Violette retains his sporting ties Talk show host takes Portland job

Mike Violette broke into the sports broadcasting biz in an improbable way.

Sure, it worked for him, but he doesn’t recommend it for other aspiring broadcasters looking to get their start.

“I was working for the Kennebec Water District as a meter reader, but I always wanted to do [broadcasting],” Violette said. “I had no prior experience. I heard about an opening at WTVL [1490 AM, Waterville], so I taped a Patriots game off TV, did a demo tape off that, and sent it in.”

The Waterville native got the job calling action for local high school football games and a new career was launched.

Violette has switched from radio to television and sports to politics over the years, but the man with no experience or broadcasting background before he made his demo tape is still behind the microphone 22 years later.

The 44-year-old Violette had another career change of sorts in late August as he left ClearChannel and a three-year run as co-host of the Maine in the Morning radio (airing in the Central Maine and Bangor areas) with Eric Leimbach to take a job with Saga Communications as the morning show’s “conservative voice” on Portland station WGAN (560 AM).

“Mike McCardle, who had been doing WGAN’s show for four years, passed away in June and I found out about their nationwide search and applied for the job,” said Violette. “The thing that’s great about this job is after working a job with a lot of different responsibilities, I just have one now with this one, and that’s to be ready for the morning show.

“The tough part is the guy I replaced is beloved, so it’s a tough act to follow.”

While his primary broadcasting jobs have changed over the years, Violette has continued to broadcast high school and college sporting events either on radio, TV or both every year since taking that job at WTVL.

Even with his new job, Violette is continuing to co-host Adelphia Cable’s weekly Strictly Sports live show with Leimbach each Monday night as well as calling high school football, basketball and hockey TV broadcasts on Adelphia.

“Saga’s been very good about letting me do the sports stuff on the side,” said Violette, who commutes from longtime friend Bob Morrissette’s house in Scarborough to Portland and drives home to Waterville two days a week for the TV show and family time with wife Anne Marie and son Peter.

“At the moment, my Waterville house is for sale and I’m living with my old mobile DJ partner, but I don’t plan to commute like this forever,” he said.

As much as he’s a sports enthusiast, Violette makes it a point not to include much sports-related talk among the morning show’s daily topics.

“There’s no lack of topics, but sometimes it’s unavoidable and all anyone has been talking about the last two weeks is the Red Sox,” he said. “They’re even overshadowing the presidential race. Everyone is a Red Sox fan right now.”

Listening to the Green

Boston radio station WWZN (1510 AM) – the flagship of the Boston Celtics radio network – has released its affiliate list and three Maine stations are included among the 12 representing four states.

Rockland station WRKD (1450 AM) joins WJJB (1440 AM) of Brunswick and WJJB (95.5 FM) of Topsham as the only Maine network affiliates so far. Bangor station WABI (910 AM) will not be airing Celtics games this year, but a fellow ClearChannel station may add Celtics action to the broadcasting schedule in the near future.

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