John Beard (news anchor)

John Beard (born 1948) is an American news anchor and actor based in Buffalo, New York.

Early life and career
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.

KNBC-TV (1981–1993)
From 1981 to 1993, Beard was anchor at KNBC-TV.

Held at gunpoint
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.

KTTV (1993–2007)
From December 1993 until September 2007, he anchored, with Christine Devine, the 10 PM newscast at KTTV in Los Angeles.

Departure
Beard left KTTV in December 2007. According to his personal website, he was fired despite the highest ratings in the station's history following years of increasing editorial disagreements with station management, whose audience market research was steering it toward ever more unsubstantial journalism and celebrity fluff. Beard had joined KTTV after earlier leaving KNBC for similar reasons, refusing to read misleading news teases and celebrity stories (particularly regarding pop singer Michael Jackson). 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 with 11 PM newscasts. The Fox owned and operated was acceptable because its 10 PM newscast would not compete against KNBC and Beard was considered a great reader by news directors and station general management.

WGRZ (2009–2018)
In 2009, Beard returned to Buffalo and began anchoring for Channel 2 News Daybreak and Midday on WGRZ. While anchor, WGRZ's morning newscast, Daybreak vaulted into first place in Buffalo's Nielsen ratings. On November 1, 2016 it was announced that John Beard would be leaving WGRZ at the end of the year. Beard ultimately stayed over a year longer, with his final newscast airing January 18, 2018.

Acting work
He has appeared as himself and newscaster roles in television series including the 1994 animated series Spider-Man, 24, and most notably Arrested Development (on which he made twenty-four appearances as himself, including the fourth and fifth seasons, which were filmed after he relocated to Buffalo).