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NY Times Report Asks: In the Nation’s No. 1 Market, Is WWOR’s Dropping of Its Last Remaining Newscast Irresponsible or Innovative?

Jul 8, 2013  •  Post A Comment

"Depending on one’s perspective, what the New Jersey-based television station WWOR is doing" — dropping its last remaining newscast — "is [either] irresponsible or innovative," writes Brian Stelter in The New Yorik Times.

The story continues, "Last week, with no notice, the station canceled its 10 p.m. half-hour of news, the only newscast it had left. On Monday [today, July 8, 2013], it will try something new at 10, a youthful newsmagazine called ‘Chasing New Jersey.’ The anchor, a real estate executive and onetime Republican candidate for Congress, will be called the ‘ringleader’ on the program; the reporters will be called ‘chasers.’ "

The story adds, "The shift in programming strategy is bound to be watched in Washington, where WWOR, broadcast on Channel 9, has been under regulatory scrutiny for years. The station is in a unique position, being the only big commercially owned broadcaster in New Jersey, whose 8.9 million residents otherwise see television news mainly from stations in New York City and Philadelphia. WWOR’s license for the public airwaves, granted by the Federal Communications Commission, comes with the condition that the license-holder pay special attention to the northern part of the state. 

"Since 2001, that license-holder has been the News Corporation, the sprawling media company controlled by Rupert Murdoch. (Since the company split into two parts last month, the new name for WWOR’s owner is Twenty-First Century Fox.) When the station’s license expired in 2007, the F.C.C. pointedly declined to renew it, but didn’t revoke it either, leaving the station in a sort of limbo — able to continue broadcasting for the time being, but uncertain about its future."

To read more details about what WWOR is doing, we urge you to click on the link in our first paragraph, above, and read Stelter’s entire article.

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