NorthEast Radio Watch 6/8/2026: New Life for NJ PBS

In this week’s issue… NJ PBS enters new era – Adam 12’s new Boston gig – Audacy relocates studios – NYC morning host plans retirement  – CHUM, Flow retool in Toronto – Remembering Rocky Allen, Pittsburgh’s Negri

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*With just a few weeks left to go before NEW JERSEY‘s public TV network concludes its operational contract with New York’s WNET (Channel 13), the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority has found a new partner to provide its stations with programming.

Assuming the proposed deal is approved, Montclair State University will take over on July 1 as the operator of the stations that were once run by the state as the New Jersey Network. Since 2011, when NJN shut down, the signals have been operated as “NJ PBS,” a secondary public service in markets where all viewers already have access to bigger PBS outlets in the form of New York’s WNET, Philadelphia’s WHYY and WLVT from the Lehigh Valley.

But while the state has slimmed down its public broadcast portfolio, selling off the former NJN Radio stations to WHYY and New York’s WNYC and putting two of its UHF TV stations’ spectrum in an FCC auction, it has continued to seek partners for the remaining TV network in order to provide New Jersey-centered programming that has included “NJ Spotlight News,” produced by a nonprofit subsidiary of WNET.

We’re still waiting for details about exactly what the next incarnation of public TV in the Garden State will look like in the short transition from WNET to Montclair State, which has already begun posting job listings for its new operation. There are reportedly discussions underway to transfer the NJ Spotlight News nonprofit over to the university, which has committed to “at least six hours of New Jersey-centric programming a week, including a weekday nightly news cast and other public affairs programming, live broadcasts of the Governor’s State of the State address, the Governor’s Budget Message, and live coverage of New Jersey elections.”

A press release from the state says there were three other bidders for the contract to operate NJ PBS, which will run for five years with two five-year extensions.

And for you tower fans: there’s an interesting little irony in Montclair State taking over operations of the network, because right there on the edge of the university’s campus, there’s a big self-supporting tower that used to carry NJN’s channel 50, originally WNJM and later WNJN-TV. That license, along with Trenton’s WNJT (Channel 52), was surrendered at auction, and while there are still “channel 50” and “channel 52” signals on the air as part of the network, they operate as channel-shares on the spectrum of the remaining full-power stations, WNJB (Channel 58) in New Brunswick and WNJS (Channel 23) in Camden, respectively.

NJ PBS has hardly been alone in facing uncertainty about its future in the absence of federal funding for public broadcaster; in recent days, there have been similar partnership announcements in places like Bowling Green, Ohio, where Bowling Green University’s WBGU-TV is being handed off to Toledo’s WGTE for operation, and in Arkansas, where public pressure and donations preserved PBS programming on a statewide network that was threatening to drop its membership.