Sean Hannity Rushes In

Talk-radio host Sean Hannity likes to say he’s come full circle. It looks as if he’s made the trip more than once.

As a child, the New York native surreptitiously listened to AM talk radio in his bedroom. Now his three-hour show on WABC-AM leads the afternoon ratings in Gotham.

Fired from a college station for being too conservative, he got his first paid gig by placing a classified ad in the trade journal Radio & Records, touting himself as “the most talked-about college radio host in America.”

That same magazine’s readers’ poll named him “2001 Talk Personality of the Year.”

And he got his start broadcasting at UC Santa Barbara’s radio station. Now he’s back in Southern California, the latest addition to the talk-show lineup on KABC-AM (790).

“I love to talk to people. I love politics. For me, it’s fun, and the fact they pay me is just a bonus,” said Hannity, 40, whose show runs locally from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays.

He’s probably better-known as half of the conservative-liberal duo on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes,” one of the first shows on the fledgling TV network in 1996. But he got his start in talk radio a decade earlier, working in Santa Barbara, then Huntsville, Ala., then Atlanta, before getting hired in New York by ABC Radio Networks, which then took his show national on Sept. 10. It’s now heard on about 90 stations nationwide and will hit the century mark sometime this month.

“There hasn’t been any new blood in the national talk-radio scene for a while,” said Al Peterson, news/sports/talk editor at Radio & Records magazine. “He brings a youthful experience that some hosts don’t have, and he’s got a baby boomer perspective. He’s got a new energy, if you will.”

That energy emanates from the first moments of the show, when an incessant Wagnerian chorus accompanies the opening, “From coast to coast, from border to border, from sea to shining sea--Sean Hannity is on.”

Hannity then spends the next three hours taking calls from liberals and fellow conservatives, interviewing guests, chatting about everyday events and mainly holding court on the news of the day, viewed from his right-side perspective. He dissects the antics of Britney Spears, labeling her a “belly-baring pop tart”; he criticizes the U.S. government for not supporting Israel enough; and he uses his rhetorical skills to steer wayward listeners who have strayed too far left--a process he calls Hannitizing.

“It’s a reverse brainwashing,” he said.

His New York-accented, machine-gun delivery is loaded with alternating rounds of humor and scorn. And the booming promos that bookend the show’s commercials exhibit the bluster and bravado typical of conservative talk radio (one announcement: “The last bastion of truth in a troubled time”), as well as a sense of humor (“The Sean Hannity Show: Even when he’s wrong, he thinks he’s right”).

“It’s smart and funny,” said KABC program director Erik Braverman. “If you’re smart and funny, and listeners like you, you’re going to be a success.”

ABC officials hope Hannity will solidify the L.A. station’s place in the fight for the local talk-radio audience, with his show anchoring the spot between Gloria Allred and Mark Taylor in the morning, and Larry Elder in drive time. Peterson said it’s just what KABC needs to combat KFI-AM (640), with its more established lineup that features as its cleanup hitter Rush Limbaugh--whom Hannity calls the Babe Ruth of talk radio.

The two have been friends for years, and Hannity filled in for him several times in the last year when Limbaugh was seeking treatment for his hearing loss. But Limbaugh will have to find a new pinch-hitter, as Hannity is now on competing stations in many markets. And though Hannity may be a protege, of sorts, and even echoes Rush in some of his techniques, their two programs are different.

“Rush is really pretty much a one-man show most of the time. He rarely deals with guests,” Peterson said. Hannity, on the other hand, includes callers and high-profile guests from the left. “He loves to debate with liberals. That’s what he eats for breakfast.”

“Any good talk show, it’s got to be information and entertainment,” Hannity said. “If I talk to only people that agree with me, it gets a little boring at times.

“I think the left, over the years, has been all too willing to silence conservatives. I’m not going to do what they’re doing,” he said.

He recently had the Rev. Al Sharpton on his show, after the New York-based activist announced his bid for the presidency. They naturally sparred on many subjects, but Hannity also conceded he was smart, funny and devout.

House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt and former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile have also been on the show. And former first lady and junior senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has an open invitation. She has yet to accept.

“I’d be nice to her,” Hannity insists.

“He really appreciates a dialogue,” said John McConnell, senior vice president of programming for ABC Radio Networks. “He’s not a yeller. He doesn’t hang up on people.”

Maybe because he knows what the other end of the phone is like. He got his start in talk radio by regularly calling a show on KTMS in Santa Barbara, offering opinions on the Iran-Contra hearings that so fired up other listeners, they wanted to debate him, not the host.

Hannity decided to eliminate the middleman and started his own radio program at UC Santa Barbara, where a dearth of interested broadcasting students allowed outsiders to get on the air. He was in Santa Barbara, as he said, “loafing” with his sister, Therese, after knocking around New York University and other colleges on the East Coast, alternately studying political science and economics and leaving school to work construction and make tuition money.

That first incarnation of “The Sean Hannity Show” lasted about 40 hourlong episodes, before his bosses had heard enough. He got canceled after a guest, a conservative author, talked about AIDS and gay bathhouses.

“It was a very left-leaning station. They called Reagan and Bush drug runners and drug pushers,” Hannity said. “Controversy was only a one-way street to the left. That wasn’t fair.”

After the ad in Radio & Records landed him the Huntsville, Ala., job, he moved to Atlanta and rose to No. 1 in the market.

Hannity made appearances on CNN, “Phil Donahue” and “Sally Jessy Raphael,” and caught the attention of CNBC head Roger Ailes, who brought Hannity to New York when he created the Fox News Channel in 1996. Shortly afterward, WABC hired him.

McConnell wouldn’t reveal the terms of the new contract Hannity got with the national roll-out, saying only that it was multiyear, and that “Sean’s having a good Christmas.”

“When I started at the college station, I was the worst,” Hannity said. “I used to be a lot more confrontational and a lot more combative than I am now.

“I was a horrible host. You can’t be 26 and be a good talk-radio host. The more life experiences you have, the more interests you have, the better off you are. You have some perspective.”

Peterson, of Radio & Records, said the most important thing Hannity has going for him is his attitude.

“He’s got the killer instinct,” he said. “He’s a guy who has never shied away from a challenge. And he’s been pretty darn successful.

“Who’s the next Rush? Sean definitely has that potential.”

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Sean Hannity can be heard weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KABC-AM (790).