WFAA Extends Sports Anchor Dale Hansen’s Contract

Tegna-owned ABC affiliate WFAA Dallas (DMA 5) has extended the contract of longtime sports anchor Dale Hansen through 2018.

Hansen will anchor his nightly sports reports on WFAA’s 10 p.m. news broadcasts Monday through Friday, as well as appear on key television specials, including the station’s Sunday night Sports Special, to match up with significant Dallas Cowboys games and other events during the year.

“After 36 years of continuous service, we are pleased that Dale will continue with WFAA, on a reduced schedule, offering his distinctive perspective on sports and culture,” said WFAA President-GM Mike Devlin. “Dale’s thoughts contain wisdom, and are often provocative in tone. However, they are consistently original, and unduplicated.”

“I have spent half of my life at WFAA,” said Hansen, who turned 69 in August. “My biggest challenge may be whether I can live to see the end of this new contract,” he added with a laugh.

Since joining WFAA in 1983, Hansen has impacted the local sports scene as much as the many athletes, coaches and team owners he has covered.

His “Unplugged” segments are often must-see TV for North Texas viewers, as well as followers on digital and social media platforms.  

“The intersection between sports and society has never been more relevant, and for the past few years that has occupied a significant portion of my nightly reports,” said Hansen. “I look forward to more.”

Dale Hansen’s Sports Special, the station’s weekend wrap-up program, helped transform local high school sports coverage in the market.

For 11 years, Hansen supplied broadcast color for the Dallas Cowboys radio network during their Super Bowl runs of the 1990’s, and currently delivers a steady stream of social media content generating buzz in the market and beyond.

The WFAA sports anchor has been recognized for his work, twice as Associated Press Sportscaster of the Year, and three times as Texas Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.

He was also honored with the George Foster Peabody Award and duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for the station’s coverage of the pay-for-play scandal at Southern Methodist University during the 1980s.

Hansen began his broadcast career in small town Newton, Iowa, followed by a job as a sports reporter in Omaha, where he also hosted legendary University of Nebraska football’s Tom Osborne’s coaches show.