Professional Career
Coleman started his career at WCIA in Champaign, Illinois, doing the early evening weather forecast 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.
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."
Read more about this topic: John Coleman (news Weathercaster)
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