New season, new city, new park, new players… Even a new radio network.

The 2004 season will usher in many changes for the Bangor Lumberjacks, and the same can be said for their radio coverage.

After broadcasting 26 of the regular season home games played by Bangor’s independent Northeast League team last year, Bangor Christian radio station WHCF (88.5 FM) will air 28 home games this year. That’s not all, Lincoln sister station WHMX (105.7 FM) will air Bangor’s other 18 home games and form the other half of the new Lighthouse Sports Network.

“It was only on one station last year. We didn’t want to disrupt our regular programming night after night,” said Wayne Frost, general manager of both stations. “Our new station manager, Pencil Boone, is a big believer in using sports programming as a community outreach and service venue.”

With the Lumberjacks moving from Mahaney Diamond in Orono to the Winkin Baseball Complex on the Husson College campus in Bangor, Frost and Boone figured this was the ideal time to expand their coverage.

“We’re particularly excited about working with the Lumberjacks this year because of the team being at Husson,” he said. “The facilities are great and much more broadcast-friendly and much closer to the station. It’s more spacious in the booths and I think the view might be a little better to where we’re a little closer to the field with a better angle.”

In addition to forming a new radio sports network, Frost’s group is installing a translator station in Waterville (100.5 FM) which will boost WHMX’s coverage area and audience.

“We hope to have it set up in May,” Frost said. “That will allow us to reach a new demographic because it will basically double our listening audience in the 25-45 age demographic group and double our overall audience to about 100,000 potential listeners.”

Currently, Frost says the 100,000-watt WHCF, which has a translator station in Presque Isle (102.7 FM) reaches 450,000 people in nine Maine counties, from Houlton to Rockland and Calais to Farmington. The 50,000-watt WHMX will cover all of Penobscot County and parts of Waldo, Washington, Hancock, Piscataquis, and Kennebec Counties.

Game broadcasts will also be available live on the Internet, on either www.WHCF.cc or www.WHMX.com. Last year, broadcasts were streamed on the WHCF web site.

“We’re looking to try and set up a separate sports streaming service on a different web site just for the Lighthouse Sports Network,” said Frost.

“We got a lot of feedback from people out of state, so we’re looking to beef up our web site this year,” said Frost.

A Maine company, ChristianNetcast.com – the largest Christian Internet radio, webcasting, and web hosting company in the U.S. – handles the streaming for Frost’s stations. The Bangor company expanded nationwide a few years ago and now offers 117 stations on its service.

Frost will be one of five regular voices calling the action and providing color commentary for Lumberjacks broadcasts. The other four are Boone, a veteran broadcaster; Tim Collins, a former pitcher at Liberty University and current program director at WHCF; former high school basketball and baseball coach and veteran announcer Carroll Conley; and Mike Blake, who teamed up with Frost on several broadcasts last season.

“We’ll also do all their playoff games, home and away,” Frost said. “They’re a well-run organization with a good future and they seem to have a good long-term view for the team.”

The first home game and broadcast is June 3 on WHCF.

Keep your eye on the puck

Time Warner Cable subscribers in Maine are the first in the country to view indexed versions of the NHL playoff games On Demand through a partnership between the NHL and Gotuit Media.

Indexing means digital subscribers – using their standard remote controls – can select segments of a stored NHL game they are most interested in and immediately watch only those parts of the broadcast.

The service is available to 35,000 digital cable homes in Maine on TWC channel 471. Viewers can contact their local Time Warner office to sign up.

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