On this edition of THE INTERVUE, I have talked to so many people who have long careers in the world of entertainment & broadcasting. But our guest is a television legend, a one of the top media markets in the country. For nearly 40 years. He was L.A.’s top weatherman on KNBC Channel 4 in Los Angeles. But nowadays, he’s out in cyberspace delivering the stories with co host Louise Palanker in Media Path Podcast, and he’s doing his own comedy show called “Unassisted Living.”
Ladies and gentlemen, now I get to say “I’m now going to turn it over to the wonderful Fritz Coleman!”
Fritz, welcome to THE INTERVUE!
I am happy to be on the air we thank you so much for inviting me.
Yes, it’s this feels very meta because you’re interviewing people. And now I’m interviewing you. So this feels interesting.
I know, it’s odd. I hope ended up being a good guest not a boring one, like we often get.
Yeah, I know. We had some stiffs in the past 14 years ourselves with TRR but I’m sure because of your history and all the wealth of knowledge I’m going to be asking you about, you’re going to be one of our top guests for 2023.
Well, I appreciate hearing that, fire away.
I want to ask you is for those who have not heard about the Media Path podcast, which has over 100 episodes, tell us what it’s all about.
Well, my co-host and I Louise Palanker, affectionately known as “Wheezy”. He had been friends for about 35 years. We worked together in comedy. She wrote comedy for other performers. And she was one of the founders of a great radio company called Premiere Radio Networks, which provides content for small and medium market radio stations all over the United States.
And that thing became so successful, she sold her to Clear Channel Radio and then that got sold to IHeartRadio and now she’s retired and doing what’s right. She’s a documentary filmmaker. Anyway, we’ve been we’ve been friends for 35 years. And so, we thought when I retired two years ago from NBC, she’s thought “why don’t we just do a podcast that is kind of a continuation of our friendship, we see eye to eye on movies and books and current events, and whatever is the popular zeitgeist of the time. And it would be fun just to have this conversation on the air, invite other people into it.” And I thought “that’s a great idea.”
Until I retired, I was contractually obligated to not do it, because I couldn’t do anything that didn’t involve NBC. So, the minute I retired, we started it up with a couple of years. We just did our 140th episode last Tuesday and we are having a blast!
Wow, 140 episodes that is sensational. And I’m so glad that you’re about you’re closing in on 150.
It’s crazy, just because you love to do it. It’s a very crowded market, the podcast market but if you just do it for the love, I just love having a conversation with people I enjoy and having guests and learning something that I didn’t previously know.
For instance, we had a great guest on a Tuesday show that wrote a book called “American Journey”, which is about this road trip that was taken by Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and John Burroughs, who is one of the great naturalist in the world. These guys were friends, and it just talks about this road from the Model T Ford in 1918. And I just I didn’t know I knew about these guys individually, they’re not about these friendships. And it was great. And so I just love learning something that I didn’t previously know and it’s good for your brand.
Absolutely. I mean, I never even heard about this road trip and like you I’ve heard about the individuals individually but never know that they were friends and let them know they took a road trip 105 years ago. So now that you have over 140 episodes under your belt, how do you choose the topic for each episode?
Well, we have a booker and as we gradually go along our reputation, it’s a little higher profile. Now we’re getting submissions from various publicists and so forth. And it’s great to be in that position, finally, but we interview anybody, anybody that’s sort of in their forefront of a popular mindset right now. Like we call it “Media Path”, because we start each show with a five or ten minute discussion of new things that are streaming, our broadcasting, newly published books, really released albums, and just talked about new media forever, five or 10 minutes that we don’t review them, we just find something that we like, and we tell each other about it. And then we have a guest.
And the guest can be from any walk of life, we have politicians, musicians, actors, our sweet spot, because we both have a great sort of a passion about 1960’s and 70’s television. And we’re in Los Angeles. We have guests who are former child stars and people who are known in the American culture, and that’s always a blast to interview somebody or childhood heroes. Anybody that is sort of part of American consciousness will be I would say resistant, we’re sort of a we’re a cultural survivor. You know, we’d love to talk about things that people think about.
Absolutely. In fact, your latest episode features “Little House on the Prairie”s, Alison Arngrim, which I had to…
First of all, she is hysterical! And she’s got a very funny book, and, we had her on and she could not have been sweeter. I have worked with her in comedy clubs, but she’s a flat out funny lady, as a one person show. I thought it was so fun. revisiting all those early episodes. And Louise is like a junkie for “Little House on the Prairie”, all those old shows that Walden Little House on the Prairie. She knows all the trivia so they were having a trivia contest. It’s hysterical. It’s fun.
