For nearly four decades, Los Angelenos came to know and love Fritz Coleman through his gig as the weather reporter on KNBC, where his affable demeanor (honed in his early years of stand-up comedy) made him a staple of local news. But when he retired from his weather gig two years ago, Coleman knew he wasn’t done working. “That 11 o’clock news kept me from a lot of things,” he recalls. “Now I could do all those things that massage my soul, be curious more, and discover more.”
That’s the impetus behind MEDIA PATH PODCAST, co-hosted by Fritz and Louise Palanker, veteran radio producer and documentarian. With 100 episodes released so far, MEDIA PATH is a look back at what has defined our media for the past half-century. With guests as eclectic as Congressional leader Adam Schiff, television legend Henry Winkler, Grammy winning songwriter Diane Warren, and “Double Dare” host Marc Summers, each week is a journey down a new path of remembering, learning, and reevaluating our shared memories and histories.
Every show includes discussion of current cultural events and recommendations from the hosts, as well as extended, deep-dive discussions with figures who have had meaningful and memorable impact on the media world we experience. While many of the subjects will be familiar to Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers, the spirit of inquisitiveness, curiosity, and sharing that Fritz and Louise bring to each episode will ring familiar to newer generations who may be hearing about these subjects, people, and stories for the first time.
For Louise Palanker, who has been producing radio entertainment for decades and successful podcasts since 2005, that sense of serious and thoughtful discovery and discussion is what drives the podcast: “We can rediscover the things that matter to us and celebrate what we love.” For Coleman, the show is a new way for him to share his passion and curiosity about the world in the same charitable spirit that earned him Congressional recognition as “Humanitarian of the Year” for his work with the American Red Cross. “It’s a great release valve of the pent-up energy from forty years of weather reporting,” he says