Sean Hannity (born December 30, 1961) is an
American radio and television host, author, and
conservative political commentator. His
nationally syndicated radio program,
The Sean Hannity Show, airs
throughout the United States on
Citadel
Media. Hannity also hosts two television shows on
Fox News Channel:
Hannity, which replaced the political debate
program
Hannity &
Colmes, and the weekend show
Hannity's America. Hannity has also
written two
New York Times bestselling books,
Let
Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism
and
Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and
Liberalism.
Early life
Hannity is the son of Hugh J. and Lillian F. Hannity.
Both his paternal and
maternal grandparents emigrated from Ireland
. He
has two sisters, Joanne S. Hannity and Therese (Hannity) Grisham.
He grew up
in Franklin Square,
New York
. During the late 1980s, Hannity was a general contractor in Santa Barbara,
California
and also a bartender. He married Jill
Rhodes, a columnist for
The
Huntsville Times, on January 9, 1993. They have two
children.
Education
Hannity
graduated in 1980 from St. Pius X Preparatory
Seminary high school, located in Uniondale, New York
. Hannity dropped out of New York
University
and Adelphi University
.
Professional life
Hannity
hosted his first talk radio show in 1989 at the volunteer college
station at UC Santa Barbara,
KCSB-FM
, while working as a general contractor. The
show aired for 40 hours of air time; Regarding his first show,
Hannity has said, "I wasn't good at it. I was terrible." Hannity's
weekly show on KCSB was canceled after less than a year by station
managers upset with his remarks about
gays and
lesbians. This was after two shows featuring
the book
The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about
AIDS by Gene Antonio; among other remarks, Hannity told a
lesbian caller "I feel sorry for your child". The station later
reversed its decision to dismiss Hannity due in part to a campaign
conducted by the Santa Barbara Chapter of the
American Civil Liberties
Union. Hannity decided against returning to KCSB.
After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an ad in radio publications
presenting himself as "the most talked about college radio host in
America."
Radio station WVNN
in Athens, Alabama
(part of the Huntsville
market) then hired him to be the afternoon talk
show host. From Huntsville, he moved to WGST
in Atlanta
in 1992,
filling the slot vacated by Neal Boortz,
who had moved to competing station WSB
. In
September 1996 Fox News co-founder
Roger
Ailes hired the then relatively unknown Hannity to host a
television program under the working title
Hannity and
LTBD ("liberal to be
determined").http://web.archive.org/web/20061109203543/http://www.alan.com/staff/alan.htm
Alan Colmes was then hired to co-host
and the show debuted as
Hannity & Colmes.
Later that year Hannity left WGST for New York, where WABC had him
substitute for their afternoon
drive time
host during Christmas week. In January 1997, WABC put Hannity on
the air full-time, giving him the late night time slot. WABC then
moved Hannity to the same drive time slot he had filled temporarily
a little more than a year earlier. Hannity has been on WABC's
afternoon time slot since January 1998.
Since 2003, Hannity has hosted
country
music-themed "Freedom Concerts" billed to help benefit the
Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, a charity created by
Oliver North to provide college scholarships to
children with a parent severely disabled or killed in military
action. Artists such as
Charlie
Daniels,
Billy Ray Cyrus, and
Hank Williams, Jr. have headlined
at Hannity's concerts.
Conservative
Cal Thomas and liberal
Bob Beckel, in their book
Common
Ground, describe Hannity as a leader of the pack among
broadcasting political polarizers, which following
James Q. Wilson they define as those who have "an
intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that
sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another,
rival group."
Television
Hannity was a co-host of
Hannity & Colmes, an American
political "point-counterpoint"-style television program on the Fox
News Channel featuring Hannity and
Alan
Colmes as co-hosts. Hannity presented the conservative point of
view with Colmes providing the liberal viewpoint, although critics
such as
Media Matters for
America and
Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting frequently accused the show of favoring Hannity's
views and those of conservative guests over more liberal
opposition.
Hannity had on air clashes with show guests such as
Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer of
Human Life International, who
challenged Hannity on his public dissent from the
Catholic Church on the issue of
contraception.
Hannity stated that if the Catholic Church
were to excommunicate him over the
issue, he would join Jerry Falwell's
Thomas Road
Baptist Church
.
In January 2007, Hannity began a new Sunday night television show
on Fox News,
Hannity's America.
In November 2008, Colmes announced his departure from
Hannity
& Colmes. After the show's final broadcast on January 9,
2009, Hannity took over the time slot with his own new show,
Hannity, which has a format similar to
Hannity's
America.
Radio
Hannity's radio program is a conservative political talk show that
features Hannity's opinions and ideology related to current issues
and politicians.
The Sean Hannity Show began national
syndication on September 10, 2001 on over 500 stations nationwide.
As of spring 2008, the program is heard by over 13.25 million
listeners a week. In 2004, Hannity signed a $25 million five-year
contract extension with ABC Radio (now
Citadel Media) to continue the show through
2009. The program was made available via
Armed Forces Radio Network in 2006.
In June 2007, ABC Radio was sold to
Citadel Communications.
In January 2007,
Clear
Channel Communications signed a groupwide three-year extension
with Hannity on over 80 stations.
The largest stations in the group deal
included KTRH Houston
, KFYI
Phoenix
, WPGB Pittsburgh
, WKRC Cincinnati
, WOOD Grand
Rapids
, WFLA Tampa
, WOAI
San
Antonio
, WLAC Nashville
, and WREC
Memphis
.
The opening theme music for the
Sean Hannity Show is
"
Independence Day" by
Martina McBride followed by
"
O Fortuna" (from
Carmina Burana) by
Carl Orff, followed by "
The Way It Is" by
Bruce Hornsby and the
Range.
Books
Hannity is the author of two books,
Let Freedom Ring: Winning
the War of Ideas in Politics, Media, and Life and
Deliver
Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism
published through
ReganBooks. Both books
reached the nonfiction
New York Times
bestseller list, the second of which stayed there for five
weeks. Hannity has stated that he is too busy to read many books,
and dictated a lot of his own two books into a tape recorder while
driving in to do his radio show.
Awards and honors
- Hannity received a Marconi Award
in 2003 and 2007 as the Network Syndicated Personality of the Year
from the National
Association of Broadcasters.
- In 2009, Talkers
Magazine listed Hannity as #2 on their list of the 100
most important radio talk show hosts in America. The same magazine
gave Hannity their Freedom of Speech Award in 2003.
- In
2005, Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University
, awarded Hannity an honorary degree.
- Radio and Records
magazine has honored Hannity with the National Talk Show Host of
the Year Award for three consecutive years.
Bibliography
References
External links
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