That’s the kind of stuff we love to do. And truthfully, in the overview, and you notice Dean, we’re at a time in American life where things are so dark. If we can just take people out of their heads for hours. We don’t do a lot of political advocacy or anything we’ll either do, we will interview politicians that have a book or something that’s interesting. And it has a point for the general public. We don’t get into big political discussions. It’s not one of those podcasts that is all cheap. And no, like, we just like to take people out of their heads and give them something to smile about.
Agreed. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I went into entertainment journalism, because covering the news, especially since I’m near the heart of politics, Washington, DC, it could be mind numbing, even one hour of listening to it, but to cover entertainment and cover what’s happening in theater and television, streaming media, is a joy to my heart, especially interviewing people like you. In fact, I believe you are my 11th interview within two weeks.
Good for you, that’s how you get your own name out there and want to come on with you if you’re comfortable. And you do a great job and keep going.
Oh, absolutely especially since I’ve been interviewing people for the past 20 years but for my own outlet, it’s now been 14 years. I’m getting ready to hit my 15-year mark. And I can’t wait to see who I’m going to be interviewing whether it’s repeats or brand-new people. And like you, it comes from all walks of life. I’ve interviewed directors, producers, writers, and now I’m interviewing a weatherman/comedian. So it’s been a great experience for me so far.
So when I read about the podcast, and I saw that you have six guests in your Hall of Fame, and they ranged from everyone from the late Cindy Williams to your coworker on KNBC, Keith Morrison, how did you to pick the six for your Hall of Fame? I’ve interviewed for 14 years, I haven’t even got a Hall of Fame yet. So but I think I now need to start on that?
Well, I had you know, it’s always ends up being who you know. Keith Morrison was the anchor at Channel 4 Los Angeles before he went on to become a co host of “Dateline” ,a wildly successful procedural show and True crime is so big in America. It’s ridiculous. I mean, these guys, Keith Morrison and Josh Mankiewicz, those two guys are their stars. It is true crime genre. They go to a Comic Con for true crime geeks, they have conventions all over the United States. Oh, yeah, guys go into superheroes.
Keith, he’s truly one of the nicest gentlemen you’ll ever have a conversation with. And he’s got a great voice and he’s such a great storyteller to anchor our five o’clock news before he actually right but a lovely man, sir. I was an easy call. I just called them up and talked about this podcast and he agreed to do it!
Absolutely. Now I want to talk about stay with the Channel 4 News since you were part of an amazing news dynasty out of Los Angeles. You had Chuck Henry, Colleen Williams, Kelly Lange, Fred Rogen, Keith Morrison, the list goes on and on. What do you miss about that chapter in your life? For I know back here in Washington, it was for me, the NBC Channel 4 here with Jim Vance, Doreen Genzler, Bob Ryan and George Michael, but what do you miss about that?
Well Bob Ryan is a legendary weatherman in the business. He’s back there with NASA and they have all the latest technology. He’s a great guy. Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned the most is the camaraderie. We had a great news team. As a matter of fact, Colleen, Fred, and I were the longest running news team on the air for 35 years.
You know, I have a phrase that I use, “you can’t manufacture chemistry.” So, we just happened to click our personalities, complemented one another. And we just seem to be very comfortable with the audience. I missed the camaraderie. I do not miss the daily grind. I always tell people, even if you love what you do, 40 years is long enough. I retired two weeks shy of my 40th anniversary. I am so forever grateful for the amazing career I had and the great opportunity I had I got to visit two Olympics because back in those days, WRC – the Washington, DC station, would send the entire news to the Olympics, because so many people watched. It was a gold mine for three weeks in a row.
And so, I got to go to the Seoul Korea Olympics, the Atlanta Olympics. Unbelievable opportunities and all kinds of wonderful people. I had a wonderful career. I do not miss the daily grind.
Well, I’m so glad to hear it especially since I was growing up, especially when I had a speech impairment and my speech pathologist, God bless her, had me watch the news. I can learn the chemistry of the news team, how they spoke their eloquence, and it made me the journalist I am today. And even though I from Washington, I studied every market including Los Angeles. So, when I was watching you and the news team with Channel 4 in Los Angeles, even though I’m 3000 miles away, it was still part of my news team, part of my home. I thank you guys for giving me a voice and the camaraderie throughout the years.
