Alan Colmes

Widely known as one of the few prominent liberal voices on the Fox News network, Alan Colmes was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950. He attended Hofstra University where he majored in communications and began broadcasting from the university radio station, WRHU. Cultivating his persona as an on-air personality, Colmes would go on to work steadily as a stand-up comedian, in addition to taking jobs as a disc jockey in and around the New York area at radio stations such as WABC, WNBC, WHN, WMCA, and WEVD. Colmes also hosted a popular syndicated series that was broadcasted by WNBC, and when NBC closed its radio division in 1988, Colmes' voice was the last one to be heard on the station. In 1996, he transitioned into television, co-hosting the political debate TV series "Hannity & Colmes" (Fox News, 1996-2009) on the newly launched Fox News network. He would represent the progressive perspective on various issues, contrasting with the views of his more conservative on-air partner Sean Hannity for several years. Meanwhile, Colmes published his first book, Red, White & Liberal: How Left is Right and Right is Wrong, in 2003. When "Hannity & Colmes" was cancelled in 2009, Colmes became a regular commentator on other shows such as "The O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News, 1996-). Alan Colmes died of lymphoma in February 2017. He was 66 years old.