NorthEast Radio Watch 9/29/2025: NJ PBS Signing Off?

In this week’s issue… Garden State PBS on the brink – WNYC offers help to public radio – Remembering NY’s Cortese, CT’s DiMaggio – Bold Gold adds in NY

By SCOTT FYBUSH

BANFF, Alberta – Don’t be alarmed if you see some new datelines here on NERW in the months to come, as your editor embarks on some new travel for a new project.

In addition to everything else I’m doing through Fybush Media, StationSale.com and Fybush.com – FCC filings, signal improvement, station brokerage, contract engineering and of course keeping track of industry news all across our region and beyond – I’m now the North America representative for Broadcast Radio, an established UK-based company that has been around across the pond for over 20 years serving clients in Europe, Africa and Asia.

In my new role, I’m helping to spread the word about Broadcast Radio’s Myriad suite of software for radio and webcasters. It’s more than just automation and playout (locally hosted or cloud-based); the Myriad suite also includes powerful music scheduling, traffic and remote capability.

You’ll be seeing more about it here, of course, but I’m also looking forward to having individual conversations with many of you about how Myriad can give you world-class functionality at a surprisingly affordable price. Which is why I’m in the Canadian Rockies this week, checking in with broadcasters at the Western Association of Broadcast Engineers (WABE) annual conference in Calgary now, and getting ready to see you at or around the NAB New York show later in October.

And there’s at least one more Tower Site Calendar on the way, too, which you can preorder right now to save on the inevitable increase in printing and mailing costs.

But enough about me; let’s get on with the week’s news.

*We start once again, alas, in the public media universe, where NEW JERSEY is in the spotlight with the decision by New York-based The WNET Group to end its contract to operate New Jersey PBS, the network of stations whose licenses remain owned by the state of New Jersey even though state operation of the signals ended back in 2011, when the former New Jersey Network was shut down.

Since then, the network has been one of three services run out of WNET along with the main PBS/Thirteen operation on WNET itself and Long Island-licensed WLIW (Channel 21).

“The recent cuts by the federal government and New Jersey state government have been very significant,” WNET said in a statement last week. “Regrettably, WNET has been unable to reach an agreement with the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority to extend the management of New Jersey’s public television network beyond the expiration date of June 30, 2026.”

What happens after that remains unsettled. WNET says it will keep producing and airing the “NJ Spotlight News” nightly newscast that has been running on both NJ PBS and WNET, and it says it’s eager to help find a new partner to work with the state-run NJPBA to find a new operator for the NJ PBS stations.

Those signals once covered nearly the entire Garden State on four full-power UHF stations in Montclair, New Brunswick, Trenton and Camden, but the state sold off two of those signals in Montclair and Trenton in the DTV repack, channel-sharing with itself on the New Brunswick signal (now on a VHF channel) and the Camden signal.

In an era of tighter budgets, is a separate New Jersey PBS operation necessary? Since the state is divided between the New York City and Philadelphia TV markets, viewers already have access to a full slate of PBS programming through WNET in the north and Philadelphia’s WHYY in the south, as well as coverage from Allentown’s WLVT through much of the Philadelphia-market part of the state. Many viewers on the New York side of the market also get WLIW and Connecticut Public TV over cable, streaming services and from New York-based DTV transmitters.

In addition to partnering with WNET to run NJPBS, the state sold off the NJPBA’s former NJN Radio network in two chunks, selling the northern half to New York’s WNYC and the southern half to WHYY. Will WHYY take an interest in extending its PBS reach into New Jersey? Having already tried and failed to take over WPSU from Penn State, which is also threatening to wind down operations, it would seem that WHYY would be a logical partner – but very little is logical right now as public broadcasters try to find their own paths forward in a shaky future.