’ is a 52-week client [and the decision was made to accommodate the show].”

Lambert said one possible solution would have been to move “Soul’s Harbor” to an earlier time block, before the World Cup finale began.

Lambert said he had heard from people who had arranged their day around the game, including some who scheduled early morning World Cup parties.

“I had people from Germany who were waiting up. People who had parties had stayed up and were going to watch,” Lambert said. “I feel really bad.”

Officials at ABC headquarters in New York said the network’s goal was to provide the championship match live from coast to coast.

“We had on our schedule from day one that ABC Sports and the ABC Television Network was going to have all of our stations air both the live match starting at 6:30 and later on tape at 12:30,” said Mark Mandel, vice president of media relations for ABC Sports.

Due to a variety of conflicts, that’s not what happened, Mandel said.

“Some of our stations pre-empted the live telecast and others pre-empted the tape-delay,” Mandel said.

Lambert said staffers at WVII received a communication from ABC that gave the affiliates a choice between the 6:30 and 12:30 broadcasts and chose the 12:30 time slot.

Mandel said the live telecast was available in most areas.

“Eighty-three percent of the country was able to see the match live,” Mandel said. “In 17 percent, they could not, for various reasons. In approximately 4 percent of the country, the stations in those markets offered religious programming. In 3 percent, primarily in the West, the stations were not on the air.”

Jeffrey initially said he was shocked when he found out the game wasn’t broadcast live on WVII, but then admitted that despite the United States team’s success in the World Cup, soccer still isn’t on everyone’s mind.

“In a way, I’m not surprised. I went to my school [earlier in the tournament] and said the U.S. had won their World Cup game, and [the students] said, ‘What’s the World Cup?'” Jeffrey said. “We’re kind of in a soccer desert here.”