John Beard

Who is John Beard?

John Beard is an American news anchor based in Buffalo, NY.

Beard hails from St. Pauls, North Carolina and was a Navy Corpsman with the Marines before beginning his broadcast career. He 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 went onto the news set and forced 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 quickly grabbed it.

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 and 24.

Beard left KTTV in December 2007. According to his personal website, he was excused after a fight to do more substantial news and less celebrity fluff. Beard had left KNBC in 1993 after refusing to read inaccurate news copy and celebrity stories, 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 KABC or KCBS because they didn't want to compete against him.