While New England Patriots fans fret over the loss of Lawyer Milloy to the rival Buffalo Bills, local radio station executives are eagerly anticipating Sunday’s kickoff.

The increased interest in New England’s season-opening road game at Buffalo (1 p.m.) is making the decision of Clear Channel Worldwide officials to double their Patriots coverage look wise indeed.

Patriots games can be heard on both Winter Harbor’s WNSX (97.7 FM) and sister station WABI (910 AM) in Bangor. WNSX carried Patriots games last year as one of the 36 affiliates of the Patriots Rock Radio Network operated by Boston flagship station WBCN (104.1 FM). This year, WNSX is one of 38 affiliates.

“The Patriots will be on both stations each week with WNSX airing the pre-game show and WABI doing a doubleheader each Sunday,” said WABI program director George Hale.

It’s the first time in recent memory that WABI has offered NFL Sunday doubleheader coverage.

“Well, Sunday is pro football day and if you’re going to do one, why not do two?” Hale said. “And doing the Patriots is a no-brainer as popular as they’ve become.”

WABI will receive its NFL feed from the Sports USA Network while WNSX will get its feed from WBCN, starting with WBCN’s three-hour pre-game show.

This weekend, WABI will carry the Pats-Bills game at 1 p.m. and the Chicago-San Francisco game at 4 p.m., but the late game will be joined in progress if the Patriots game runs late.

The Patriots radio network attracts an estimated 1 million listeners in six states, according to the team’s Web site. WBCN is in its ninth year of coverage and Gil Santos has been calling Patriots games – albeit with a few interruptions – since 1966.

Web catches on with Bengals

Count the University of Maine at Fort Kent among the entities utilizing the benefits of the Internet.

The UMFK athletics department is teaming up with the school’s Web services department for a second straight year to provide varsity soccer webcasts or Web streaming of 14 Bengals men’s and women’s soccer games this fall.

The first webcast will be Saturday at 3 p.m. when the UMFK women host Nova Scotia Agricultural College in the first round of the Bengals Kickoff 2003 tournament.

These webcasts will be available at www.umfk.maine.edu/vstream and will feature a small video screen with full play-by-play audio broadcasting, which will be aired with a 15-second delay.

The site also features archived games that people can still click on and view.

Women’s action will continue Sunday at either noon or 2 p.m. and the first men’s webcast is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 13, at 3 p.m.

UMFK’s web services department also has aired several nonsporting events on the Internet site such as UMFK’s 2003 commencement and the UMFK nursing pinning ceremony.

FSNNE drops the Bears

University of Maine football fans looking forward to watching Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. telecast of the Maine-at-Hofstra game are getting some bad news.

The live broadcast was dropped from Fox Sports Net New England’s schedule late Thursday afternoon after the regional cable network was notified it would not be aired by Fox Sports Net New York.

The reason that got dropped was it was no longer available to us,” said Barbara Pease, FSNNE programming department coordinator. “We had an agreement with Fox Sports New York to air the game they were doing, but they dropped it from their schedule because they decided to do a different event.”

Pease said she’s unaware of any plans to replace the broadcast with another Maine game later in the season.

“It’s possible, but nothing’s been said about it,” Pease said.

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