Chuffed that my approval means so much to you but really there is no need.
Never change, Farmer, won’t you not?
Una Mullally on Andrew Hanlon, from last weeks Tribune.
Profile: Andrew Hanlon, TV3 Head Of News
Always up for a few scoops
What was to have been a highlight in his quest to up TV3’s profile went badly wrong for its head of news when the public reacted with distaste to its report on Brian Lenihan’s illness. Una Mullally reports
'At the end of the day, the story was around, and it was only a matter of time before it would come out." Such was TV3’s head of news, Andrew Hanlon’s attitude to the criticism surrounding his decision to break an informal embargo that Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan had been diagnosed with cancer. TV3 ran the story on St Stephen’s Day, even though political correspondents were made aware that the minister or his department would not be commenting on his health until the new year. The news was out in media circles, but most respected Lenihan’s need for time over the Christmas holidays to deal with the matter privately.
Bray-born Hanlon was probably dreaming of headlines screaming about TV3’s ‘exclusive’ in the Sunday newspaper’s the next day – indeed, the Sundays were informed that the network was to run an “important” story and told to hold their breath.
Instead, the sound of something backfiring over Ballymount resounded when the 5.30pm news whirred into action. The coverage was a mess. The five-and-a-half-minute special at the top of the bulletin on St Stephen’s Day featured Ursula Halligan bumbling her way through a live report from government buildings in which she referred to the minister in the past tense followed by anchor Colette Fitzpatrick conducting a live interview with consultant oncologist Professor John Crown outside St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin.
It all made for rather uncomfortable viewing, coupled with the shocking information about the minister’s health. The dispersing of two camera crews for live links would indicate a meticulously planned, if poorly executed, attempt at creating some kind of ‘event’ news story.
Instead of the press backslapping TV3 for such a scoop and other networks gleefully following up, its enthusiasm for running such a potentially tragic piece of personal information during Christmas was greeted with stunned muffles. RTE’s Six One bulletin placed it low down in its coverage, scrambling to the moral high ground with the agility of a mountain goat as soon as it was obvious that TV3 misjudged the ‘story’. RTE’s political correspondent David Davin-Power enthusiastically slammed the rival network’s behaviour, which should make for interesting coffee breaks in the Dil given that he shares an office with Halligan. The next day it made front-page news, but papers danced around the story, and already questions about TV3 – and Hanlon’s judgement – were being posed.
For people who know, who work with, and have worked with Hanlon, his decision-making in this instance doesn’t come as a shock.
Hanlon is, first and foremost, a hack. Unashamedly commercial and tabloid, he drives the Fox News-like side of TV3.
Hanlon started his career in journalism in 1986, with his now nemesis RTE. In 1988, he got a break with Millennium Radio, a station the national broadcaster set up to mark the Dublin millennium. There, he headed up the news department. He left Montrose a year later for 98FM, where he held the position of chief executive. Interestingly, one of his first recruits was the fresh-faced political correspondent Conor Lenihan, Brian’s younger brother, who had returned from London where he had worked as a reporter.
From 98FM, Hanlon was one of the founding members of the now defunct Independent Network News (INN) a news organisation that provided local radio stations around the country with reports and bulletins.
It was at INN that Hanlon would gain the vital experience at running a news network full of enthusiastic employees at a remarkably low cost, a business model he would eventually impose on the news department at TV3. Anecdotes abound from his time at the fledgling news network. One centres around Hanlon’s attitude to cutting costs. In the new INN newsroom, they had the cheapest printer imaginable, a dot-matrix machine that made it impossible to submit bulletins to print five minutes before broadcast, as is the norm in radio. Instead, they had to submit it 20 minutes before the top of the hour.
However, according to staff, Hanlon’s office had a laser printer for his own use. A former colleague said: “His philosophy is ‘I work you to the bone, I pay you as little as I can get away with, and if you don’t like it, there’s the door’.”
From INN, Hanlon made the leap to TV3, setting up the newsroom and bringing in staff including his close friend Alan Cantwell (only two original members of reporter staff remain, Cantwell and Halligan). From the rest of the media, the station’s focus on a younger target audience fed news by glamorous female reporters with a tabloid angle drew delight (tabloids) and ire (broadsheets). Most reporters in TV3 exist in a perpetual state of poorly-paid job insecurity. Hanlon is known to remind reporters of an endless queue of younger, blonder, cheaper wannabe reporters snapping at their heels should they dare ask for a raise.
That’s not to say Hanlon doesn’t have friends and allies at the station. He is described as charming and charismatic almost as often as he is said to be intimidating, as well as being good fun and generous on nights out, often putting his credit card behind the bar for staff.
Recent close colleagues included Claire Byrne and Lorraine Keane. Both relationships soured in the end, however. When Byrne netted a job with Newstalk when the station went quasi-national in 2006, Hanlon and TV3 secured a High Court injunction against her working for other broadcasters for a period of time, and instructed her to work out the notice of her contract. A bust-up was also rumoured – although never confirmed by either parties – to be one of the reason’s Xpos front woman Lorraine Keane quit the station last year.
Keeping Hanlon in line is the deputy director of news, Bob Hughes, who has a slightly conservative attitude to reporting the news, (one TV3 worker describes them as having a “good cop/bad cop” dynamic) and TV3 chief executive Dave McRedmond, who takes an interest in newsroom goings-on.
Neither share Hanlon’s love of bellowing across the newsroom floor or jostling with producers. Obsessed with exclusives, he is no doubt livid at how what was meant to be a TV3 coup is now being hammered by the public and media alike. “I think his biggest problem is just saying ‘do it!’” another former colleague said. “He’s obsessed with exclusives. If he has a sniff of one, he doesn’t give a sh*t about anything. He doesn’t take what other people say on board.”
Married to crime journalist turned novelist Liz Allen, the couple live in south Dublin with their daughters. Abrasive, ballsy and argumentative mightn’t be the most jolly of personality traits, but Hanlon also does an awfully good job at running a cut-price newsroom, and keeping his reporter’s names in the papers and social pages, thus creating national profiles for his anchors. While his staff are used to being reminded about those snapping at their heels, perhaps it’s now Hanlon’s turn to face the full growl of a public angered at one ‘do it’ too many.
January 3, 2010
Whats the issue here - that they broke the story on Stephens Day? :rolleyes:
A lot of media hacks with grudges against TV3 it seems.
[quote=“KIB man”]Whats the issue here - that they broke the story on Stephens Day? :rolleyes:
A lot of media hacks with grudges against TV3 it seems.[/quote]
There’s definitely an air of people happy to see this fella and his cronies fall on their face thats for sure. However thats not my issue, but its an interesting look at Hanlon for those who wouldnt be familiar with him.