Media News

Iconic Dallas media figure Dale Hansen returns to fray via new podcast

Mark Villasana, Lila Levy, Dale Hansen

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An iconic Dallas media figure is back on the air: Former longtime sportscaster Dale Hansen, who retired in 2021 after more than 40 years, is chattering again in a new podcast, "Dallas Dialogue With Dale Hansen," which made its debut on June 2.

The podcast is sponsored by Northwest Insurance Agency, a Dallas-based agency owned by Mark Villasana, an insurance professional with nearly 30 years of experience in the DFW market.

Villasana and his partner Lila Levy (AKA, CultureMap Dallas' own bagel expert) launched a separate podcast in April 2025, called "Beyond The Policy: Covering Everything Dallas," where they share insights on insurance, before segueing to interviews with chefs, artists, musicians politicians, and other local figures.

Hansen was one such figure they interviewed, and that May 26 episode turned out so well, they decided to launch a new monthly podcast starring Dale, providing the outspoken and opinionated Hansen with a platform for his hot takes on a variety of issues.

Here's a few words from Dale:

The return of Dale
""I've seen every movie and TV show that Netflix has to offer," Hansen says. "My wife and I travel quite a bit, and I play a lot of poker with the guys," Hansen says. "So when Lila called, what was supposed to be an hour turned into two and a half. I don't have a lot of conversations with people these days, so it's hard for me to shut up. Halfway through, they said, 'This is really good, would you mind if we make it into two parts.' And then they suggested the idea of doing the podcast once a month. That was the magic moment for me. I love writing commentaries. I was ready to retire for a lot of reasons, but that was the only thing I missed from my television days."

To zoom or not to zoom
"My wife and I live in Waxahachie," Hansen says. "It's not that far from Dallas. We're recording the show in Denton and I make the drive. I don't like having these conversations over Zoom. I know it's technically possible but i like to look the person in the face, and be there with Mark and Lila. Someday we might end up doing it over Zoom but for now, it gets me out of the house. It's about an hour and 15 minutes. Although halfway there, I start thinking, 'Maybe we ought to do this over Zoom.'"

First topic
"The first one I did was about the divide in America — how we've allowed politics to divide us unlike anything in our history," Hansen says. "We've been divided before but never lost friends. But because of my self-identified 'liberal' leaning, I've had conservatives kick me out of a card game. I don't get invited to dinner parties. My sister and I didn't talk for nine years. I blame a single man, Donald Trump, for causing this divide. Previously, you could still maintain friendships. And it goes both ways. I have a liberal friend, we were going to eat at Javier's, and the question was, 'Who else is coming,' because they won't attend if certain people are there."

Future Dale
"Future topics include the Luka and the Dallas Mavericks, and the technology of the world we live in -- phones, computers, Facebook. I do see some of the benefits, but how many influencers does one country need?" Hansen says.

"Bottom line, I am doing a great deal of what I did at channel 8 — talk about social issues, sports, although even when I was talking about sports, I would always weave in social aspects. I just love sparking the conversation. A friend told me that his buddy said, 'The hell with Dale Hansen, he thinks he's right about everything and he's just not.' Well, of course I think I'm right — I wouldn't say it if I didn't think I was right. I didn't understand why that was supposed to offend me."

"Dallas Dialogue With Dale" can be viewed on YouTube or heard via Spotify.

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Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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