Entertainment

The hardest working woman in TV news

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When Tamron Hall was a kid growing up in Luling, Texas, her idol was Johnny Carson. She would put on talent shows with her cousins for their neighborhood. They would twirl a baton or sing, and Hall would introduce the acts. When she wasn’t emceeing, the small-town girl would hone her interviewing skills by hanging out with her two 90-year-old neighbors, known as Mama Susie and Lovey, asking them, well, just about everything.

“I grew a reputation for always asking questions and being nosy,” says Hall in a Texas twang.

Fast-forward 30 years or so, and Hall, 42, now asks questions for a living as one of the most in-demand anchors on television. At NBC, Hall hosts MSNBC’s “NewsNation with Tamron Hall” and fills in for “Today” co-hosts. She also helms “Dateline” on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, and, this fall, you’ll be able to find her on “Deadline: Crime With Tamron Hall” on Investigation Discovery.

There’s even been some speculation in the blogosphere that Hall will eventually take a permanent seat on the “Today” show couch as a co-host. The embattled morning program could certainly use more Hall, who has a knack for switching from hard news to silly, conversational segments with her fellow anchors. Gawker.com recently called her “a human party” because of her easy on-air chemistry.

But for now, the Investigation Discovery channel is lucky to get her for its crime show. “They’ve [NBC] obviously got additional growth plans for her beyond her successful show at MSNBC,” says Henry Schleiff, Investigation Discovery president and general manger. “She’s been courted by outside networks because everybody is seeing the emergence of a really talented, substantive person.”

On the new show, Hall will interview detectives, prosecutors and psychological-profile experts about real crimes. Sadly, it’s a subject that’s close to home — her older sister, Renate, was murdered in Texas in 2004. The case remains unsolved.

The year after Renate’s death, Hall’s father died of pneumonia. “My father died with great anguish and grappled with the loss of my sister and the circumstances,” says Hall. “It broke his heart.”

Now, she hopes to shed light on similar crimes.

“I was surprised how emotional it was telling my mom when I got the show,” Hall says. “She started crying, actually, and said maybe this was God’s way of allowing me to help get my dad the closure that he desired while he was here.”

Hall’s journey from Luling to NYC started with a general assignment TV-reporting job in Bryan, Texas, after graduating from Temple University. Six months later she landed a job in Dallas. Then, in 1997, Debra Juarez, news director at the Fox affiliate in Chicago, hired her.

“She’s one of those people who, when she walks into the room, everybody notices,” says Juarez.

“I watch her every day now. She has the ability to do a hard interview and go after a subject . . . and also to make that turn, have fun and bring a unique quality to the features stories.”

One of Hall’s biggest interviews in Chicago was with Sen. Barack Obama in 2007, shortly before he announced he was running for president. Not long after, she received a network job offer in NYC.

NBC’s then-president, Steve Capus, laid it out in a call, asking Hall, “Do you want to be a big fish in a little pond or do you want to try something new?” She chose the latter, joining MSNBC, where she was eventually given her own show.

A natural, she’s a pop-culture and news junkie who says she goes to sleep with her TV on and her iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and MacBook next to her bed.

“I can’t keep up with everything that she does,” says Ilyas Kirmani, Hall’s “NewsNation” producer.

Hall manages her chaotic schedule with no personal assistant or publicist. And she even finds time for dating.

“Under the legal definition, technically I am single,” says Hall with a big smile when asked if she has anyone special in her life. “But I’m a normal girl in the city, I like to have my fun. I’m less of a Samantha [from ‘Sex and the City’], though.”

In spite of all of the buzz surrounding her, Hall says she’s just enjoying the ride. Literally.

She spends her free time riding her orange fold-up bike around town.

And her next goal isn’t news-related: She wants to teach her manicurist’s son to ride a bike.

“He’s 10, and never learned!” she says. “As a kid from Texas, it always amazes me when city kids don’t know how to ride a bike.” kstorey@nypost.com