Clear Channel sale of Maine stations should come soon

The identity of a potential new owner of Clear Channel radio stations in Maine could be announced at any time now.

Bids were due a few weeks ago for the cluster of Maine stations, which include University of Maine Black Bear radio flagship station WVOM (103.9 FM) of Howland and Black Bear radio network affiliates WGUY (102.1 FM) of Lincoln and WABI (910 AM) of Bangor. Other Clear Channel-owned stations, such as WCME (96.7 FM) in Boothbay Harbor, will likely be at least part-time Black Bear affiliates.

Black Bear Sports Properties is a subsidiary of Missouri-based Learfield Sports and serves as the UMaine athletic department’s multimedia rights consulting arm. Learfield and UMaine signed a six-year deal a year ago for BBSP to handle all of the bidding and decision-making for awarding exclusive TV and radio rights.

The rights were recently awarded to Clear Channel, ending a 10-year run by Bangor all-sports station WZON (620 AM). No rights fee was paid in the three-year deal.

“It’s essentially what we call a barter deal,” Clear Channel Bangor market manager Larry Julius said. “We retain a fair amount of ad inventory to sell to advertisers and generate revenue, but there’s also time built in there for the University because Learfield owns the rest of the inventory.”

A potential new owner of any of the 19 Clear Channel stations in Maine on the market couldn’t renege on the new contract, even though it didn’t exist before or as the stations went on sale last fall, according to Julius.

“Not that anyone would want to anyway,” he said. “I mean, anybody who has spoken to us in regard to buying the stations sees that [UMaine sports radio rights] as an asset. It’s certainly an enhancement.”

Julius said one of the next items on the to-do list is to line up announcers for the various sports and putting together a plan for a weekly coach’s show with UMaine head coach Tim Whitehead as well as what the network’s approach will be for pre- and postgame shows.

Celtics foul up WRKD schedule

The remaining eight games on the Boston Celtics’ regular-season schedule will not be aired by Clear Channel radio stations WRKD (1450 AM) in Rockland, WFAU (1280 AM) in Gardiner, and WIGY (97.5 FM) in Madison.

Don Shields, sports director at Rockland’s WRKD and WMCM (103.3 FM), said the loss of the broadcasts is due to technical problems.

“The Fox Sports Radio Network put all the games on a different satellite channel in the last month of the season, and it’s a different channel than the Red Sox are on,” Shields explained.

That means in order to carry both Sox and Celtics games, Shields or someone else from the station would have to travel to Augusta to change the channel on their satellite receiver.

“If you have someone in-house to do that, you’re fine, but if you don’t, it’s difficult and we don’t,” Shields aid. “I live in Thomaston, so I would have to drive from there to Augusta to flip it and then either stay to flip it back so we can get the Red Sox or come back later to flip it back.”

The decision to switch satellite channels was made by Boston Celtics flagship station WRKO, which also is the Boston Red Sox flagship. It was necessary for WRKO to make a change so it could air both teams’ broadcasts when both are playing at the same time.

Since Red Sox broadcasts are all must-carry for network affiliates and the Celtics are already out of playoff contention while hopelessly mired at the bottom of the standings, Shields elected to just bypass the remainder of the Celtics’ schedule.

“It didn’t seem like a big hardship for us. The Red Sox are a lot more important for us,” he explained. “The Celtics are not a really good sell, but when we miss the Red Sox, people yell.

“We missed about two minutes of Sox game action last year and my cell phone had already started ringing the first minute it happened.”

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