2009 Silver Circle Inductee Dale Hansen

Dale Hansen’s broadcasting career began in in Newton, Iowa, where he was a radio disc jockey and operations manager at KCOB. His first television job was in Omaha, Nebraska, as a sports reporter at KMTV-TV. Hansen next took the anchor chair at Dallas’ KDFW-TV. Then in 1983, Dale made the move across town to WFAA-TV where today he still reigns as the most watched, most talked about, most controversial sports anchor in Dallas-Fort Worth. Dale anchors the 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. sportscasts as well as Dale Hansen’s Sports Special on Sunday evenings. Hansen also serves as the station’s Executive Sports Director.

He is best known for his straight talk, behind-the-scenes, between the lines, one-on-one, no-holds-barred latest word on the Dallas Cowboys. Anything can happen during a Dale Hansen sportscast and viewers have tuned in WFAA for more than 26 years just to see what Dale will say.

But make no mistake, Hansen is a serious sports journalist. In 1987, Dale received the George Foster Peabody Award for Distinguished Journalism. That same year, he won the DuPont-Columbia Award for his contribution to the investigation of SMU’s football program. Hansen’s reporting ultimately led to the NCAA imposing the “death penalty” which prohibited SMU from fielding a football program in 1987.

Hansen has also twice been honored as Sportscaster of the Year by the Associated Press, three times Texas Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, Best Sportscaster by United Press International and the Dallas Press Club, and TV Personality of the Year by American Women in Radio and Television.

It is with great honor we welcome Dale Hansen into the Silver Circle of the Lone Star Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his more than 30 years of service and outstanding contribution to television broadcasting.