New Jersey Network - History

History

The system was founded in 1968 by an act of the New Jersey Legislature establishing the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority (NJPBA). New Jersey already had a public television station licensed within the state—WNET, licensed to Newark. However, for all practical purposes, WNET was a New York City station, effectively leaving New Jersey without a public station of its own. With state funding and four UHF licenses assigned years earlier by the Federal Communications Commission, the NJPBA went to work building the state's public television stations. The first station, WNJT in Trenton, went on the air on April 5, 1971, with the other three stations signing on over the next two years. The system was known on-air as New Jersey Public Television (NJPTV) until 1981, when it adopted the New Jersey Network identity.

Due to New Jersey being split between the New York City and Philadelphia markets, NJN's television network reached viewers in parts of five states. While this gave NJN one of the largest potential audiences in the country, it also forced it to compete directly with three of the highest-rated PBS stations in the nation—WNET, secondary New York City member station WLIW, and WHYY-TV in the Philadelphia area. NJN spent most of its existence searching to carve out a niche of its own.

One of its solutions had been to air some of the more popular PBS shows on a delayed basis. Another solution has been to focus its efforts on its news operation. The latter worked very well, as NJN and its reporters won many awards for their journalistic efforts. In the 1980s, NJN was the first media outlet to break the "Taggart Affair" political patronage scandal. NJN's newscasts and public affairs programming were co-produced (initially) and simulcast on WNET for that station to fulfill its licensing commitment to Newark.

NJN's radio network began operation on May 20, 1991, when WNJT-FM in Trenton signed on; eight other stations would be established over the following seventeen years.