In comparing public television to communism, the Garden State's morbidly obese governor said:
We are looking forward to this new partnership, which we think will serve the people of New Jersey extraordinarily well. It also meets our goal of making sure government is out of the broadcasting business. In my view that should have ended with the Soviet Union. It's ending here in New Jersey a little later than the fall of the wall in Berlin, but we're getting there.(Note: Christie didn't mind getting government INTO the ugly shopping mall business or into the air taxi business.)
Christie is dismantling public broadcasting and eliminating jobs in the state while, big surprise, benefiting his corporate and political friends. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The change has rankled some lawmakers and activists, who said they feared a station would be more beholden to fund-raisers and donors. They worried that news coverage would suffer with a potentially reduced staff.
The deal also shone a spotlight on the Adubato family of Newark, which continues to play a major role in ward-level politics.
Steve Adubato Jr. will provide programming for the new station, which will be called NJTV. The evening news will be called "NJ Today." Mr. Adubato anchors several public-affairs interview shows and runs a communications-training company.
His father, Steve Adubato Sr., is a longtime Democratic power broker in Newark who is aligned with Mr. Christie, a Republican, most notably on education.NJN Television was formed in 1968 and will be handed over to WNET-TV, a public station in New York. WNET will receive federal subsidies to run New Jersey-centric programming.
New Yorkers covering New Jersey news? Priceless.
