Joyce Campbell, who has worked in public television continuously since 1959, is retiring as KCET’s vice president of education and children’s programming. Her last day is March 18.
Campbell has been with the Los Angeles station for 20 years. She’s supervised many of the station’s major initiatives, from bi-lingual pledge programs to California Connected, the science series The Human Quest and A Place of Our Own and Los Niños en Su Casa, for Spanish- and English-speaking child caretakers. Most recently, she helped develop Sid the Science Kid with the Jim Henson Co. and served as KCET e.p. on the series through the production of its second season, just wrapping.
Prior to KCET, Campbell was senior v.p. and station manager at WETA in Arlington, Va. She also worked at KUID-TV in Moscow, Idaho. She began her career at KQED in San Francisco, as a senior producer/director helping to cover the tumultuous 1960s in the Bay Area. One memory: While directing a live concert at the Berkeley Folk Festival, Country Joe and the Fish, standing before the American flag, used the “f” word. The next morning, the FBI was at the station. Fortunately, no fines.
Campbell and her husband, David Campbell, are planning an adventurous start to her retirement: a trip to the Serengeti.