John Beard (news anchor)
| John Beard | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1948 (age 68–69) St. Pauls, North Carolina |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | B.A. East Carolina University |
| Occupation | News anchor |
John Beard (born 1948) is an American news anchor based in Buffalo, NY.
Beard was born in St. Pauls, North Carolina. He served as a Navy Corpsman with the Marines and graduated from East Carolina University. After school, he worked at WIVB-TV in Buffalo, and at WITN-TV and WXII-TV in his home state of North Carolina.
From 1980 to 1993, Beard was anchor at KNBC-TV. It was during one of Beard's newscasts at KNBC that a mentally unbalanced viewer, who was the child of newsteam pharmacy specialist Max Stollman, went onto the news set and demanded consumer advocate David Horowitz read the man's manifesto at gunpoint. Once Horowitz finished reading the paper, the man set the gun down on the desk, at which time Beard reached over and grabbed the weapon on the desk.
He has appeared as himself and newscaster roles in television series including Spider-Man, Arrested Development (on which he made twenty-four appearances as himself, including the fourth season, which was filmed after he relocated to Buffalo) and 24.
From December 1993 until September 2007, he anchored, with Christine Devine, the 10 p.m. newscast at KTTV in Los Angeles. Beard left KTTV in December 2007. According to his personal website, he was excused (despite the highest ratings in station history) because he was being paid too much after a fight in favor of more substantial news and less celebrity fluff in contrast to what market research indicated viewers wanted to hear. Beard had left KNBC in 1993 after refusing to read misleading news teases and celebrity stories (particularly regarding pop singer Michael Jackson), to go to KTTV. KNBC management at the time let him out of his contract to go to a "lesser" station, but would not release him to go to channel 2 (KCBS) or channel 7 (KABC) the other two network owned and operated stations in Los Angeles which had 11PM newscasts. The Fox owned and operated was acceptable because its 10PM would not compete against KNBC and Beard was considered a great reader by news directors and station general management.
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