John Shea (5/90 WIOU)
Excerpt from Sun Sentinel 5/30/90: John Shea | WIOU
Try, Try Again Cbs Will Audition Nine New Series This Fall, While Axing Seven Of Nine From Last Fall.
May 30, 1990|By TOM JICHA, TV/Radio Writer
CBS might not be better next season but it will be different. The fall schedule announced on Monday includes nine new series -- four sitcoms and five dramas -- as well as NBC refugee The Hogan Family.
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WIOU is the latest attempt to base a successful drama in a broadcast news setting. John Shea, Helen Shaver and Mariette Hartley head a large ensemble.
© Sun Sentinel
Excerpt from LA Times 7/24/90: John Shea
'Real Life' May Be a Real Hit for Jane Pauley
July 24, 1990|RICK DU BROW
FAST COPY: Strong casting in CBS' new fall series "WIOU," about a failing local TV news department--John Shea, Helen Shaver, Mariette Hartley, Harris Yulin and Dick Van Patten.
© LA Times
Excerpt from New York Magazine 8/1/90: John Shea
Any Wednesday
John Leonard
But if WIOU gets those ratings, I suspect the reason will be not so much its newsroom "relationships"--the reporter (Helen Shaver) who deserves to be an anchor; the executive producer (Mariette Hartley) who thinks she's better than the news director (John Shea); the bow-tied weatherman (Dick Van Patten) who panders to senior citizens; the Bryant Gumbel wannabee (Phil Morris)-- indentured as they are the predictable and the obvious.
© New York Magazine
Excerpt from The Prescott Courier 10/19/90: John Shea
WIOU Brings Wit to Newsroom
WIOU marks a huge turning point in actor John Shea's career. His first venture into series television is set to debut Wednesday, Oct. 24, on CBS, unless the World Series requires a seventh game. Throughout his acting career, the Yale Drama School graduate has garnered an impressive list of Broadway and feature film credits, with Broadway's 1976 production of Yentl and filmdom's 1982 Missing among them.
But a recent painful event, the loss of a close relative, prompted Shea to put work on hold for six months to re-evaluate his life and the direction his career had taken. He realized he needed to make his name more well known, but he did not want to sacrifice his standards of quality in the process. He's hoping, and with good reason, that WIOU will help him attain that goal. "I wanted to do this now instead of later, because when someone close to you dies, you realize just how fragile the whole thing is. It sort of hits you in a place that you never really knew before. It sort of wakes you up and shakes you up and you start thinking very, very seriously about how you're spending your time and what you want to accomplish." Shea explained.
While his acting credits are impressive, Shea said he realized he had little name recognition, and that was hurting his chances to pursue his talents for directing. "I felt like I'd been orbiting. I've been doing a lot of things that are offbeat these last few years, kind of off-Broadway things and art films, and things that weren't particularly commercial or successful or mainstream. And I realized that it had come time in my career where I had to do something like that."
Having been identified with heavy roles such as the title character in HBO's The Impossible Spy, a young American killed in the Chilean revolution in the film Missing, and a Nazi in NBC's Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil, to name a few, Shea said he looked for a role that blended comedy with drama. After reading 30 scripts for this fall's new shows, Shea knew there was only one role that fit him, that of news director Hank Zaret in WIOU. Zaret is trying to pull a fading big-city television station out of the ratings cellar while coping with the egos and eccentricities of his staff. The story-lines can focus on current social and political topics, which appealed to Shea's serious side, while at the same time provide humorous moments.
© The Prescott Courier
Excerpt from Sun Sentinel 10/24/90: John Shea
Tv Journalism Takes A Beating
October 24, 1990|By TOM JICHA, TV/Radio Writer
The nominal hero is Hank Zaret, the incoming news director of WNDY-TV, a slumping network-owned station in Chicago. (It might be useful to remember that Pratt and Eisendrath worked for the CBS-owned station in Chicago.) Wink Martindale made Hank Zaret a star. A popular game show emceed by Martindale delivered a huge lead-in to the local news at a small California station where Hank was the news director. He parlayed his small-market ratings success into a job with the network in New York, where a fatal mistake got him busted back to WNDY, where he had begun his career. When he arrives, WNDY News is running fourth to reruns of Mr. Ed.
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Hank and Kelby, played by John Shea and Helen Shaver, have a past, and apparently a future, away from the station. WIOU is the first series for Shea, who has an impressive credit sheet. ``I`ve been on Broadway, been on the West End, starred in seven feature films and 10 miniseries and TV movies. I`ve never even done a pilot; never wanted to,`` he said. ``I definitely do want to do this. Every year I`ve been offered pilots; last season, there were three or four. I`ve always said no because I`ve never found one like this that combines the ability to be serious and comic at the same time.``
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WIOU
AIRS: Wednesday nights at 10 on WCIX-Ch. 6 and WPEC-Ch. 12 (premiere tonight).
STARRING: John Shea as Hank Zaret, the new news director of a low-rated Chicago TV station; Helen Shaver as anchorwoman Kelby Robinson; Haris Yulin as self-important, though fading, anchor Neal Frazier; Dick Van Ps news director Hank Zaret.
