John Coleman obit

John S. Coleman, Weather Channel Co-Founder, Dies at 83

He was not on the list.

John S. Coleman, a co-founder of the Weather Channel, the original meteorologist on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and, later in his career, a vocal climate change skeptic, died on Saturday at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas. He was 83.

His death was confirmed by his family.

Before it became possible to use mobile phones to check humidity levels and wind speeds by ZIP code on demand, Mr. Coleman pioneered the concept of round-the-clock weather reporting.

He popularized the use of chroma key — better known as green screen — which allowed him to speak against a backdrop of ever-changing maps and images. Throughout his career his shows included warning systems to allow viewers to prepare for coming storms and incorporated lifestyle segments.

Nearly half of American households now tune in each month to the Weather Channel, which Mr. Coleman helped launch with Frank Batten Sr. in 1982.

“The weather is a unique story, because it impacts all of us very personally on a day-to-day basis,” Dave Shull, chief executive of the Weather Channel, said in an interview. “For him to see that there was an opportunity, and to have the fortitude to go through the and downs to push an idea he had from scratch, that’s remarkable.”

John Stewart Coleman was born on Oct. 15, 1934, in Champaign, Ill., the youngest of five children of Claude and Hazel Coleman. He spent his childhood in Alpine, Tex.

While in high school, his family said, he helped host a radio show in Carbondale, Ill. By the time he graduated from the University of Illinois with a journalism degree in 1957, he had already delivered the early evening weather forecast and hosted a local “American Bandstand”-type television show in Champaign.

His career took him through broadcast positions in Omaha, Milwaukee and Peoria, Ill. He joined the fledgling “Good Morning America” in 1975 and stayed for seven years.

“He was sort of a weather rock star at the time,” said Joseph D’Aleo, whom Mr. Coleman recruited out of academia to lend a hand at “Good Morning America” and to help him develop his idea for a 24-7 weather channel.

“He was dedicated to everything he did; he’d sometimes take off after the morning shows, get on an airplane, go halfway across the country and meet with venture capitalists to present his idea,” Mr. D’Aleo said in an interview.

But after a year of false starts, Mr. D’Aleo said, Mr. Coleman “felt a little bit like Sancho Panza behind Don Quixote and his impossible dream.”

Then Frank Batten Sr., the chairman of the media conglomerate Landmark Communications (now Landmark Media Enterprises), agreed to back the enterprise. On May 2, 1982, the Weather Channel made its debut coast to coast under the Landmark umbrella, with Mr. Coleman as president and chief executive.

“It suddenly happened,” Mr. D’Aleo said. “Cable was growing very quickly, and operators were realizing they needed more services to get people to pay for cable.”

The American Meteorological Society named Mr. Coleman broadcast meteorologist of the year in 1983, citing his “many years of service in presenting weather reports of high informational, educational and professional quality.”

That same year, he was pushed out of the Weather Channel.

Mr. Shull described the ouster as a classic case of a visionary struggling with the operational demands of the business. Mr. D’Aleo said that Mr. Coleman had lost a fight for financial control of the company.

Landmark sold the Weather Channel to NBC Universal and two private equity firms for $3.5 billion in 2008.

Mr. Coleman moved on, working in New York and Chicago before settling in Southern California. For 20 years he worked as a meteorologist for KUSI-TV in San Diego.

By the time he retired in 2014, he had become a lightning rod for controversy over his views on climate change.

At the top of his personal blog, he wrote: “There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has not been any in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future.”

“He came out pretty strongly, and we took a pretty public position counteracting what he was saying,” Mr. Shull, of the Weather Channel, said. “We still honor him as the founder of the network, but we certainly don’t ascribe to his opinions on climate.”

Mr. Coleman and his wife, Linda, eventually moved to Las Vegas, where he could indulge his passion for poker. His family said he played several times a week.

He is survived by his wife; his daughter, Susan Keim; his son, Scott; his brothers, Philip and Richard; five grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Mr. Coleman was also an avid writer. His self-published novel “Trophy: Sex and Money Are the Most Powerful Forces on Earth” is marketed on Amazon as partly a love story and partly a tale of “billion-dollar business deals between a movie studio and a television network,” with “maybe even a murder thrown in.”

Another book, “Weather Channel Pioneers,” is due out next month.