Bangor all-sports radio station WZON has again received a handful of awards from the Maine Associated Press.

Representatives of The Sports Zone came away from the AP’s spring banquet last month with five awards, including a sweep of all three places in the play-by-play category, a first for best sportscast, and second place for sports feature.

WZON swept play-by-play with a first for a University of Maine hockey game broadcast, second for UMaine football, and third for a high school basketball tournament broadcast. The feature award was for a broadcast of a Senior League World Series game last summer.

“I think one of the best thoughts about it is the awards come in all categories,” said station program director Dale Duff. “We’ve won play-by-play in just about every sport we’ve done as well as features for profiles on people in sports and for coverage of events like the Kenduskeag Steam Canoe race, and we’ve won some news awards, too.

“I think it’s gratifying to win awards for every area of sports we’ve done. It shows great strength and diversity in everything you do.”

WZON has won just over 130 awards from the AP and Maine Assocation of Broadcasters in its 10 years as an all-sports station including two station-of-the-year awards, four Maine sportscaster of the year awards, and one as a national Marconi Award finalist.

NESN goes to the minors

New England Sports Network has increased its live minor league baseball broadcast schedule to eight games this year, and the Portland Sea Dogs will be featured in half of them.

The schedule began with Portland’s home game against Binghamton May 24. The next Sea Dogs telecast will be a home game against Norwich Monday, June 28 at 6 p.m. and the last two are July 24 and Aug. 19.

NESN is also airing four Pawtucket Red Sox games (June 7, 14 and 21 plus Aug. 5).

Former WVII sportscaster Eric Frede will handle Sea Dogs play-by-play for NESN and former major league and Boston Red Sox pitcher Bob Tewksbury will provide color commentary for both the Sea Dogs and Pawtucket broadcasts.

Majors for a month

All Comcast high-speed Internet subscribers can get 30 days of live MLB.TV baseball broadcasts over the Net for free.

What’s the catch? Well, according to Major League Baseball, there is none. The promotion is being billed as Comcast’s way of thanking subscribers for choosing its service. The offer ends July 6 at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern time) and can be activated by logging onto http://lists.mlb.com/u/478250/9811466 or just logging onto MLB.com and clicking on the offer icon.

The offer allows Comcast service users to watch up to 300 live out-of-market games online, listen to live streaming audio broadcasts of games each day, and see extended post-game highlights. New Comcast subscribers could get MLB.TV live baseball free for the rest of the season, depending on area restrictions.

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