PORTLAND — The Maine Public Broadcasting Network announced a change in its coverage of the 2014 Maine Principals’ Association Invitational High School Basketball Tournament on Thursday.
MPBN has been informed by Time Warner Cable that it has been unable to come to an agreement to continue its partnership with the Cumberland County Civic Center and is therefore unable to install equipment needed to produce the games in Portland. As a result, MPBN will not be provided with the Boys Class A championship and the girls Class A championship signals needed to broadcast these two games state-wide as scheduled on March 1st.
Time Warner has been MPBN’s valued partner in originating games out of the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland for many years. Since the tournament runs multiple games at multiple sites simultaneously, MPBN relies on a number of partners to pull together enough equipment and personnel to cover the Eastern and Western semi-Finals and Finals and the state finals in classes A through D.
Each year MPBN produces the games out of the Augusta Civic Center. Production partners Husson University and the New England School of Communications (NESCOM) produce the games out of the Bangor Civic Center, and Time Warner produces games in Portland. All of these games are transmitted back to MPBN’s Bangor facility for distribution across the State on MPBN Television and streamed live on MPBN.Net.
“This is a tough situation as we definitely do not want to disappoint any of our viewers and basketball fans across the state,” said Gil Maxwell, MPBN’s Chief Technology Officer. “We are in our 35th year of broadcasting the tournament and we completely stretch our own resources and rely on our partners in order to cover as many games as we can. We don’t have the equipment or personnel to fill the void and attempt to cover the Portland Class A championship games ”“ our hands are tied.”
MPBN has been in close contact with the Maine Principals’ Association regarding the situation and the MPA understands that without a signal from the aouthern Maine venue, MPBN is not able to broadcast the Class A finals.
MPBN will carry 42 Tournament games this season with 21 games originating from Bangor and 21 games from Augusta as scheduled. MPBN’s coverage of the tournament begins on Feb. 19.
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