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Summary

Abstract:
Born in Leavenworth, Kansas, Schein was a pioneer in the development of educational television and radio in New York State. During graduate study at Boston University, he became active in fundraising to help establish Boston's educational television station, WGBH and served on the Massachusetts Citizens Committee on Educational Television. In 1955, Schein came to Schenectady and served as associate producer and first president of the Mohawk-Hudson Council on Educational Television, where he produced instructional programs for in-school use broadcast over WRGB-TV. Schein led the effort to launch the second public television station in New York State, Schenectady's WMHT in 1962, and was executive director and later general manager. He was instrumental in the addition of the all classical music radio station WMHT-FM in 1972 and the Radio Information Service (RISE), a radio reading service for the blind and print handicapped in 1978. He retired in 1986 as general manager, after concluding negotiations for the acquisition of Channel 45, WMHQ. The collection contains newsletters, programs and schedules, meeting minutes, photographs, and Schein's files as president of Mohawk-Hudson Council on Educational Television, and files as executive director and general manager of WMHT.
Extent:
40 cubic ft.
Language:
English .
Preferred citation:

Preferred citation for this material is as follows:

Identification of specific item, series, box, folder, Donald Schein Papers, 1954-2005. M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany, State University of New York (hereafter referred to as the Schein Papers).

Background

Scope and Content:

Following his retirement from WMHT, Schein decided to organize his personal and professional papers chronologically for the benefit of future researchers. This order has been maintained in the present arrangement. Folders are arranged by year; within each year they are arranged alphabetically by subject. Occasionally, folders contain material spanning multiple years. In these cases they are filed according to the earliest year they contain and subsequent years are indicated in the folder title.

Many record series in the collection are consistent from year to year. Folders titled "MHCET Internal Records" (through 1961) and "WMHT Internal Records" (1962 and after) contain the internal records of the Mohawk-Hudson Council on Educational Television (MHCET) and its broadcast station WMHT. These records primarily document the administrative history of the station via meeting minutes, correspondence, reports and memoranda. They contain relatively few records of the production of particular series or of the day-to-day operation of the station.

Folders titled "Educational Television" (through 1966) and "Public Broadcasting" (1967 and after) contain material received by WMHT in its capacity as a member station of various educational television and public broadcasting organizations, including the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). This material consists primarily of reports, newsletters, internal circulars, memoranda and similar gray literature.

The collection also includes large although not always complete collections of various trade periodicals, including Public Telecommunications Review, Educational and Industrial Television, Current and Access, as well as numerous bound reports and publications from MHCET/WMHT and from national public broadcasting organizations. These items are filed alphabetically by title within their year of publication.

Schein kept a journal on looseleaf paper throughout much of his adult life. During his career at WMHT, these journals described meetings and work activities. Following his retirement their contents became more personal and reflective. The collection also includes Schein's Day-Timer pocket planners and associated expense sheets for the years 1976-1995. These journals and Day-Timers are found under the appropriate heading within each year.

The collection includes a complete run of WMHT's monthly program guide from its beginning in 1963 through 2005. This guide has been indexed within each year according to its title, which varied over time. The titles are:

1963-1973 Scene on 17

1973-1982 The WMHT Program Guide

1983-1985 WMHT

1985-1989 Capital Region

1989-1990 Capital

1991 Program Guide

1991-2002 Prelude

2002-2005 Outlook

In addition, the collection includes many subject files which varied from year to year:

1920-1954 : These years encompass Donald Schein's life before he joined the staff of the Mohawk-Hudson Council on Educational Television (MHCET). Material from these years includes personal correspondence, a draft of Schein's Ph.D. dissertation at Boston University, and notes and readings from the Syracuse University graduate program in broadcasting.

1955-1961 : This period covers Schein's years with the Mohawk-Hudson Council on Educational Television (MHCET) prior to the establishment of WMHT. These years include material on the Basic Russian program (1958), notes on various MHCET series, materials received from other educational television stations, and publications on educational television. Of particular note is Producing Your Educational Television Program, a 1961 instructional manual published by MHCET.

1962-1967 : These years span the time between the establishment of WMHT and the creation of the national Public Broadcasting Service in 1967. Material from these years primarily documents the growth and development of WMHT.

1968-1978 : These years cover the first decade of WMHT's participation in the Public Broadcasting System. The extensive Public Broadcasting files contain internal memoranda, circulars and messages from the national PBS offices. Internal WMHT records include material related to the establishment of WMHT-FM in 1972 and the RISE reading service in 1978. The year 1976 contains extensive material related to Schein's attendance of a Harvard Business School seminar hosted by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1979-1987 : These years cover the bulk of WMHT's second decade as a PBS affiliate. They document the purchase of WUSV, the retirement of Donald Schein in 1986, and the station's 25th anniversary celebration in 1987. The WMHT internal records for 1987 include an extensive assortment of clippings and correspondence regarding the controversy over WMHT's station fund. The year 1987 also includes material from Donald Schein's project to compile a video history of the station, including numerous interview transcripts.

1988-2005 : The collection covers the years following Schein's retirement in less detail, but it continues to include complete runs of WMHT's monthly program as well as some internal material, such as board minutes and annual reports, received by Schein following his retirement. It also includes a small assortment of material related to Proctor's Theatre, where Schein served as volunteer executive director in 1988.

