Longtime NBC4 anchor Doreen Gentzler announces retirement

Gentzler could also be Washington’s final connection to an period of native TV during which anchors have been almost civic establishments and newscasts have been broadly watched — a time quickly fading within the web age. Her contemporaries included a protracted checklist of acquainted figures, notably Jim Vance, with whom she co-anchored WRC’s newscasts for 28 years till his loss of life in 2017.

In an interview on Friday, Gentzler stated she deliberate to spend time with household and to journey in retirement; her announcement coincided with the retirement of her husband, Invoice Miller, a public data officer on the U.S. legal professional’s workplace within the District and a former Washington Submit journalist.

“I believed, ‘Why not step away whereas I’m wholesome sufficient to get pleasure from [retirement]?’ ” she stated, including, “I’m very a lot going to overlook it, particularly the individuals I’ve labored with.”

However Gentzler additionally acknowledged that she’s been worn down by the information of late. “It’s troublesome reporting on kids within the crossfire, about hateful speech and conduct towards one another, about all the private and political assaults,” she stated. “It weighs on you night time after night time.”

NBC4’s decades-long run atop the native information scores started in 1989 after the station’s then-general supervisor, Allan Horlick, employed Gentzler to share the anchor desk with Vance. She was a shock alternative: On the time, Gentzler had been working at a station in Philadelphia that had demoted her from anchoring on weeknights — the marquee shift — to weekends.

Vance was already a well-recognized determine to native viewers, however the station had struggled to discover a co-anchor who countered his cool, nearly aloof persona. Gentzler, then 31, supplied a softer counterpoint not solely to Vance, however to the station’s all-male staff of sportscaster George Michael, weatherman Bob Ryan and leisure reviewer Arch Campbell.

Helped partly by the recognition of NBC’s “Should See TV” lineup, “Jim and Doreen” progressively grew to become the popular native information staff in a news-obsessed area. Throughout their future on the air, Gentzler-Vance drew extra viewers all through the Washington space than CNN, Fox Information and MSNBC averaged collectively amongst native viewers in prime time.

The station’s recognition endured till Vance’s loss of life in 2017 after 48 years on the air — and continued afterward as effectively. Gentzler’s early night and late-night broadcast — now co-anchored with Jim Handly — proceed to guide native stations.

Gentzler grew up in Arlington, Va., although she spent the latter years of her childhood residing close to Charleston, S.C. She attended the College of Georgia and labored as an anchor and reporter at stations in Chattanooga, Tenn., Charlotte, Cleveland and Philadelphia earlier than she was employed to anchor with Vance, whom she’d watched rising up.

Gentzler stated on Friday that the loss of life of one other co-anchor, Wendy Rieger, influenced her fascinated with retirement. Rieger retired from WRC on the finish of 2021 after battling well being points; she succumbed to mind most cancers in April at 65, the identical age as Gentzler.

“How might it not” have an effect on her pondering, she stated. “Wendy began [at the station] a yr earlier than I did, and we nearly grew up collectively. I miss her very a lot. It was very robust to look at what occurred to her. It actually makes you assume.”

Gentzler stated she is going to proceed on the air till Thanksgiving week. The station has not named a successor.

“I’ve been working right here for greater than half me life now,” she stated on the air on Friday. “These [two] infants that I had again within the ’90s … they’ve grown up and moved out now. It’s time for me to retire. Or perhaps evolve, like Serena Williams.”