For 40 years, Fritz Coleman was the weathercaster to Angelenos, via the broadcast towers
at NBC Channel 4.
Before, during and after retirement, he also got to know locals as a stand-up comedian – largely at The Comedy Store in West Hollywood, and for the last two years and counting, at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. The Philadelphia native honed his stage persona in the Navy with what was then Armed Forces Television while stationed aboard the USS John F. Kennedy. There he worked as a morning radio disk jockey and a weathercaster for the evening news. He now lives in Toluca Lake.
While reflecting on his career, Coleman considered whether he spent too much time trying to make the wrong people happy.
Right energy, wrong outlet
“Well, when I found out you were going to talk to me about my biggest mistake, I’ve been thinking about it for the last 12 hours. I think the biggest mistake of my whole life – and this has affected every aspect of my life – was spending the first two-thirds of my life completely consumed by the psychosis of people-pleasing. I don’t do that anymore, now that I’m an old person, because I’m too tired and I just don’t care, but I spent so much of my emotional energy people-pleasing.
“Even when I was doing the weather, I really wasn’t that concerned about getting accurate information to people that they could use to improve their lives. I just wanted them to like me, and that was my success. And when you do stand-up comedy, it’s like stage-four people-pleasing. You’re getting up on stage; you set up this false intimacy with an audience; you pray that they like you; and then when they walk out the door, that’s the end of the relationship.
“I did it in relationships to the point where I would make some very serious errors in judgment just trying to make a girl like me, without taking into consideration whether, if she did like me, if it was going to be a healthy relationship.”
Working hard or…working hard?
“I would say I was a real workaholic. I did an odd shift in Channel 4. I was doing the 5, 6 and 11 o’clock news. When you’re doing the weather there, you are totally responsible for your own content, so I would do a split shift. I would go in at noon, prepare the 5 and 6, do the 5 and 6, at 6:30 I would be off, and then I would be back at 9:30 at night or so to do the 11 o’clock news. And then I was doing comedy shows. In the meantime, if it was tranquil weather like it was every day between April and October, I would go to The Comedy Store and do a show. I was in hyper achieving mode, and I think my children lost a little of my attention during that time, and I regret that intensely.
“Sometimes I feel I have to predicate this by saying I have a spectacular relationship with all of my children now, but if I could do that over again, I would have paid a little more attention to the important things, instead of being consumed by my work.”
