WVII to treat Giants fans with entire Monday game

Thanks to some late schedule manipulation and a request from the local ABC network television affiliate, Monday night’s “early” NFL game is available on local noncable and nonsatellite TV sets from start to finish.

The rescheduled game between the New York Giants and New Orleans Saints, which was originally supposed to be played at 1 p.m. Sunday in New Orleans, was switched to Giants Stadium in New Jersey after Hurricane Katrina hit.

That meant the 1 p.m. Sunday Fox Network broadcast was moved locally from WFVX-TV (Channel 22) to sister station and ABC affiliate WVII (Ch. 7) and a special 7:30 p.m. start time Monday.

The wrinkle for Giants fans was the NFL’s plan to let ABC air the game from 7:30 to 9 p.m. and then switch to the regularly scheduled Monday night game between Washington and Dallas at 9 p.m. while moving the Giants/Saints telecast to fellow Disney-owned network ESPN. That meant that Giants followers without cable or satellite service would only get the first half of the game.

That was before WVII general manager Mike Palmer placed a call to ABC headquarters and spoke to network officials about the possibility of allowing WVII to carry the Giants game in its entirety.

“Well, there are a lot of Giants fans in the area, so that was our primary motivation,” said Gene Hardin, WVII promotions manager.

Palmer’s request was granted and WVII is one of 20 stations nationwide – most of the others are located in Louisiana and New York markets – that will carry the entire Giants telecast and then switch to the Redskins/Cowboys game.

“We were originally supposed to carry Sunday’s game [on WFVX] so at least this way we still get to keep it and make some Giants fans happy too,” Hardin said.

The Giants telecast will also air on ESPN in local cable markets as long as it is not blacked out through exclusivity rules by WVII.

Television trio touchdown

Six years after its last state championship high school football game telecast, Bangor television station WABI (Channel 5) is making up for lost time by airing all three gold ball games live in November.

WABI’s bid to air all three games was formally accepted by the Maine Principals’ Association last week, making WABI the first TV station to air all three games live in one day and one season.

“Honestly, when they first started making noises about doing this ‘Super Saturday’ thing, we became interested in doing it, but we wanted it to be at UMaine to make it easier for us,” said WABI program director Steve Hiltz. “When that didn’t happen, we basically moved on to other things with the University of Maine becoming a prime focus.”

Before 2000, WABI had carried at least one state final football game in 12 of the previous 13 years.

“I think it’s one of those situations where we hesitated to do this in the past with all the setup time and cost, plus the logistics associated with our University of Maine sports schedule was a potential problem tool,” Hiltz explained. “But the more we looked at the schedule the last couple years, the more we noticed that Maine doesn’t usually pose a conflict on that day so that kind of provided a spark for us to do this and get the wheels in motion.”

So, early this year, WABI officials called the MPA and asked what it thought about the possibility. The MPA decided to put out RFPs (requests for proposal) and solicit bids from state TV stations. A joint bid by Bangor station WLBZ (Ch. 2) and Portland’s WCSH (Ch. 6) was the only other one received by the MPA.

“We’re stretching a bit to do this, but having to sit on the sidelines and watch local teams going down there almost every year just wasn’t something we liked to do,” said Hiltz. “You’re taking your chances with it as far as local teams’ involvement, but certainly the odds are very much in your favor. Even if we don’t know who’s going to be there, we know there will be some good teams, some local teams, and some exciting games.”

Hiltz and fellow officials will be able to judge how cost-effective this venture is fairly quickly as the date of the games – Nov. 19 – falls during the November sweeps period (Nov. 3-30), so ratings info will be available.

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