NJ PBS Will End Operations June 30 After Losing State and Federal Funding

New Jersey’s only statewide public television station will shut down on June 30. Why? State and federal money dried up. The closure marks the end of a 15-year run by NJ PBS, which worked with far less cash than the station that came before it.

Public Media NJ runs the station with The WNET Group. Officials there said they couldn’t strike a new deal when the current agreement runs out. Two big hits caused the problem: state budget cuts and the 2025 Congressional Rescissions Act, which wiped out federal dollars for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

According to Shore News Network, NJ PBS started in 2011 as a smaller version of New Jersey Network, which Gov. Chris Christie dismantled. NJN had cost taxpayers around $28 million to $30 million each year.

NJ PBS worked on just $3 million to $5 million per year from the state, plus federal grants and donations. That’s an 80 to 90% drop in public money compared to what NJN got.

This thinner budget became impossible to manage after federal dollars vanished in 2025. When the Corporation for Public Broadcasting closed in January 2026, it cut off a major source of support that had kept stations going since 1967.

The station will keep airing shows, including NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi, until late June. Then the broadcasts stop. Some content will stick around but in a different way.

WNET says it will keep making NJ Spotlight News for THIRTEEN and online. But this creates problems, especially in South Jersey, where THIRTEEN’s signal reaches only half the state.

A federal court struck down an executive order that targeted public media money in March. That ruling didn’t save the station. Congress had already voted to cut all funding anyway.

The shutdown wraps up years of arguments about public broadcasting in New Jersey. People who liked the post-2011 setup said it saved taxpayer money and kept government out of the newsroom. Others said the cuts hurt local reporting and made it harder to cover the whole state.

NJ Spotlight News will stay online through its website and social media. The change means New Jersey loses its only statewide public TV station for the first time since 2011.

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