The End of NJN Radio

It didn't get nearly enough press. Last week an entire public radio chain was snuffed out. It was like there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.  The whole process took abotu 6 months if you start with the actual papers and not just the stumping. Their last day was last Thursday, and that day was the end of the New Jersey Network; a Public Radio and Television Broadcasting Network. Gov. Christie [R] of New Jersey chopped his state in half, more-or-less drawing the line at Interstate 195, and only letting the networks butt heads around Brick Township. The Northern territory went to New York's 93.9 WNYC, and South Jersey for the Philly gang at 90.9 WHYY. The television network was spared and reorganized as NJTV now owned by WNET.org, the parent company of WNET-TV and WLIW-TV.

I'll now callously skip over the massacre of the TV stations and focus on radio as I am known to do and go straight for the radio. WNJT 88.1 Trenton NJ, WNJY 89.3 Netcong NJ, WNJP 88.5 Sussex NJ and WNJO 90.3 Toms River NJ, and even the repeater W285EE have become "New Jersey Public Radio," owned by New York's WNYC. Only a year ago New Your Public Radio (WNYC) owned just WNYC-FM on 93.9 and WNYC-AM on 820 kHz. Then they picked up 105.9 WQXR for a classical service Even W228BI, their 93.5 repeater in Smithtown, NY. It is being replaced by another on 105.7  but I don't' think it's on air yet. This purchase effectively doubles their number of transmitters,

WHYY was the much smaller entity, consisting of just the one FM and the one TV station. (Maybe WRTI was giving them an inferiority complex.) But now they're audible clear to the shoreline. They have assimilated WNJB 89.3 Bridgeton NJ, WNJM 89.9 Manahawkin NJ, WNJN 89.7 Atlantic City NJ, WNJS 88.1 Berlin NJ and last but not least, WNJZ 90.3 Cape May Court House NJ. I broke it out on a map roughly estimating coverage area. Blue is WHYY, red is WNYC . Here's what that looks like:

(You can zoom in for a bit more detail if you want) The stations were sold at bargain basement prices to say the least. Why BIA/Kelsey would put their name to this trash I cant guess. The stations they compared them to for price reference were in podunk markets, some even in unrated market areas. It stinks of bias. The total market value was estimated to be $4.2 million for the entire network. And while none of these stations was KTRU or WRVU... I maintain they were undervalued in this estimate. The whole NJ treasury doc in pdf is here, but I'll cut to the chase.

WNJB - $469,000

WNJM - $144,000

WNJN - $563,000

WNJO - $496,000

WNJP - $403,000 (includes W285EE)

WNJS - $142,000

WNJT - $1,572,000

WNJY - $581,000

WNJZ - $219,000

But now it's gone. Ultimately that means a lot of  "NJ" call signs will be changing in the immediate future. It also means both of these networks will be working hard to round up new donor/members to pay for both the acquisition and the operating costs.

AVP to ORH

 ...another long drive in a long career of long drives.
We begin on route 33 in New Jersey because that is how you cut south back onto Route 78 East after you have accidentally taken the exit for 22 East. It is there I caught a cooking show, an honest-to-goodness cooking show on WHYY 90.9. It was The Splendid Table, hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper, and it's one of the last of it's kind.  The program actually won the Best Radio Food Show award in 2008. She really is quite good.. but there can't be a lot of competition left. 

When I hit 287 North, I tuned in Rhythm Revue with Felix Hernandez on 88.3 WBGO, always an excellent program. I haven't heard it much since I left New York. He was spinning Donny Hathaway "Valdez In the Country" when I tuned in, a little late they hit some Sugarman Three. About then I could also get in 89.5 WSOU which was playing "Elephant Riders' by Clutch, and both 89.2 WFDU and 91.1 WFMU were both spinning some really great garage rock: the Fabulous Wailers, Calvin Owens, Frank Zappa, even the Rat Pfink Theme. Rex at WFMU was out but his sub was still good.

 I caught 91.3 WVKR briefly up on  84 East but only one song by Circlesquare "Hey You Guys."  Further North I caught 91.7 WHUS was was in the middle of a jazz set, James Farm, Donald Harrison's kickass Drumline, Dave Alvin etc. Then while heading up 84E approaching the border with Massachusetts, on 90.1 WECS I caught Mark E. Ramone in the middle of some Dead Milkmen. I think he's been there for 20 years, probably been playing that record the whole time. I think it came out in 1988.

Up in Worcester I caught 90.5 WICN playing Ahmad's Blues by Red Garland, great tune. I think he did that one in the mid 50s. When I listen to stations like these I hope that they're still there next time I drive through town. I've seen so many vanish in the last year I cant help but to wonder about it.

