The following article appeared recently in the Bangor Daily News
 
WZON TOYS WITH OPTIONS
Bangor Station Begins to plan Maine Coverage
by Andrew Neff
Of the NEWS Staff
 
Unlike a child who grows bored with a toy after a day or two, the folks at
Bangor sports radio station WZON (620 AM) haven't even begun to play with
the one the University of Maine presented them last Friday.
 
"What we're really excited about is we've worked really hard to get
ourselves in position to  this and we finally have," said station general
manager Chris Spruce.
 
Five days after being awarded exclusive radio rights to UMaine sports for
the next three years, SportsZone officials are still in the preliminary
stages of planning their coverage strategy.
 
"We have absolutely not talked about what we're going to do yet," said
program director Dale Duff.  "One of the primary problems is we don't even
have [Maine fall and winter] schedules yet."
 
Of primary concern to officials at UMaine and WZON, and the listening
public, is the possibility of scheduling conflicts limiting live coverage
of UM's major sports.
 
"I'm fairly confident that the conflicts may be less in number than people
expect," said Spruce.  "What we tried to do in regard to the bid process
was throw out some possibilities on how to approach potential conflicts.
Now that we have the contract, we're obviously going to try and explore
these possibilities."
 
Those possibilities include live updates from secondary game sites, late
games joined in progress after early ones finish, tape-delayed coverage and
arranging for other stations to broadcast games conflicting with a Maine
game broadcast by WZON.
 
"We're certainly open to all kinds of ideas.  Tape-delay is not as likely
only because we've only done it once and that was after we ran the men's
basketball game from Alaska live at an unusually late time," Spruce explained.
 
Duff and Spruce would like to see adjustments in the schedules so WZON
could air almost all of both games whenever Maine men's and women's game
coincided.
 
Duff said as little as a half-hour difference between starting times would
make a huge difference in coverage capability.
 
"Let's say it's Thursday and the men are home and the women are on the
road.  You tip one at 7 p.m. and the other starts around 7:40 p.m.,"
explained Duff.  "I don't know we would necessarily start the play-by-play
on the second game as it began, but we could set the scene and then go to
the end of that game -- while there's still most of the second half to be
played -- after the first game ended."
 
Both Duff and Spruce cautioned it's too early to get specific.
 
"Until we get there, we're kind of talking through our hats," said Spruce.