Let me tell you something, you are a great success story because people don’t have the character. You face the fear, you faced a challenge in your life and you went right at it. Because some people have a speech impediment or even not quite so seriously, they have a fear of speaking in public. You face your fear, and you conquered it and you’ve made a career out of it, which is a pretty amazing. So congratulations.
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Now I’m going to switch gears from we talked about the podcast, we talked about your time on Channel 4, but I got to talk about the comedy because I’m very curious. How did you get into the realm of comedy?
Well, this is a weird story. It’ exactly the opposite of what people suspected. I became a weatherman in LA. And I did a vanity project and decided to become a weatherman. I actually got my job as a weatherman from comedy. I was working at The Comedy Store at Sunset Boulevard, which is the place you have to work to be discovered. And the news director from Channel 4 Los Angeles, Steve, Antoniotti and his wife were in the audience on a Friday night. and I talked on stage. Early in my career I worked for Armed Forces Radio and Television. And I told this anecdote on stage about being forced to do the weather in the Navy, but not knowing anything about it. And after the show, this man & his wife came up and introduced themselves, they said, “I really love that story”. He said, “Listen, this is an odd question but do you have desire to come to Channel 4, and do some vacation relief weather forecast? And so even for people who are on vacation, I have a guy who desperately need some help here. Would you consider doing that?” And I was making $35 a night and I thought “Oh, my God, of course I will. And when do you want me to start?”
I auditioned and I got the vacation filling job. I was like the utility guy for two years in my predecessor left. Incidentally, it’s a timely time to talk about this because the guy whose place I took is the guy that took Pat Sajak’s place where he wants to do “Wheel of Fortune”
Really?
Yes, Kevin O’Connell.
Yes, he in fact hosted “Go” on NBC.
That’s right, he went on to Buffalo and had a great career. Oh, yeah. But anyway, so Kevin was to go work at CBS. And I got bumped up to the main weather job and I had retired two weeks shy of my 40th anniversary. I got my job and whether from doing stand-up, because this was a time pre-El Nino, pre-climate change when the news was a lot more conversational.
Our evening newscast are four, five and six o’clock newscast. It was kinda like what you see in the morning, where everything’s really familiar and people smile. And that’s was the case with our newscast back then. So you fit in there, I couldn’t even get the job if I applied for it now. because all these people have to have the AMS degree, the American Meteorological Society notation. I could never do that. It’s too mathematical. It’s too chemical. I couldn’t do it. So I just got hired as a comic. I was hired. I always say that my job on the news cache was to be the palate cleanser between the tragedy and the sports.
And you’ve done it so well. I want you to talk about your solo comedy show “Unassisted Living”. I wonder what it’s all about, because I did see some clips on Tubi!
Well, this type of comedy is a single topic monologue. For about the last 25 years, I take one topic, and then I do an hour show. First one I did was about parenthood, the second one was about force. The third one was about the news. And this one is about just getting older, in the frame of the pandemic. And so I’m old, but I don’t require assistance. So that why it’s called “Unassisted Living”.
I can’t wait to talk about what it like what it’s like to be a grandparent on the pandemic, when your kids can’t go to school, and you have to oversee their Zoom education, which is a nightmare. I talked about all the latest fads, and cryptocurrency and all these various things. It’s just, I’m an observational comedian. I don’t do any politics. And I don’t work blue. I worked clean, because I found that my fans, my demographic, just appreciate a cleaner show, so it’s a little stuff that baby boomers and people close to Baby Boomers can appreciate.
Excellent. And how many grandkids you have, by the way?
I have two; one is 10, one is 7, who are the best part of my life. I have three children. My youngest just graduated from college really going to be a psychologist. And I very proud of my kids. And now that I’m retired, more time to spend with them, which is it is a gift
So you talked a little bit about observational comedy. What does it take to do observational comedy because I’m somewhat familiar with it.
Well, I think two of the great practitioners of the type of comedy I like are George Carlin, one of the one of the great works in business, Robert Klein, who’s another fantastic performer who was very smart. And Jerry Seinfeld is a great example of an observational comedy. We take every mundane scene in your life, but we really do adulation, pump them up, make them humorous because the only reason they work is they’re all common experience with a common experience with this sort of investigative span.
And it makes people relatable. So even a group of strangers by the end of the night are laughing because they’ve all had the common experience of getting old, taking various medications, going to more doctors than they’ve ever had before, not being able to get up out of a chair as fast and all those kinds of things. It’s like taking common experience, and putting a microscope to it. And that’s what makes people feel sort of a sense of security and common.
To follow Fritz, go to
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WEBSITE: FritzColemanComedy.com
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