The Song Is You Program

"The Song Is You" is a tune written by Jerome Kern, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was released in 1932. The lyrics are nothing to write home about, but it's been covered dozens of times: Sinatra, Vic Damone, Bing Crosby, Dave Brubeck, Art Blakey.. etc. Several of the covers are better than the original in my opinion. Books, bands and albums all have lifted the title for their own uses.  It has even become the title of a very notable public radio program.

The Song Is You is a weekly radio program out of WPPB (formerly WLIU).  The format is a mix of interview and music. Each week host Bonnie Grice interviews guests and asks them to talk about music that's relevant to their lives, they of course then play those 10 to 12 songs. It's a bit like Fresh Air on the occasions that Terry Gross interviews a musician. the big difference is that the guests aren't usually musicians. She interviews poets, directors, writers, actors, actresses, editors, painters, and all sorts of other educated artistic people.

Some of the big names have been Ru Paul, Poet Laureate Billy Collins, playwright Terrence McNally, talk-show host Montel Williams, writer Anne Rice, former US President Jimmy Carter,  Chairman of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun, Photograph er Ralph Gibson,writer Bob Morris, and actress  Jill Zarin.Which is not to say that she never interviews musicians. Musical guests have included jazz pianists Marian McPartland, Ellis Marsalis, Billy Taylor guitarist Loudon Wainwright III, and pop artists Lisa Loeb, and K.D. Lang. More here.

Host Bonnie Grice also has two other programs on WPPB. She has  morning program, In The Morning With Bonnie Grice airs Monday through Friday as an arts and culture program. She resides in Sag Harbor, NY. She also hosts the nationally syndicated program Jazzworks. More here. Grice  has been in radio for decades. Her first talk program was on 88.5 WMUB in Oxford, OH whiel still attending Miami University as a grad student. She wen on to host a program at 89.7 WKSU in Kent, OH rimshot to the Cleveland market. She was later a mornign host on 91.5 KUSC in Los Angeles. She's also worked at 93.9 WNYC, 89.7 New York, WGBH, Boston and even 105.1 KKGO Los Angeles.

The Song Is You airs on over 70 public radio stations including WPPB 88.3 FM and WCWP 88.1 FM  KCLU in Santa Barbara market. It was on WHYY in Philly until last year. The show was honored with a “Gracie Allen” award for excellence in writing. As cool as all that sounds, they haven't updated their website in 5 years.

Locally Originating Progamming

I dislike non-commercial stations that run exclusively satillite fed syndicated programming. The worst offender in this catagory is the religious broadcaster. (Fybush calls these satcasters) My main objection to is not to the content. It's the source of the content to which I object.

follow me on this detour:
The radio spectrum, like any physical property, or natural resource is finite. Each city can only contain so many broadcasters, so a government body exists to manage the space, the FCC. It's no different from your town council deciding who gets to develop the waterfront property. The point being; if the radio band is the property of a community, then content on the radio that originates from outside the community is, in a sense... stolen from them.

We all know perfectly well that many religious stations receive all programming via satillite. They then time-shift this programming and rebroadcast to meet some obtuse, nominal and ultimately impotent local programming requirement. Let me stop right here and point out that not all religious broadcasters are like this. Right near me is WNAP-AM 1110 who runs almost entirely local programming. http://wnap1110am.com/ It's a fine station who serves Norristown and the surrounding community just fine.

By comparison WKDN 106.9 Camden runs zero local programming. http://www.familyradio.com/index.htm

That RF belongs to the Camden Philadelphia Area, yet zero of their programming content originates locally. The FCC would tell you that somehow they serve our community. I would debate that strongly. That same signal could belong to any civic, religious or community group and serve Philadelphia more fully.

Out of fairness let me examine my local NPR affiliate: WHYY 90.9 FM Philadelphia, PA Look at their schedule Monday thru Friday: http://www.whyy.org

35 hours of BBC between the overnights, the news hour and the world

31 hours of NPR nationally syndicated programming from talk of the nation, morning edition, all things considered, News and Notes, Creators at Carnagie... etc

6 hours of Here and now & Sound Print from MPR

5 hours of Marketplace from American Public Media

1 hour of This American Live from Public Radio International

In the end, only these local programs run Monday thru Friday. Out of a total possible 120 hours 16 originate locally. That's about 14%. It's not a lot. but it's more thant zero. These local shows are:

5 hours of Radio times

10 hours of Fresh air (counting the afternoon rebrocast)

1 hour of Voices in the family

That being said, the WHYY weekends are a smorgasbord of local shows.