Rod Fritz on exit from WBZ: ‘I was kind of blindsided’
The former news anchor said it wasn’t his decision to leave.
Veteran Boston broadcaster Rod Fritz says it wasn’t his decision to leave his position as a news anchor at WBZ NewsRadio last week. “I walked in and kapow!” Fritz told the Boston Herald of a meeting last Thursday with station leadership.WBZ NewsRadio Assistant News Director Jon MacLean wrote in a memo last week that Fritz was “moving on and will no longer anchor” at the station, according to The Boston Globe. Fritz told the Herald he was informed the station was “going in a different direction” and his contract was not going to be renewed before he was handed his exit papers.“I was kind of blindsided, without a doubt,” he told the newspaper. “I expected everything to move along nicely. I had no inclination otherwise.”Since iHeartMedia took over ownership of the station last year following the merger of Entercom Communications Corp. and CBS Radio there have been a number of high-level staff departures. WBZ reporter Carl Stevens wrote in a tribute to Fritz on Facebook that it took him a few days to digest that the news anchor, who he said always brought “immediate energy” and a “lightness” to the newsroom, no longer works at the station.“This is a guy who’s been in radio news since the mid-70’s,” the reporter wrote. “His institutional knowledge was a tremendous asset. We, as journalists, are constantly bombarded with facts, fictions, hyperbole and a whole globe’s worth of evolving realities. It sure helps to have experience and perspective as you try to figure out what’s really real. Rod has that experience and perspective.”Read the full report at the Herald.
