Sean Hannity
Sean Patrick Hannity is an American conservative television presenter, broadcaster and writer. He hosts The Sean Hannity Show, a nationally syndicated talk radio show, has hosted a self-titled political commentary program on Fox News since 2009, and co-hosted the original Fox News debate show Hannity & Colmes with Alan Colmes from the network's founding in 1996 to 2009.
Hannity volunteered as a talk show host at UC Santa Barbara in 1989. He later joined WVNN in Athens, Alabama, and shortly afterward, WGST in Atlanta. After leaving WGST, he worked at WABC in New York until 2013. Since 2014, Hannity has worked at WOR. In 1996, Hannity and Alan Colmes co-hosted Hannity & Colmes on Fox. After Colmes announced his departure in January 2008, Hannity merged the Hannity & Colmes show into Hannity.
By 2018 Hannity had become one of the most-watched hosts in cable news and most-listened-to hosts in talk radio. He received Marconi Radio Awards from the National Association of Broadcasters in 2003 and 2007 and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in November 2017. He has written four New York Times best-selling books: Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, and Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, and Live Free or Die.
Early life and education
Sean Patrick Hannity was born December 30, 1961 in New York City, the son of Lillian and Hugh Hannity. Lillian worked as a stenographer and a corrections officer at a county jail, while Hugh was a World War II veteran and family-court officer. He was the youngest of four siblings and the only boy. Hannity's maternal and paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Ireland. He grew up in Franklin Square, New York on Long Island.In his youth, Hannity worked as a paperboy delivering issues of the New York Daily News and the Long Island Daily Press. His parents were initially supporters of President John F. Kennedy, eventually growing more Republican in their views as time went on, though they resisted being overtly political at home.
Hannity attended Sacred Heart Seminary in Hempstead, New York and St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary in Uniondale, New York. He attended New York University and Adelphi University, but did not graduate from either.
Career
In 1982, Hannity started a house-painting business and a few years later, worked as a building contractor in Santa Barbara, California. He 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, he said, "I wasn't good at it. I was terrible."Radio
Hannity's weekly show on KCSB was canceled after less than a year after a controversy. During two shows, gay and lesbian rights were discussed in what was considered to be a contentious manner. The university board that governed the station later reversed its decision after a campaign conducted on Hannity's behalf by the Santa Barbara chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the station had discriminated against Hannity's First Amendment rights. When the station refused to issue Hannity a public apology and more airtime, he did not return to KCSB.After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an advertisement in radio publications, presenting himself as "the most talked about college radio host in America". Radio station WVNN in Athens, Alabama, 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. 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 was on WABC's afternoon time slot from January 1998.
In their 2007 book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That Is Destroying America, conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel 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". The WABC slot continued until the end of 2013. Since January 2014, Hannity has hosted the 3:00–6:00p.m. time slot on WOR in New York City.
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 more than five hundred stations nationwide. In 2004, Hannity signed a $25million five-year contract extension with ABC Radio to continue the show until 2009. The program was made available via Armed Forces Radio Network in 2006. In June 2007, ABC Radio was sold to Citadel Communications and in the summer of 2008, Hannity was signed for a $100million five-year contract. As of March 2018, the program is heard by more than 13.5 million listeners a week. Hannity was ranked No.2 in Talkers Magazine
In January 2007, Clear Channel Communications signed a groupwide three-year extension with Hannity on more than eighty 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.
Hannity signed a long-term contract to remain with Premiere Networks in September 2013.
At the beginning of 2014, Hannity signed contracts to air on several Salem Communications stations including WDTK Detroit, WIND Chicago, WWRC Washington, D.C., and KSKY Dallas.
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.While Hannity's views are typically politically and socially conservative, he has spoken supportively about birth control, which has led to on-air clashes with pro-life guests such as Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International. Hannity said if the Catholic Church were to excommunicate him over his support for contraception, 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.
Freedom Concerts
From 2003 until 2010, Hannity hosted country music-themed "Freedom Concerts" to raise money for charity. In 2010, conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote that only a small percentage of the money raised by the concerts goes to the target charity, Freedom Alliance. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission and the Internal Revenue Service, also in 2010. The FTC complaint alleges that Hannity was "falsely promoting that all concert proceeds would be donated to a scholarship fund for the children of those killed or wounded in war". The complaint filed with the IRS claims that Freedom Alliance has violated its 501 charity status. The concerts stopped around the same year.Other activities
Hannity has had cameo appearances in film and television, having a brief voiceover in The Siege as an unseen reporter, and appearing in Atlas Shrugged: Part II and the second season of House of Cards as himself. He executive produced and appeared in the 2017 film Let There Be Light, which also stars Kevin Sorbo.As of April 2018, Hannity owned at least 877 residential properties, which were bought for nearly $89million. He purchased some of the homes with the help of loans from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and most are in working-class neighborhoods. His property managers have taken an aggressive management approach with a much higher than average eviction rate. The Washington Post reported that his property management team has used eviction proceedings both to remove tenants and to generate revenue. His property managers have claimed that Hannity has no active role in the management of the more than 1,000 properties he has a stake in.
Views
Candidacy of Donald Trump
Hannity is known for his pro-Trump coverage. According to The Washington Post, "Hannity's comeback coincided with his early, eager embrace of his fellow New Yorker... Trump attacked the Gold Star father, and Hannity stood by him. Trump went after a federal judge of Mexican descent, and Hannity backed him. After the Access Hollywood tape emerged of Trump making lewd comments about inappropriate sexual behaviour towards women, Hannity continued to defend him: 'King David had 500 concubines, for crying out loud.'" After the inauguration, the first interview the new president gave to a cable news channel was conducted by Hannity. Hannity additionally defended the Trump administration's false claim that Trump's inauguration crowd was the biggest ever.Hannity has been criticized as being overly favorable to the candidacy of Trump and granting him more airtime than other presidential candidates during the 2016 primaries. Hannity, for instance, let Trump promote the false claim that Rafael Cruz, father of Trump's rival presidential candidate Ted Cruz, was involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination. He admitted to favoring Republican candidates, though without indicating a preference for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz. According to Dylan Byers of CNN, Hannity during interviews "frequently cites areas where he agrees with Trump, or where he thinks Trump was right about something, then asks him to expand on it", and "often ignores or defends Trump from criticism".
Tensions between Cruz and Hannity appeared to reach a boiling point during a contentious April 2016 radio interview, during which Cruz implied Hannity was a "hardcore Donald Trump supporter" and Hannity responded by accusing Cruz of "throw this in my face" every time he asked a "legitimate question". Jim Rutenberg commented in August 2016 that Hannity is "not only Mr. Trump's biggest media booster; he also veers into the role of adviser," citing sources who said Hannity spent months offering suggestions to Trump and his campaign on strategy and messaging. Hannity responded to the report by saying, "I'm not hiding the fact that I want Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States.... I never claimed to be a journalist." Hannity also appeared in a 2016 Trump campaign ad. Hannity has feuded with several conservatives who oppose Trump, including National Reviews Jonah Goldberg, Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens, and National Review editor Rich Lowry.