Four “Webcasts” into a one-year experiment, Bangor television station WABI (Channel 5) is starting to find a niche for sportscasts on the Internet.

What is believed to be a first nationally and certainly a first in Maine is starting to catch on as more and more prospective viewers are learning about WABI’s University of Maine sports Webcasts.

“We hadn’t publicized it very heavily, but we did manage to get it on our Web site as a link. We got about seven people who logged onto it for the first game,” said WABI program director Steve Hiltz. “We didn’t receive any feedback at that point one way or the other.”

That was back on Sept. 13. Two more football and one hockey Webcast later, people are starting to notice.

“We had 26 for the BU hockey game [Nov. 1] and one more person watched it after it was over as an archived game,” Hiltz said. “Now that it’s out, we’re really hoping for it to go.

Station officials are hoping to see the numbers inch up to 30 or more this weekend as WABI airs Maine hockey and football games on TV and the Internet. Friday’s hockey game (Northeastern at Maine) starts at 7 p.m. Saturday’s Villanova-Maine game starts at 3 p.m.

“We’re getting more response on it now with e-mails and phone calls,” Hiltz said. “It’s taken us a few weeks to get our on-air promotions going and we’re now purchasing time to advertise it out of the market in Presque Isle and Portland.”

Since Presque Isle TV station WAGM (Ch. 8) is not airing any of WABI’s Maine sports broadcasts and Portland’s WMTW (Ch. 8) is airing four of the 14, the Webcast, or streaming option, should be especially attractive to UMaine sports fans in Aroostook County and Southern Maine.

Computer users can access WABI’s Webcasts by logging onto its site (WatchMainesports.com) and following the prompts to sign up for a game. Webcast cost $14.95 each and users must have a credit card to sign up. It’s suggested that users have a broadband or cable Internet hookup rather than dial-up due to the speed and memory required to run the video and audio signals.

“The live telecast is not available until just a few minutes before it first goes on the air. It used to say ‘Feed not available’ until it came on, but that scared a few people off, so we changed the message to ‘Please stand by’ instead,” said Hiltz. “You can log on at any time to sign up for the games.”

Webcasts are delayed 30 seconds since it takes that long for the signal to go from WABI to SyncCast, the Internet content provider in California, and on to the Internet.

If viewer interest continues to grow, Hiltz said the one-year experiment may go a bit longer.

“We didn’t have any big expectations for it and we’re still calling this our testing year,” he said. “However, at this point, because we’ve seen this recent growth, we’re starting to make some noise about committing to another year of it.”

NESN gets “official”

New England Sports Network has hired former National Hockey League referee Paul Stewart as a studio analyst for its Boston Bruins telecasts. Stewart will alternate with former Bruins Rick Middleton, Cam Neely and Barry Pederson and appear on NESN’s The Boston Globe Pre-Game Report and Banknorth Overtime postgame show. His debut is alongside former Portland Pirates radio voice Tom Caron on Friday night, when the Bruins visit the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Stewart was an NHL official for 17 years before retiring after last season. He is the first American-born referee to work 1,000 regular season games. The Dorchester, Mass., native was named director of development for the Boston Bruins Foundation charity last month.

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