At an early afternoon storm briefing, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was asked about whether he regrets making the decision to go on national TV this morning before going on local radio in New Jersey, for the benefit of the hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans without power, but who might have battery-operated radios. “No,” was Christie’s abrupt answer, before shaking his head and saying, “Next question.” Christie appeared on “Meet the Press,” “This Week” and on the CBS News 11am special anchored by Scott Pelley as well as on national cable news.
New Jersey has only a couple commercial TV stations, including WMGM in Atlantic City. In north Jersey people depend on New York TV while Philadelphia covers South Jersey.
Last month, Gov. Christie got the state of New Jersey out of the TV business, transferring the operations of state-owned NJN TV to New York public TV’s WNET. NJN had been on the air for 43 years. The shutdown meant the layoff of 130 employees.
Later in his briefing, Christie joked about learning about the idea of pool TV news coverage. He’ll be taking a helicopter tour of the state in the coming hours which will be pool material for any broadcaster that wants it. “Like yesterday, I didn’t know about the whole pool coverage thing,” said Christie, before joking about the 2012 presidential race he’s not in: “I have some visitors from Iowa to help assess the storm damage and some from New Hampshire too.”