Ward Chamberlin Jr., Architect of Nation’s Public Broadcasting

Ward Chamberlin Jr., a leading architect of the nation’s public broadcasting system who revitalized PBS stations in New York and Washington and nurtured the career of the documentarian Ken Burns, died in Bedford (MA). He was 95.

Chamberlin’s four-decade television career began circuitously. A corporate lawyer at the time, he was working for the nonprofit International Executive Service Corps, where Frank Pace, a former Army secretary, was the president. When Pace was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to be the first chairman of the newly minted Corporation for Public Broadcasting early in 1968, he recruited Chamberlin to join him as chief operating officer. Pace promptly asked Chamberlin to determine what challenges and opportunities public broadcasting presented and gave him the latitude to meet them. Chamberlin proceeded to pioneer an enduring decentralized network model of independent public stations. He remained chief operating officer until he retired in 2003. He was also senior vice president of the Public Broadcasting Service, executive vice president and managing director of WNET in New York and president of WETA in Washington, which he transformed into the third most prolific producer of original programming after WNET and WGBH in Boston.