DC ExtraTime: Someone You Should Know - Chris Hansen

 FOLLOW-UP  Team MTV Meets Dateline
BY DC CUEVA                      

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

All the way back in 2017, we featured on here something that is as much as staple of the end of the work week as this site getting to post our MTV episode posts here. And if you are one of those who loves a good story and seems to be stuck at home on a Friday or Saturday night as we all are right now in this age of quarantine, then it's a good bet that you're glued to some true crime stories.

Thanks in part to Challenge & Road Rules OG Mark Long and him meeting veteran corespondent Keith Morrison, we got to write on the longest-running primetime show on NBC, Dateline. It began in 1992 and is still going strong heading towards thirty years on the air as far & away the network's most successful foray in the newsmagazine space and a constant in the Peacock's schedule. But there was a time where Dateline wasn't all about crime: it recovered from the mess over the rigged GM truck explosion to win awards and respect in having the standard news-mag mixture of investigations, interviews and features, and even some entertainment too.

Something that also was a staple of Dateline for several years (and as much anticipated as hearing Morrison's voice telling those bedtime crime stories) was a hybrid of a newsmagazine staple of hidden cameras being combined with a sting operation and catching those being caught in the act for suspicious online activity... one of the first shows on TV to explore this world years before Catfish did exactly that. To Catch A Predator featured confrontations with adults presumed to have had sex with a minor in online chats, and them arriving at a house ultimately to be sent off in handcuffs as the result of a police sting operation seen in American living rooms.

Premiering in November 2004, To Catch A Predator aired as a sub-series within Dateline for four years on the network, with NBC affiliates in Milwaukee and Kansas City also airing their own local versions of the franchise. It also spawned other spin-offs following in the same format in catching con men, ID thieves and even those who steal iPods. To this day, it remains the best-known work of its host, Chris Hansen, who spent over three decades with NBC on the network & local level starting in Lansing, MI then reported & anchored in Tampa and Detroit before ultimately joining Dateline, and then becoming a staple of the talk show circuit because of his series.

Predator aside, Hansen also covered Columbine, 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing, TWA Flight 800 and the Unibomber. He also led investigations into Al-Qaeda's operations, Indian child slave labor, Chinese counterfeit prescription drug sales, and lack of airport security leading to the FAA revising their policies. But what inspired Hansen into journalism was the disappearance of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, and he gained his early stripes reporting on Detroit's Chambers Brothers drug ring for local TV there. And since he left NBC, Hansen has continued to follow online predators while also looking at true crime through various TV shows and his new YouTube channel Have A Seat.

So you're thinking... "How could this corespondent who left us jaw-dropped at online predators being caught on TV somehow be shoehorned onto DCBLOG?"  As all of us are being quarantined right now, Mr. Hansen had the chance to plug the newest extended play album of Are You The One? Season 6 alum, Ethan "Emoney" Cohen. This amazing scoop in music promo led Season 8'er Kari Snow to say on Instagram, "Nobody can ever top this."  Check it out below, and check out Emoney's new album on streaming which he's dedicated in memory of his late AYTO castmate, Alexis Eddy.

STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND LISTEN TO @chrishansen. My album comes out tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/EudxiA8HYY

— Emoney (@EmoneySunset) April 20, 2020

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