Name John Beard | Role News Anchor TV shows Steals and Deals | |
 | ||
Nominations Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series Similar People Portia de Rossi, David Cross, Ron Howard, Jason Bateman, Will Arnett | ||
John Beard is an American news anchor based in Buffalo, NY.
Beard, born in St. Pauls, North Carolina and a Navy Corpsman with the Marines before beginning his broadcast career, is a graduate of East Carolina University.
From December 1993 until September 2007, he anchored, with Christine Devine, the 10 p.m. newscast at KTTV in Los Angeles. Prior to KTTV, Beard was a longtime anchor at KNBC-TV, beginning a 13-year career at the station in 1980. 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 to 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.
Beard has also worked at WIVB-TV in Buffalo, and at WITN-TV and WXII-TV in his home state of North Carolina.
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.
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 allegedly reading inaccurate news copy 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 or channel 7 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.
In Buffalo, Beard is now an anchor for Channel 2 News Daybreak and Midday on WGRZ, and has helped propel WGRZ's morning newscast, Daybreak, into first place in Buffalo's Nielsen ratings. Beard has expressed interest in renewing his contract in Buffalo when it expires.