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WHYY and all the new NJ calls

W

wcradio2

I noticed that WHYY has begun to give all the calls for all those NJ public stations they've absorbed/bought, every time the top of the hour rolls around.
Does anyone know if they'll be attempting to actually cover more news from NJ now they are heard all over the state.
(didn't realize that so many were 'downashore')
 
Don't expect a lot of NJ coverage.


I'll miss NJN radio. Not the New Jersey news (which began with the 6 AM news on Morning Edition -- during the 5 AM hour, they used to take the extended feed from NPR), but being able to hear Morning Edition and ATC in their entirety. WHYY substitutes locally produced stories for some network ones, and in most cases the production values are nothing to brag about. Only one out of ten of their local inserts, if that, are anything I'd want to hear!

Also, they seldom had begathons --pardon me, "pledge drives" -- at ehe same time, so I didn't have to miss too much of the NPR material.

And don't get me started on selling the NJN TV stations to WNET!
 
they seldom had begathons --pardon me, "pledge drives" -- at ehe same time, so I didn't have to miss too much of the NPR material.
Click to expand...

I'll miss NJN radio too, for the same reasons. But, apparently there weren't many of us who used to listen.

I was shocked when I read that all of those radio stations, all over the state, had a weekly cume of 11,000 listeners. That is pathetic.

But it was a real bare bones operation, with a board operator/announcer in Trenton monitoring satellite feeds, reading the weather info, and giving the time. The biggest expense was probably whatever they paid to NPR for programs. The relay transmitters were all on state owned towers on state land, and most of the towers were there for other reasons.

Given the facts, it probably would have cost more to run a fund raiser, than could ever be collected from the donors among the 11,000 weekly listeners. No way WHYY and WNYC can do any worse with these. Probably a good move. TV is another story, but its a done deal so no point in getting frustrated.
 
The TV thing is similar to Delaware's TV situation. WHYY operates both channel 12 (licensed to Wilmington, but operating and focused on Philly) and channel 64 (Seaford DE) as a Philly station as channel 64 simulcasts channel 12's programs. Other than the 30 minute weekly Delaware news magazine that is produced in Wilmington, the rest of the operation is done in the more spacious state of the art facility in Philly. I believe WHYY is trying to sell off the Wilmington studio so they can do everything from Philly (WHYY has already unloaded a small Dover DE studio they used for Del legislative news). So both NJ with WNET in NYC and Delaware with WHYY in Philly essentially do not have any real local TV presence for local news or programming. North Jersey in the TV world is considered to be a "suburb" of NYC, just as Wilmington and Northern Delaware are considered in the TV world to be a suburb of Philly.

My guess is, as WHYY provides a weekly Delaware TV news magazine program for Delaware viewers, that eventually WNET will do something similar for NJ viewers. I read somewhere that this has become a trend with PBS stations, rather than trying to compete with a daily newscast, they offer a weekly news magazine format. I believe in that same article it said that Chicago's PBS station is doing a weekly news magazine.
 
My guess is, as WHYY provides a weekly Delaware TV news magazine program for Delaware viewers, that eventually WNET will do something similar for NJ viewers.
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As part of the deal, WNET has promised to do a daily NJ newscast, and it has been on since day-one. It will be the Fall before we see exactly what it will be like. The promise is that it will be modeled on the PBS News Hour. While they are putting that new staff together, the summer version includes mostly anchor read headlines, and politician, and civic leader interview segments.

WNET also promised lots of public affairs type programs specifically produced and targeted at NJ topics and the NJ audience.

WNET is a respectable and well run operation, so there is no reason to doubt their word. But we'll have to wait and see.
 
Sounds like NJ will get more local coverage via WNET than Delaware does now with WHYY (we used to have a weekday nightly newscast), but then again, NJ is a larger far more populous state than Delaware. Some days, to be very honest, there just isn't much in the way of real news other than a police blotter story or two happening here. So maybe WHYY made a good choice in doing a well done weekly newscast of the big stories in long form than a poorly done daily newscast. Good luck hope it works out well for the former NJN viewers.
 
wcradio2 said:
Does anyone know if they'll be attempting to actually cover more news from NJ now they are heard all over the state.
(didn't realize that so many were 'downashore')
Click to expand...

Not really covering the entire state of NJ. The stations are in Camden, Cumberland, Cape May, Atlantic, and Ocean Counties. The one in Ocean County is in Southern Ocean County. An NJN station in Northern Ocean County, one in Meercer County and the rest in North Jersey went to NYC public radio. I believe that WHYY-FM's signal even blankets the areas that the 2 former NJN stations in Camden & Cumberland Counties so really WHYY is adding 3 stations down the shore.
 
If it were me, I'd flip the Cumberland and Camden County stations to the HD2 signal and let the shore stations stick with the WHYY primary.
 
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