With Primetime coming out, and Hollywood’s busiest person, Robert Pattinson, portraying the intense host of to Catch A Predator, Chris Hansen has been firmly placed back in the limelight.
To Catch a Predator was on air from 2004 – 2007. During that time, 12 hidden camera sting operations were reportedly used to expose 300 men who were targeting minors on the internet.
As Primetime portrays, the show went a step further, and could be perceived to have crossed a line during its most high-profile case ever. The sting operation to catch Bill Conradt Jr., a local assistant district attorney, ended with Conradt, the suspected predator, shooting himself as SWAT team members, followed by the NBC camera crew, entered his house.
After the death of her brother, Conradt’s sister, Patricia, sued NBC for more than $100 million. She alleged that the network persuaded law enforcement to carry out an overly-aggressive arrest in order to secure more dramatic footage. The lawsuit was settled in 2008 and the terms were not disclosed.
Despite the abrupt and morbid ending to the show, Chris Hansen has remained steadfast in his belief that the show was right to do what it did, and how it did it. “At the end of the day, we had proved our point.” Hansen said in an interview with TIME. Chris also told David Osit that they were “serving a greater purpose.”
But Chris Hansen wasn’t done with catching people in the act. In 2007 Hansen released his book, To Catch a Predator: Protecting Your Kids from Online Enemies Already in Your Home, and appeard in spin-offs of the original concept for NBC, To Catch a Con Man and To Catch an I.D. Thief. In 2013, NBC and Chris Hansen parted ways.
Finding predators was clearly still a priority for Hansen though, and in 2015 he launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund a return to his original format, this time called Hansen vs. Predator, saying “There is a pent-up demand from viewers for another investigation, and from a technology standpoint, the landscape has really changed since we did the last one.”
Chris quickly raised almost $100,000, from over a thousand contributors, with donors being promised rewards for their offerings, such as coffee mugs, t-shirts, signed books, credits on the show, and personalised videos.
With funds secured, in 2015 Hansen and his team conducted the first ever crowd-funded sex sting operation, in which they caught 10 alleged predators. However, a year after the Kickstarter campaign, donors had received nothing, and there was no footage either.
Eventually, in 2016, Hansen vs. Predator would be released on the Crime Watch Daily website, with the episodes available on True Crime News’ YouTube channel and local news channels.
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10 years on from the Kickstarter campaign, the comments on the website suggest that donors have still not received any of their promised items for helping support Hansen vs. Predator…
More recently, Chris Hansen has voiced his dissaproval with the film Primetime, saying, in an interview with USA TODAY, “They wanted to exploit the brand that I’ve built over the last 45 years. You can decide whether that’s ethical or legal or identity theft or however you look at it. But it seems a little exploitive, as Hollywood often is.”
Hansen now runs a streaming network called TruBlu. The description on their website reads: Spearheaded by Chris Hansen, we examine scams, catch predators and bring you a fresh supply of gripping crime programs and documentaries.
Hansen reportedly purchased advertising spots for TruBlu before every screen showing Primetime.
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