 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.