John Coleman (meteorologist)

For other uses, see John Coleman (disambiguation).

John Coleman
John Coleman, KUSI News Weathercaster
Born	John Coleman (1934-10-15) October 15, 1934 Alpine, Texas
Status	Married
Occupation	Weather Forecaster
Spouse	Linda Coleman

John Coleman is an American TV weatherman noted, along with entrepreneur Frank Batten, for founding The Weather Channel. He presently works as an on-camera weather caster at KUSI-TV in San Diego but is no longer affiliated with The Weather Channel.

Professional career

Coleman started his career at WCIA in Champaign, Illinois, doing the early evening weather cast and a local bandstand show called At The Hop while he was a student at University of Illinois. After receiving his journalism degree in 1957, he became the weather anchor for WCIA's sister station WMBD-TV in Peoria, Illinois. Coleman was also a weather anchor for KETV in Omaha, WISN-TV in Milwaukee and then WBBM-TV and WLS-TV in Chicago.

Eyewitness News team, 1972. Back, from left: anchor John Drury, anchor Joel Daly. Front, from left: weatherman John Coleman, anchor Fahey Flynn, sportscaster Bill Frink.

At WLS, Coleman was teamed with Fahey Flynn, Joel Daly and Bill Frink to form the Eyewitness News team, creating a news brand name and establishing a highly successful new local news format derisively dubbed "happy talk" by a local television columnist. This style of local news has been widely copied. The team dominated Chicago television news ratings for more than a decade. During his time at Chicago's WLS-TV, Coleman was one of Chicago's most popular weathercasters, famous for his amusing and irreverent style. It was then that Coleman became the original weathercaster on what was then the brand-new ABC network morning program, Good Morning America. He stayed seven years with this top-rated program anchored by David Hartman and Joan Lunden.

In 1981, he persuaded communications entrepreneur Frank Batten to help establish The Weather Channel, serving as TWC's CEO and President during the start-up and its first year of operation. After leaving TWC, Coleman became weather anchor at WCBS-TV in New York and then at WMAQ-TV in Chicago, before moving to Southern California to join the independent television station, KUSI-TV in San Diego, in what Coleman fondly calls, "his retirement job."

Views on global warming

In the fall of 2007, he described the current concern over global warming as "a fictional, manufactured crisis, and a total scam."

In 2008, Coleman gave a speech to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce blaming the "global warming scam" and environmentalist lobby, for rising gas and food prices. He also declared the scam "a threat to our economy and our civilization."

Coleman has also made appearances on CNN, Fox News Channel and on the Showtime program, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, to share his global warming views. Coleman recently published an article entitled "The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam" in which he promotes the idea that many scientists and politicians have been embroiled in fraudulent activity based on incomplete science and a political motive for a world government. Coleman says the genesis of the global warming movement was the claims of scientist Roger Revelle, an early mentor of Al Gore.

In January 2010, Coleman produced a special report for KUSI-TV, entitled Global Warming: The Other Side, in which he forwards his view on Global Warming as a scam—and lays out what he believes to be evidence of a deliberate manipulation of world temperature data by NASA and others.

Critics of Colman’s have questioned his lack of academic credentials, journalism degree, and charge that he has not conducted actual research in the area of climate change.

Personal life

Coleman was born in 1934 in Alpine, Texas, the fifth child of a college professor and his math teacher wife, Claude and Hazel Coleman. He is married to Linda Coleman, and lives in a retirement community in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo.

External links

• John Coleman at IMDb
• Coleman's Corner at KUSI