![]() One month earlier, he sat in his dining room, a warm, Western-themed space with faux antlers for a coat rack and a painting of three mares on the wall, recalling how impossibly long those first 13 weeks seemed. No one is more surprised than Hansen himself. “I don’t think he’s capable of telling you anything but the unvarnished truth of what he actually believes,” says Or Moyal, who produced Hansen at WFAA for six and a half years, from 2011 through 2018 (full disclosure: he’s also my former boss at The Athletic). Hence the charge levied against him for decades: there must be something performative about the man on TV. DALE HANSEN UNPLUGGED FULLSo the notion that he would attain wealth and renown simply by being himself all the time, at full volume, damn the consequences, defies comprehension. By his count, Hansen was fired from eight jobs-including his previous one at Channel 4, then Dallas’ CBS affiliate-before coming to the station in 1983, all more or less for being Dale Hansen. It’s unbelievable that any of this happened-that an initial 13-week contract upon arrival at WFAA would mushroom into one of the most significant local news careers in history. “Let’s just try it one time,” he says, “and see how it works.” Livingston smiles back, well aware of the moment now mere hours away. “But I’ve never done that before, so why would I do it now?” “I said, ‘Dannie, I appreciate that, and that’s all just great advice,’” Hansen drawls, an amused grin plastered on his face. And when it comes time for that final broadcast, go out classy.Īll of that is decidedly not Hansen, but it’s the classy part of the equation that really tickles him. Don’t do anything the station’s going to be upset about. Ride these last months out, he told his pupil. Like always, Livingston was quick with a few words of advice. Now they’re rehashing a phone conversation they had back in April, when Hansen’s retirement was evolving into something beyond the idle thought he’d batted around for the last several years. It only followed that his “all-time, all-time favorite mentor” had to be there for the end, so Hansen flew Livingston and his wife, Kathy, down for the week. Hansen retained everything, and always stayed eager to credit Livingston for the accolades that would follow, over the next four and a half decades. DALE HANSEN UNPLUGGED PROFESSIONALLivingston spent the next two and a half years molding him into a professional broadcaster, drilling in the fundamentals while demanding Hansen never be afraid to buck convention, such as integrating high school sports coverage into his newscasts in Nebraska and later Dallas, before any of the competition thought to try it. “It was almost that his eyes were pulling you into the story.” Once Hansen showed up in a suit, with a fresh haircut, he was hired. “It was spooky to a certain point,” he says. He’d never been on camera before, either, which made Livingston the first to encounter the magnetism Hansen would become famous for once the red light flickered on. Hansen was an unconventional choice, shaggy-haired with no sports experience. Which suits him fine because, after Chris, the person he needed here most is sitting diagonally from him, over on the couch.ĭannie Livingston met Hansen in 1977 at Omaha’s KMTV, when the station was looking for a weekend sports anchor. “I’ve downsized like Obama,” he cracks, referencing the former president’s recently scaled-down birthday party. In a different world, people would be buzzing in and out of the house. He has already rehearsed his remarks four times today, a high number considering he wrote them back in February and, as of at least a month ago, could recite many of the lines from memory. He’d just finished reentering his final commentary into WFAA’s system for tonight’s show, a process that took 40 minutes after a technical snafu erased the first effort. A black Lab named Wilson, one of their five dogs, is sprawled out on the floor to his left. WFAA’s 4 o’clock newscast plays on mute on a television mounted over the fireplace mantle. The pandemic nixed the blowout and helped accelerate the bow-out, and now here he is, wrapped in the navy blue robe and nestled into a red Navajo-print chair in the sitting room of his Waxahachie home. That’s if he retired at all for years, the party line was he’d go until he dropped dead, and his wife of 39 years, Chris, absolutely believed it. Once upon a time, he imagined a grand sendoff-nothing on par with the epic thousand-person bashes at his old house on Lake Waxahachie but at least 150 or so people crammed into Javier’s, one of his favorite haunts. But this wasn’t how he imagined he’d go out. He loves his bathrobe, which makes this a not altogether uncommon occurrence. It’s 4:50 in the afternoon on his last day of work, and Dale Hansen is wearing his bathrobe. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |