Conor McAnally

Conor McAnally (born 24 March 1952) is an Irish television writer, producer and director. He worked in Ireland up to 1989, moved to London and worked in the United Kingdom until 2004 when he moved to the United States. He is based in Austin, Texas. His productions have won more than 20 awards including 5 British Academy Awards and 3 from the Royal Television Society. He is best known for music and entertainment programs and is an expert in live broadcasts.^[1]

Early life

McAnally was born in Dublin, Ireland to actors Ray McAnally and Ronnie Masterson. He is the eldest of four children. His brother Aonghus is a radio and television presenter/producer at RTÉ in Ireland. He was educated at St. Josephs's Primary and Secondary Schools in Fairview, Dublin and then attended Rathmines College of Commerce Dublin Institute of Technology where he graduated in Journalism.

Career

McAnally joined Independent Newspapers in Dublin in 1970 as a junior reporter and worked for the daily Irish Independent, Evening Herald and the weekly Sunday Independent. During a 5-year newspaper career he was an investigative reporter, crime reporter, health and social welfare correspondent, deputy motoring correspondent and a columnist. He won the Journalist of the Year award in 1972 for breaking a story on how the Irish Republican Army was training volunteers to fight in Northern Ireland. He met his first wife Roisin Finnigan at the Independent where she worked as a copy taker.

In 1975 McAnally joined the Irish Broadcast service RTÉ as a radio and television reporter. He worked in the Newsroom for two years before moving into program presenting on The Politics Program and Youngline. As the host of Youngline he was the first person to introduce the fledgling U2 to a TV audience. In 1980 McAnally became RTÉ's youngest Producer/Director. He produced Ireland's Eye, Non Stop Pop, Moving Hearts in Concert, Stockton's Wing in Concert, Christmas at the Castle, and directed a number of other shows.^[2][3][4]

In 1982 he left to form Spearhead Productions and directed 152 shows in his first year. In 1984 McAnally joined forces with radio DJ Vincent Hanley (aka. Fab Vinny) to form Green Apple Productions where they created MT USA, Europe's first terrestrial music video TV series and Hanley became Ireland's first VJ. The show was broadcast on Sunday afternoons and repeated on Friday nights, and continued until 1987 when Hanley died of an AIDS-related illness. McAnally and the other Green Apple partner Bill Hughes decided to end the program series rather than continue without Hanley. Shows at Green Apple included Rapid Roulette, Finding Fax Future, The Write Stuff. In 1987/1988 he made a trilogy of documentaries on AIDS. He would later describe them as a tribute to his friend and partner Vincent Hanley.^[5][6]

In 1987 Green Apple Productions merged with Strongbow Film and Television Productions, a producer of documentaries, feature films and TV dramas. McAnally left Strongbow in 1989 and moved to London where he freelanced as a producer and director. He worked with The Children's Channel directing 12 shows a week for their British Satellite Broadcasting channel. He joined Buena Vista Productions (Disney) in London and produced The Disney Club for ITV for 3 seasons. After Disney he developed, wrote, produced and directed Over The Wall at Brian Waddell Productions for the BBC. The executive producer of Over The Wall Peter Murphy introduced him to British Pop duo Ant & Dec and he became their producer for The Ant & Dec Show at the BBC, Ant & Dec Unzipped at Channel 4, SM:TV Live and CD:UK at ITV. He headed up Blaze Television at Zenith Entertainment Ltd.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]}

In 2004 McAnally moved his home to Texas and commuted to London. In 2005 DIRECTV in Los Angeles commissioned CD:USA a music show based on the CD:UK format.^[13] McAnally moved to Los Angeles to run the show and a year later Blaze was sold to US media company Shout! Factory at which point McAnally became managing director and ran the company until the end of 2009.

McAnally created ConorMac Productions in 2010. The company is based in Bastrop, Texas, just outside Austin and specialises in multi-camera directing and producing music, entertainment and other genres.

References