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New Jersey's governor, noted reckless driver Chris Christie, is planning to divest the state of its public television network, the New Jersey Network (NJN) and hand control of it over to WNET-TV, New York City's premier public television station. New Jersey is giving it away, while WNET will make $4,000,000 from the deal - half in the form of a grant transferred from the New Jersey Network and another half in broadcast tower rental fees NJN receives from private companies. So, Christie says New Jersey will save money by getting rid of a public television asset he says the state can no longer afford (and he says doesn't need!), but he's letting WNET have it for free.

NJN's 130 staffers could be affected, perhaps laid off due to inevitable redundancies. The state Assembly is holding hearings to examine the deal, with state Senate hearings to follow. The legislature has until June 28 to veto it. New Jersey also plans to sell its nine public radio stations for $1.9 million in cash and $2.4 million in non-cash contributions.

WNET president Neal Shapiro promises an improvement in New Jersey-oriented programming. He plans to have noted New Jersey broadcaster Steve Adubato produce a whole range of new public affairs programming, and he wants to start a nightly news program modeled more after the PBS NewsHour than the current NJN news program's anchoring and reporting format resembling local commercial newscasts. Many observers are skeptical, as they should be. I don't believe Shapiro lives in New Jersey. What does he know about the state, anyway?

By the way, WNET has done this before. The station took over Long Island public television station WLIW-TV and promised a continuation of Long Island public affairs programming, but all of that disappeared. Though anyone who ever saw "Face-Off," a "Crossfire"-style program in which Guylanders yelled and screamed at each other, will know that wasn't all a bad thing.

NJN has always been serious when it comes to presenting public affairs programming. Their schedule includes a program on the arts in New Jersey, programs about the affairs of the state's black and Hispanic populations, and panel discussions on politics in Trenton. Christie says he'd be more comfortable having NJN - to be called NJTV under the new deal with WNET - run by an entity not connected to the state when the network is suppose to cover him and other New Jersey politicians and be unbiased. But just how interested is an entity not connected to New Jersey going to be in covering the state's affairs?

Unlike national public television, NJN is a real network. Its four channels show the same programming simultaneously, it airs standard PBS fare in prime time (a state network can't really produce its own entertainment programming), and its primary concern is the public it serves. The network's employees, including the news staff, are top rate. I had the privilege of meeting two NJN personalities recently. I met NJN political correspondent Michael Aron at an art show reception and I had a detailed conversation with him about the state of the news media. And, just the other day, I also met reporter Desirée Taylor at a library grand re-opening I attended that she covered. Both of them couldn't have been any nicer. I gave both of them my cards. They're a really classy group of people. These are the type of people you want to see cover your state.

Until everything shakes out, though, the only certainty is that the state's News 12 commercial cable station will continue to cover local affairs - even if the stories they cover can be rather silly. The local newscasts from the New York and Philadelphia commercial stations can only be guaranteed to cover this state if there's a mob hit or a political scandal in Trenton or Newark.

Many Democratic lawmakers in Trenton, as well as U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, are critical of the governor's plans and hope to at best delay the implementation of the deal with WNET. There's also a report of an offer by Montclair State University to take over NJN that was rebuffed. Something fishy there.

In any case, this isn't the first time a Republican politician has tried to destroy public broadcasting. Newt Gingrich and John Boehner have both led efforts from the speakership of the U.S. House of Representatives to defund it. As mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani sold WNYC-TV, a municipal TV station predating the 1967 federal public broadcasting law, to private interests, ending a tradition of providing foreign-language programming for the city's immigrant populations. And New Jersey's previous elected Republican governor, Christine Todd Whitman, cut funding to NJN while comparing government support for public media to Pravda. (A more apt comparative entity, the BBC, was never mentioned in that debate.) NJN had begun airing a hour-long nightly news report in April 1993; Whitman was elected governor that November, and the one-hour newscast experiment was short-lived, ending with the start of a new fiscal year in July 1994.

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping this will all work out. But I've seen this TV show before. :-(