It’s not Wide World of Sports, but the folks at Bangor all-sports radio station WZON (620 AM) are feeling like they’re spanning the globe this weekend to provide live coverage of University of Maine sports.

“I would say it would break some kind of record locally, or at least for us, in terms of the distance covered with two crews on the same weekend,” said Sports Zone program director Dale Duff. “It’s a 4,973-mile distance between the two locations and that translates into 89 hours of driving time, straight through.”

The frequent flyer miles will be rolling in as WZON sends regular announcer Dan Hannigan to Anchorage, Alaska, to cover the Maine hockey team’s games at the Nye Frontier Classic Friday (9 p.m.) and Saturday (11 p.m.) and a two-man broadcast crew to Miami to cover the Black Bears’ football game at Florida International University Saturday (3:30 p.m.).

“We found out today with the weather forecast for Saturday afternoon, it’s supposed to be 86 degrees in Miami,” said Duff. “It’s 47 degrees right now [Wednesday] in Anchorage. The forecast is a mix of rain and snow showers and 42 degrees there for Friday and Saturday.”

Hannigan did his best to entice football announcers Rich Kimball and Bob Lucy to trade assignments. Needless to say, he wasn’t successful.

“I think the best he could come up with was Alaskan king crab, and I’m not really a big seafood guy, so the lure of salmon didn’t really work either,” Kimball said with a chuckle.

Obviously, the trip has been a greatly anticipated one for Kimball and Lucy.

“Absolutely. In the conference schedule, the highlight is usually Richmond because they have the best barbecue, but beyond that, you have Colgate in upstate New York, where there wasn’t that much beyond the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Louisiana was fun when we went to cover the McNeese State game last year,” Kimball said. “And this works out especially well as far as the timing because my shoes are just about dried out after all the rain we saw at UMass last weekend.”

Although the trips are costly, Duff said the possibility of employing one cost-saving measure and trying to find broadcast crews based locally and hiring them to do the game broadcasts on a freelance basis was never really considered.

“In essence, a Maine team is pretty much the only one that would offer location challenges like this,” Duff said. “But logistics aside, we always try to use our own people first.”

The schedule won’t allow Kimball and Lucy much time to sightsee as they’re leaving Friday morning and boarding a plane Sunday morning, but they may try to work in a sight or two.

“We may try to take in some of the sights, but given the navigational skills of Mr. Lucy and myself, we could wind up in Havana,” Kimball joked. We are going to try and go to South Beach and look around, but it’s all work… All work.”

MPBC doing some fine tuning

Maine Public Broadcasting (Maine PBC) is still evaluating the possibility of submitting a bid for live television broadcast rights to the Eastern Maine Class A basketball tournament. That’s the word from Maine PBC spokeswoman Rhonda Morin, who said the six-station public TV network is still trying to determine whether submitting a bid would be cost-effective or prohibitive, among other factors.

WZON joins Revolution

Bangor radio station WZON (620 AM) will broadcast Sunday’s Major League Soccer championship game between the Los Angeles Galaxy and New England Revolution at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. WZON, which aired Revolution regular season games a few years ago, has never done the MLS title game before. It will take the live feed for the 1:30 p.m. game from Revolution flagship station WEEI (850 AM) in Boston.

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