WVII’s Baier accepts producing job in D.C.

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After spending six years of his life in cold climates, Tim Baier has decided to head back to the south.

The sports anchor at Bangor television station WVII (Channel 7), who was born in New Jersey but grew up in Atlanta, has accepted a producer’s job in Washington, D.C.

Baier, who started working in Bangor Feb. 9, 2004, will be a producer and part-time reporter for WUSA, a CBS TV affiliate with an eight-member fulltime sports staff.

“Brett Baber is the sports director there,” said the 27-year-old Baier. “Primarily, I’ll be doing a Wednesday through Sunday shift as a producer and reporting the other days, doing three stories a week.”

One bonus of working in the nation’s capital for Baier is the presence of his brother Bret, a Pentagon correspondent for Fox News.

Baier graduated from Boston College in 2001 with a degree in political science and communications, worked at CNN Headline Sports as a producer-editor for six months, and then graduated from a 12-month broadcast journalism program from Northwestern University in 2003.

After graduation, Baier traded the Windy City for the River City.

“It’s been much better than I expected,” Baier said. “I was a little fearful because I knew it was cold and all, but it turned out really good.

“It’s been awesome actually. The one thing I’ve said about Bangor, which is really cool, is it’s a small market, but it’s awesome, especially one to be learning the ins and outs of the business in.”

Bangor is the location he’s spent the longest amount of time living in the last six years.

“I’ll miss the people, but I’m really looking forward to my new job,” said Baier, who finishes his run at WVII Friday and starts at WUSA on Dec. 1.

No permanent replacement has yet been named for Baier, but assistant sports director Elgin Traylor will take over in the meantime.

TV title tripleheader

Think of it as tournament championship Saturday, only outside with half as many games.

For the first time in Maine, all three high school state championship football games will be broadcast live on television by Bangor station WABI (Ch. 5). If that wasn’t noteworthy enough, the games will also be broadcast live by WABI’s Internet streaming service: www.watchmainesports.com.

The action starts at 11 a.m. with the Class A game between Mt. Blue and Bonny Eagle. The Class B game between Brewer and York is at 2:30 p.m. and the Class C game involving Foxcroft Academy and Lisbon kicks off at 6 p.m.

WABI program director Steve Hiltz compared his station’s sizable undertaking to the eight-game Eastern Maine Class A basketball tournament quarterfinal days they used to do on Saturdays.

“Guys are going to be wiped out. It’s a long day and a lot of stuff to do,” said Hiltz. “We’ll have about 15 people doing this. The production and broadcast staffs will be the same crews for each game, but we will try to rotate everyone to give everyone some down time.”

For instance, Jon Small, Tim Throckmorton and Keith Erickson will rotate play-by-play, color/analyst, and sideline reporter duties, respectively from game to game so each will serve once in each capacity. Keith Allen and Peter Hewett will be the directors for the games and even they will take turns.

Hiltz said the biggest logistical problem WABI faces is moving equipment two hours south and getting all the necessary equipment in place (five people will handle that task by heading to Portland Friday morning and staying overnight). Another hurdle which had to be overcome was lining up statistics, roster information, and other information from the participating teams.

“We’ve been contacting the schools since before the regional finals began just to get started on all the things that needed to be done,” Hiltz explained. “We won’t be able to have the player head shots and as many of the graphics we usually do for games like Maine football just because of the work involved and limited amount of time we had to do it.”

Even without those to work on, the equipment in the production rooms at 35 Hildreth Street rarely sat unused.

“It was like having one bathroom and 50 people wanting to use it,” Hiltz agreed.

Advertising spots during all three broadcasts were already 60 percent sold even before the competing teams were decided. Now 75 percent of the spots have been sold.

“We expect to be sold out or very close by the time kickoff arrives,” Hiltz said. “The Brewer game will be sold out. I have no doubt about that.”

The fact the games occur during a national TV ratings sweeps period (Nov. 3-30) is another positive for WABI as it will be able to get Nielsen ratings info on each broadcast.

WABI is the lone station broadcasting the games. Hiltz said there was no interest from the Portland TV market to simulcast their broadcasts.

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