Photographs : The collection contains approximately 1 cubic foot of photographic material which was maintained as a separate series. These photographs largely consist of promotional photographs from the first decade of MHCET's existence and include numerous photographs of MHCET series such as Fun With French and TV Schooltime. The series also includes a smaller assortment of promotional photographs from later years, including a photograph of Schein with Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Lieutenant Governor Malcolm Wilson.

Biographical / Historical:

Donald Schein, a pioneer in the development of public broadcasting in New York State, served as executive producer and general manager of WMHT, the Capital District's public television station. Schein was born in Leavenworth, Kansas in 1920 and graduated from high school in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1938. From 1942 to 1945 he served in the Coast Guard. After the war he received a bachelor's degree in English from Northeastern University and a master's degree in American Literature from Boston University, where he taught while working on his Ph.D. dissertation.

In 1953, Schein became interested in the educational potential of television. After taking several courses on broadcasting at Boston University he enrolled in the graduate program in television production at Syracuse University in 1954 and received an M.S. the following year. Following his graduation from Syracuse, Schein was hired as a program producer by the Mohawk-Hudson Council on Educational Television (MHCET), the Capital District's educational television consortium. MHCET had been founded in 1953 under a charter from the New York State Board of Regents, the first such charter to be granted to an educational television council. Initially, MHCET produced educational programs for early-morning broadcast over other local television and radio stations. The Council had an early success with Fun With French, a children's language program.

When station founder Angela McDermott left MHCET in 1956, Schein became executive producer. In 1957, MHCET produced the first for-credit open circuit televised college course in New York State, a University at Albany course on introductory geography. In 1958, in cooperation with the American Chemical Society, MHCET produced a televised course in Basic Russian. Initially intended to teach GE engineers to read Russian technical monographs, the course was a popular success and received nationwide press coverage.

Meanwhile, Schein was working to establish a permanent educational television station for the Capital District. In 1958 MHCET established a fundraising group, Friends of Educational Television, to help finance the establishment a permanent station. The Council eventually acquired its own station, Channel 17, and in March 1962 WMHT began broadcasting out of a converted gym in the basement of the Riverside School in Schenectady. The following year, commercial station WTEN donated a more powerful transmitter, increasing the station's broadcast range.

WMHT was a member of NET (National Educational Television), the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting System, and Schein was active in the national educational broadcasting community. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, which established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The phrase "public television" replaced "educational television" as the preferred industry term and WMHT became a charter affiliate of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

In 1968, WMHT constructed a studio and control room in the State Capitol Building, allowing programs on state government to be produced and broadcast directly from the Capitol. In 1969, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare donated Building 34 at the Rotterdam Army Depot to WMHT, allowing the station to move out of the Riverside School and into a dedicated state-of-the-art production facility.

In 1971 the station received a gift of land in the Helderbergs to house its transmitter. Two years later the station acquired a new transmitter, increasing its signal power tenfold. The station continued to grow throughout the 1970s, broadcasting national PBS productions such as Masterpiece Theater and producing its own programming for local broadcast and national distribution. Inside Albany, a program on New York State government, began broadcasting in 1975, and in 1979 the program received Columbia University's Alfred I. DuPont Award for excellence in broadcast journalism. In 1978 the station produced Molders of Troy, a historical drama which told the story of the nineteenth-century labor movement from the perspective of an Irish-American family in Troy. That year WMHT also became the first Capital District television station to receive network programming via satellite.

During the 1970s, WMHT expanded into radio. WMHT-FM, the Capital District's only full-time classical music station, went on the air in 1972, and by 1975 it was broadcasting 24 hours a day. WMHT-FM was the first noncommercial station to air an all-classical format. In 1978, WMHT began to transmit the Radio Information Service (RISE), a radio reading service for the visually impaired, and to broadcast NOAA weather radio.

The station continued to grow throughout the 1980s. By 1982 WMHT was broadcasting 24 hours a day, and in 1986 MHCET acquired the commercial UHF station WUSV and turned it into WMHX, a second public television channel. Schein continued to be active in the national public broadcasting community; in 1985 he delivered a well-received speech arguing against corporate underwriting of public television programs.

In 1986 Schein retired as general manager, although he continued to serve as president emeritus for another year. During his departure the station became embroiled in a controversy over the size of its reserve fund, which some critics considered excessive. Following his retirement from WMHT Schein served for a year as the volunteer Executive Director of Proctor's Theatre in Schenectady. He also served as president of the Environmental Clearinghouse of Schenectady and was active in various community organizations. Schein died in 1998.

Acquisition information:
This collection was donated to the University Libraries, M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, by Bernice Schein in 2004.
Processing information:

Processed in 2009 by Nick Webb.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged chrnologically. There are no series.

Physical location:
The materials are located onsite in the department.

Contents


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Using These Materials

ACCESS:
The archives are open to the public and anyone is welcome to visit and view the collections.
RESTRICTIONS:

Access to this record group is unrestricted.

TERMS OF ACCESS:

The researcher assumes full responsibility for conforming with the laws of copyright. Whenever possible, the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives will provide information about copyright owners and other restrictions, but the legal determination ultimately rests with the researcher. Requests for permission to publish material from this collection should be discussed with the Head of Special Collections and Archives.

PREFERRED CITATION:

Preferred citation for this material is as follows:

Identification of specific item, series, box, folder, Donald Schein Papers, 1954-2005. M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany, State University of New York (hereafter referred to as the Schein Papers).

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