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.
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. Critics argued that the show highlighted Hannity's views and those of conservative guests over Colmes' and those of liberal guests.
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.
In April 2009, Hannity said he'd allow himself to be waterboarded for charity. The statement generated some attention, though there has been no public follow-up by Hannity and has since dropped from the media's attention.
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 three books. The first two,
Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism and
Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, were published through ReganBooks. Both of these 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 write many books, and dictated a lot of his own two books into a tape recorder while driving in to do his radio show.
Hannity wrote his third book,
Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda, which was released by HarperCollins on March 30, 2010. The book became Hannity's third
New York Times Bestseller.
Freedom Concerts
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. As of 2009, more than $9 million has been raised by the concerts.
Artists such as Charlie Daniels, Billy Ray Cyrus, Hank Williams, Jr., Ted Nugent, Montgomery Gentry, Martina McBride, Buddy Jewell, LeAnn Rimes, Lee Greenwood, Michael W. Smith, and Avalon have headlined at Hannity's concerts. Between musical sets, the concerts include short intermissions with politically conservative speakers such as Oliver North, G. Gordon Liddy, Mark Levin, Newt Gingrich, Jon Voight, and Rudy Giuliani. Headlining names for the 2010 concert series are Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, and Michael W. Smith.
In March 2010, two liberal organizations, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington group (CREW) and the political action committee VoteVets.org requested that the Federal Trade Commission investigate Freedom Alliance, Freedom Concerts, Sean Hannity, Lt. Col. Oliver North and others. The complaint alleges the claims that all of the concerts' proceeds go toward scholarships are false. CREW also asked the IRS to investigate whether Freedom Alliance' engaged in political activities in violation their non-profit, tax-exempt status. The president of the charity overseeing the scholarships, Freedom Alliance, called the allegations "baseless" and added that "there is absolutely no merit to the scurrilous charges launched against Freedom Alliance from two of the most left-wing organizations in the country." Hannity is not on the staff or board of Freedom Alliance.
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
- Hannity, Sean (2002). Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism, ReganBooks, ISBN 0-06-051455-8.
- Hannity, Sean (2004). Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, ReganBooks, ISBN 0-06-058251-0.
- Hannity, Sean (2010). Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda, Harper Paperbacks, ISBN 0-06-200305-4.
