High school basketball state championship games once again will be televised on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

MPBN announced Tuesday it has been awarded television broadcast and streaming rights by the Maine Principals’ Association to the 10 boys’ and girls’ state championship games from Portland, Augusta and Bangor in February.

But Dick Durost, the executive director of the MPA, said that the regional finals and semifinals, previously broadcast by MPBN, will only be available through live streaming. He said an announcement would come early next week as to who would be providing that service.

Durost said there were no bids to televise the regional games.

“We recognized that it had to be a unique station or network to do that,” he said. “In the end, it was important to us to try to provide some television coverage rather than have it all through live streaming. Those of us close to this thought this was the way we would split it.”

MPBN has been televising basketball tournament games since 1979. In October, the network offered $10,000 for the rights to the 2016 championship games – but said it did not have the resources to provide coverage of every game under the new five-class alignment being used by the MPA for the first time this winter. As a result, MPA officials put the broadcast and streaming rights for the basketball tournament up for bid in early November.

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The MPA accepted the same $10,000 bid from the MPBN the second time around. MPBN paid $16,000 for the rights to the 2015 state title games – along with regional semifinals and finals.

“We absolutely are thrilled to be back with MPBN,” said Durost. “This is the broadest way to get our games to the public across the state.”

MPBN CEO Mark Vogelzang said in a statement, “We are very excited to once again partner once again with the Maine Principals’ Association and continue our tradition of covering high school basketball and thank them for this opportunity. Offering basketball coverage to every community across Maine is very important to us as an organization.”

MPBN’s staff reacted enthusiastically to news that the network had been awarded the television rights, according to Cory Morrissey, MPBN’S director of marketing and underwriting.

“I sent a note to the staff around 3:30 and I never got the sort of responses we got,” he said. “The guys love to do this, which is awesome. It’s kind of a win for everyone.”

The state championship games will be held on Feb. 26 and 27. MPBN plans on rebroadcasting all the games on Sunday, Feb. 28.

“I think the rebroadcasts we can do will make for some interesting viewing,” said Morrissey. “The kids who played in the games will be able to watch them. It will be cool.”


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