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Friday’s announcement of a new over-air television contract for the Boston Red Sox is a good news-bad news development for non-cable TV viewers.
The good news locally? It’s likely that viewers will see the same number of games on Bangor TV station and CBS affiliate WABI (Channel 5) they have the last few years. The bad news is the total number of over-the-air (non-cable) games will shrink drastically.
The Red Sox announced a three-year TV deal with Boston’s WSBK (Ch. 38) and WBZ (Ch. 4) giving the two stations the rights to air 28 games in the Boston TV market. The deal, which may be worth as much as $15-17 million, means a drastic shift in the allotment of Sox broadcasts to cable and non-cable stations.
For the last three years, Boston’s WFXT (Ch. 25) has aired almost three times as many games as what will be available to WSBK and WBZ next year. This year, for instance, WFXT is airing 77 games with New England Sports Network doing another 85 on cable.
Next year, that allotment will see a 63.6 percent increase in the number of games aired on NESN and decrease in the number seen on local affiliates in New England, like Bangor’s WABI and WBGR (Ch. 33).
“When we heard the story, we were rather surprised,” said WABI program director Steve Hiltz. “We really had a good relationship with them [Fox 25] and we felt they did a really good job with good communication.”
What should work in WABI’s favor is the fact that it and WBZ are CBS network affiliates. Another advantage is an existing working relationship between WSBK and WBGR for Boston Celtics telecasts.
“I suppose there’s something to be said for that, but we haven’t dealt with them before. We haven’t worked with UPN [38] before either,” Hiltz said.
NESN, a Red Sox-owned network which is airing 85 Red Sox telecasts this year, will see its schedule increase to 122 games. That leaves only 40, 28 of which will be on WSBK or WBZ and 12 of which will be on ESPN, ESPN2, or Fox Network affiliates as part of Fox’s game-of-the-week schedule.
It’s likely that WABI’s share of games won’t change. WABI has aired approximately 15 to 18 games per year since it began regularly airing the Sox five years ago.
“That would be our goal, yes. We usually take at least 15 games or so. We shoot for 20, but never quite get there,” said Hiltz.
That would leave only 11 to 13 games available to WBGR, which takes anything available in the Bangor market not aired by WABI through a separate partnership with WABI.
Of the 28 games shared by WBZ and WSBK, 26 will be part of a Friday night package and 24 of those will be carried by WSBK. That might be good news for WBGR as WABI has a harder time clearing Friday night Red Sox games due to primetime network obligations to CBS.
“That’s true. I guess we both have to evaluate what they have for a schedule open to us, but until we have someone get in contact with us and take a look at what we have, we can’t go much further than that now,” Hiltz said. “No one has contacted us at this point in time. They may still be shaking out what they want to do.”
Mules kick it on radio
Colby College radio station WMHB (89.7 FM) will provide live coverage of five White Mules football games this season, starting with the home opener against Middlebury College on Sept. 28. WMHB will also broadcast these games on the Internet on its Web site: www.Colby.edu/wmhb. The other broadcasts are slated for Oct. 5 (Wesleyan), 19 (Hamilton), 26 (at Bates) and Nov. 9 (Bowdoin).
Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600, or aneff@bangordailynews.net
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