Robert Hadlock is a weeknight anchor on KXAN News at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. Robert has worked in his present position at KXAN since 1990, making him the longest continuously serving news anchor in Austin television.
For years, KXAN News viewers have seen Robert reporting on numerous breaking news events, many connected with significant severe weather outbreaks. One of the most memorable and tragic was the tornado that hit the Williamson County town of Jarrell in 1997, taking 27 lives. In 2005, Robert reported from southeast Louisiana on the night of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. The following day he took KXAN viewers on a tour of the devastation in New Orleans aboard the station’s helicopter.
In 2001, Robert filed a report from New York City after the September 11th terrorist attacks.
He was one of the first Austin reporters on the scene in Nacogdoches when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas in 2003. Two years later he reported live from the Johnson Space Center on the return to flight for the shuttle program.
He was on hand for the tragic end of the Branch Davidian standoff outside Waco in 1993.
Robert covered the late Pope John Paul II on three pilgrimages for KXAN; Toronto in 2002, St. Louis in 1999 and Cuba in 1998. In Havana, he was one of the few American journalists, and the only one from Austin, allowed by the Cuban government to report live via satellite. His reports on the people of Cuba earned KXAN the prestigious “Texas Headliners Award” for Best Hard News coverage.
During his years at KXAN, he has served on the boards of several community groups and organizations and has emceed numerous charitable functions for organizations such as CASA of Travis County, Easter Seals-Central Texas, Catholic Charities, Hospice Austin, and the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. Robert is a graduate of UT Austin as well as a Life Member of the Ex-Student’s Association. In 2012 he spent two weeks in Europe as part of a broadcast journalism fellowship with RIAS Berlin Commission.