DC broadcast legend Arch Campbell on becoming ‘The Accidental Critic’ and how streaming ‘changed everything’
One of D.C.’s most popular and enduring local television news personalities, Arch Campbell, is sharing how he inadvertently became an entertainment reporter and joined one of the country’s most successful on-air collaborations at NBC Washington.
Campbell’s new autobiography, “The Accidental Critic: A Television News Memoir,” just went on sale. On Sunday, Feb. 2 at 5 p.m., he’ll be interviewed by former News4 colleague Doreen Gentzler at Politics and Prose, in Northwest D.C. The event is free to attend.
Campbell, 78, grew up and began working in television in Texas.
“Many years ago, at the beginning of my career, I was working in a newsroom, and the boss roared in one morning and said, ‘I want a movie reviewer, who wants to do it?’ The place went silent, and I raised my hand and said, ‘OK, I’ll do it,'” Campbell told WTOP.
He remembers his first movie review in 1973.
“I went out and got a ticket for a new movie that just opened that week — ‘American Graffiti’ was the first movie I reviewed on television,” Campbell said, with his familiar baritone voice and affable laugh.
Soon after, Campbell was recruited by Washington’s local NBC affiliate WRC, and came to work in the nation’s capital.
Campbell Goes to Washington
“Back then, TV news used to end with a funny story every night,” Campbell said. “When they hired me to come to WRC, my new boss calls me in, and he says, ‘You are the designated zany.'”
That began the partnership, in what’s often referred to as the “happy talk” days of local television news, when stations discovered the benefits of assembling a “news team.”
“Basically, my book is a kind of informal history of Channel 4, and at the heart of it is the friendship between me and Jim Vance and Doreen Gentzler, Bob Ryan and George Michael,” Campbell said. With anchors Vance and Gentzler, Ryan on weather and Michael on sports, the team was a perpetual ratings winner.
Referring to his partnership with Vance, Ryan and Michael: “The four of us all started together the same month of the same year and stayed together, pretty much in that assembly, until 2007 — 27 years,” said Campbell, with Gentzler joining in 1989.
Things are different now
Campbell said it would be difficult to assemble a news team as closely knit in the current 24-hour breaking news environment.
“And it’s a hard element, to replicate that kind of genuine friendship,” Campbell said.
Campbell added technology and news cycles have changed.
“Things are different now. I worked in TV news from the early stages, when the Eyewitness News format started, and when we had a lot of fun,” Campbell said. “Then came the streaming age, and the DVR age, and that has changed everything,” with news consumers getting news on demand.
With a career spanning 32 years at NBC4, eight years at ABC7 and currently doing The Arch Campbell Podcast, he’s looking forward to being interviewed by his friend and colleague Gentzler at Politics and Prose.
“Ironically, it is Groundhog Day,” Campbell said, alluding to 1993 film starring Bill Murray, and beginning his laugh, “which is the perfect day for it.”
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