Clear Channel to air state finals Five stations taking football feeds

Five Clear Channel Worldwide radio stations in Maine will air all three of Saturday’s state championship football games live for the second straight year.

The Maine Sports Network – Bangor’s WABI (910 AM), Rockland’s WRKD (1450 AM), Gardiner’s WFAU (1280 AM), Madison’s WIGY (97.5 FM), and Boothbay Harbor’s WCME (96.7 FM) – will start its coverage of all three games 20 minutes prior to the kickoffs.

“It’s hard to measure ratings since it’s not like TV where they’re measuring certain days or time periods, but the listener feedback was really good on what we did last year,” said WRKD director of operations Don Shields. “And this year we’ve really lined up some good sponsors, especially from central Maine. The Winslow game sold out in five minutes.”

Saturday’s action starts at 10:40 a.m. and the kickoff for the first game – the Class B state final between Winslow and Mountain Valley of Rumford – is 11 a.m. at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland. The Class A game between Bangor and Bonny Eagle of West Buxton starts at 2:30 p.m. and the Class C clash between Bucksport and Jay kicks off at 6 p.m.

Game action and color analysis will be a group effort as Shields joins morning host and broadcaster Eric Leimbach, and Jim Toomey in a revolving arrangement from game to game.

“We kind of did this on the fly last year, but this year we’ve had the whole year to prepare,” said Shields. “I’ll do the pregame show and then Eric and Jim will do the first game. Then Eric and I will do the second game and then for the Bucksport game, I’ll do play-by-play and Jim will do color.”

Patrick West will do sideline reports during all three games.

Due to a TV announcing commitment, WABI program director and morning host George Hale will not be able to participate in any of Saturday’s high school broadcasting.

Hale, who has conducted a taped interview with Bangor coach Mark Hackett for the Class A pre-game show, is calling the action for Saturday afternoon’s University of Maine-New Hampshire football game to be televised by Bangor station WABI (Channel 5).

None of Saturday’s games will be carried live, but Bangor resident Eric Baxter, who has aired games on Woodland and Bangor-area public cable access TV channels, plans to tape all three games and air them on a 24-to-48-hour tape-delay basis on Bangor Adelphia cable access TV (Channel 12).

NESN’s gorge-ous Thanksgiving

If you’re looking for something to digest Thanksgiving dinner by, New England Sports Network is offering several selections for the New England sports fan.

Those who still haven’t seen “Still We Believe: The Red Sox Movie,” which takes viewers through the 2003 Boston Red Sox season from behind the scenes, can see it on NESN at 7 p.m. The network will also air an encore broadcast of its coverage of the Red Sox World Series champion victory parade from Boston. “Red Sox Rolling Rally” starts at 3 p.m.

NESN Retro-spective

If you didn’t get a chance to see New England Sports Network’s latest NESN Retro, look for it as NESN repeats it at various times the next week.

It’s worth checking out, especially for those of you NHL hockey heads who are going through withdrawal symptoms.

The latest episode brings together Boston Bruins stars Bobby Orr, Ray Bourque and Brad Park for the first time in studio with NESN announcer and former Portland Pirates radio voice Tom Caron to discus their storied careers.

The weekly, hour-long original program airs each Wednesday at 8 p.m. The next scheduled airings are Saturday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday at 8 p.m.

All three players talk about revolutionizing the game of hockey and their favorite Bruins memories.

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