‘Inside Albany’ video archive donated to Syracuse University Library

‘Inside Albany’ video archive donated to Syracuse University LibraryJune 18, 2002Cynthia J. Moritzcjmoritz@syr.edu

Syracuse University Library has acquired the video archives of “Inside Albany,” New York’s leading weekly television news magazine covering events in the state Legislature. Inside Albany Inc. and WMHT-TV (Schenectady) have donated to the library the collection of weekly programs from 1975 to 1995, to be preserved and made available to those researching the history of New York State government.

“Inside Albany” has covered issues before the New York State Legislature for the New York PBS stations for more than 25 years. The first program aired Jan. 2, 1975. It started as a one-hour weekly program, produced at WMHT-TV, and in the past several years has been condensed to a half-hour program. The program covers all of the Carey-Cuomo-Pataki years and issues such as the Love Canal chemical contamination crisis and the fiscal crisis of 1975.

The “Inside Albany” collection will become part of the Syracuse University Library’s Television History Archive, which also contains an extensive collection of political advertising, video interviews with several television pioneers, television scripts and a wide range of other resources related to television history. The Television History Archive is a partnership of the Library and the Center for the Study of Popular Television. The archive is accessible by appointment only.

“The ‘Inside Albany’ collection represents a very important acquisition for the Syracuse University Library,” says Robert Thompson, Trustee Professor of television-radio-film in the Newhouse School of Public Communications anddirector of the Center for the Study of Popular Television. “Twenty years of ‘Inside Albany’ is an archive that could launch 100 dissertations. Through these shows, one is able to see the evolution of New York politics and also of New York public affairs programming.”

No other television program regularly takes its viewers onto the floor of the Assembly and Senate for debates or introduces them to lawmakers from across the state. When the legislature is not in session, “Inside Albany” has brought its viewers to a Brooklyn hospital, an Adirondack mountain peak and the control room of Nine Mile II nuclear power plant. “Inside Albany” has traveled from Buffalo to Brookhaven to cover political campaigns.

David Hepp, a Newhouse graduate, is founding producer/reporter of “Inside Albany” and Lise Bang-Jensen has been with the program since 1987 as reporter-producer and co-host. “Inside Albany” has won numerous broadcasting awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in television journalism. It is one of the longest-running TV news programs in the country. It airs regularly on nine public broadcasting stations across New York State.

For more information contact the Library’s Media Services Department, Room 008 E.S. Bird Library at (315) 443-2438 or by email at multimedia@library.syr.edu.