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A year ago, Bangor television station WABI (Channel 5) scheduled a record number of University of Maine men’s hockey game broadcasts.
Another year, another record.
This season, WABI will air at least 16 UMaine sports broadcasts in all and 12 of them will be hockey.
“We were looking to get at least seven games and we have 12, so yeah, that’s on the high side for us,” said WABI program director Steve Hiltz. “Things really fell together well.
“It’s a combination of being able to clear them [schedule-wise] along with the fact that there’s a lot of demand for them.”
Bangor’s CBS affiliate usually has to wait until as late as mid-October to firm up its UMaine sports schedule because it is third or fourth in the pecking order behind Hockey East home network New England Sports Network, Comcast regional network CN8 and College Sports TV.
“We’re very happy with our schedule. We have good nonconference games to start out, and we have Boston College and Boston University once along with two games against New Hampshire, which we’re very excited about,” Hiltz said. “The way the schedule broke this year, it worked out really well for us.”
WABI has already aired two of its four football games and is airing its first two hockey games this weekend with the Black Bears hosting Mercyhurst Friday and tonight. Hiltz said the station would also like to add one men’s and one women’s basketball game to its UMaine sports schedule.
“We’re going to look at the schedule to see what’s available, but since America East isn’t televising any of Maine’s home games, we pretty much have our pick of all the basketball games in Orono,” Hiltz said. “Usually, we go with something in January, February or March.”
If those two games are added, this will be greatest number of UMaine sports telecasts (18) WABI has aired in an academic year.
This is the first year of WABI’s three-year broadcast deal with Learfield Communications for UMaine sports TV broadcast rights, but it’s the ninth straight year that WABI has teamed up with UMaine to televise Black Bear sports.
Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net
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