© Sun Sentinel
Entertainment Weekly 10/26/90: John Shea
TV Review: WIOU (1990)
By Ken Tucker Ken Tucker is critic-at-large for EW 10/26/90
WIOU is the nickname for WNDY, a failing big-city TV station. The station's news show hires a fresh news director (John Shea) to turn the station around in the ratings, and we meet WIOU's large cast through his eyes.
© Entertainment Weekly
Excerpt from The Free Lance-Star 10/27/90: John Shea & Chicago Sun-Times 11/7/90: John Shea
'WIOU' first TV series for theater actor John Shea
by Jerry Buck
Lost Angeles (AP) - John Shea finally agreed to do a television series, but not until he has read dozens of pilot scripts in search of a strong role. A veteran New York stage actor who has appeared in several films, Shea is making his TV series debut on CBS in "WIOU," set in the highly competitive environment of local television news. Shea stars as Hank Zaret, a newly hired news director battling low ratings at a network affiliate station in Chicago. The role of a key man in a tough spot mirrors Shea's own apprehension about working in TV. "I didn't watch television, I didn't like it, and I didn't want to do a series," Shea says. "I felt television could destroy me. I came out of the New York theater and had elitist attitudes."
But Shea, an energetic man, found that he sometimes spent six months doing nothing between plays and movies. "I was getting bored," he says. "I looked for alternatives, and my agent said a TV series was one way to solve the problem. After I won an Emmy for playing the attorney in 'Baby M.' the networks started pursuing me in earnest. I turned down everything, but decided to educate myself. I started reading the pilot scripts."
Shea began splitting his time between stage and films when he made his movie debut in "Missing" in 1982. Since then he has appeared in "Stealing Home," "A New Life," "Unsettled Land" and "Windy City." His TV films include "The Impossible Spy," "Family Reunion," "Small Sacrifices," "Kennedy," "Baby M." and "Do You Know the Muffin Man?" He compares the theater to sculpture and television to watercolors. "On stage you're constantly chipping away at an image to discover and reveal an ideal form, which is never achieved," he says. "In television, like watercolors, you have to know what you want and do it very quickly.
"So I had a jump when 'WIOU' came around. Last winter I read 30 to 40 scripts. To me 'WIOU' was clearly the best for many reasons. I got a lot of scripts for half-hour comedies, but I didn't want to do a sitcom. I wanted a role that would challenge me.
"I didn't want to be the sole star of an hour drama. I've heard too many horror stories of how actors get burned out. I wanted to do an ensemble show."
Now he's working with some of the people who helped refine ensemble dramas in the early 1980s with such multi-Emmy winners as "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere." Shea heads a cast in "WIOU" that includes Helen Shaver as a reporter pushing to become an anchorwoman. Shaver is also the former girlfriend of Shea's character. Others in the large cast are Harris Yulin as an anchorman whose ego matches his inflated salary, Mariette Hartley as an executive producer who feels she should have gotten Shea's job, and Dick Van Patten as a popular weatherman who reaps a fortune for personal appearances. It's a volatile mixture of drama and black comedy that goes up against NBC's hot police show "Hunter" and ABC's lyrical "Cop Rock" on Wednesday.
Shea says one of the things that attracted him to "WIOU" was its similarity to the only shows he ever watched, "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere." They were also ensemble shows that blended drama and comedy, and they were developed at MTM when it was headed by Grant Tinker.
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"My character is a man obsessed with details, and so am I," Shea says. "I was involved in the casting. I'm involved in the writing. I'm a news junkie and I collect stories. I have a master's degree in directing from Yale, and I see this as an opportunity to direct again.
"Hank's a former boy wonder who's taken smaller stations to the top. I think of him as a news gangster who goes after the story at any cost. He took a fall in New York when he rushed into a story that turned out to be wrong. Now he's wary. Everybody's on his neck. He has to bring up the station's ratings, but he has to watch his ethics."
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"I made my debut in 'Missing,' which was a prestigious picture with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. I couldn't find a worthy successor. I turned down a lot of things, went my own way, and as a result lost my momentum," Shea says. "I did a lot of art films abroad that no one has ever seen. So in a way I'm entering the culture of my country in a big way. What I haven't done before is mainstream work, and I thought a television series would do that immediately. None of my features were big commercial successes.
"This is a turning point. I'm older now, ready for a new phase of my life."
© The Free Lance-Star
Excerpt from Eugene Register-Guard 12/31/90: John Shea
Actor puts reality into role of TV news director
By Seli Groves
John Shea, one of the stars of "WIOU" devoted a good deal of time to researching his role of news director Hank Zaret before the cameras rolled on the series' first episode. "I realized how everyone concerned goes through pretty much what actors go through before they go on stage," Shea says. "The sense of anticipation - it's there. So is the sense of excitement that you feel before the curtain goes up. And so is the dread. You're coming on live in front of all those people out there. You hope nothing goes wrong. Even more, you hope that if something happens, you can deal with it. You think of everything that can go wrong...and while you're waiting, you hear someone counting down: 'three, two, one' - and suddenly, there's the red light and, bang, you're on, in front of millions of people.
"When I started researching the news director's role, I began to feel as if I were in one of those last scenes of 'The Wizard of Oz.' For me, the news had always been like Oz where someone like the Wizard is forever telling the truth and is all powerful and almighty. Then suddenly, the little dog in the film pulls back the curtain, and you see that it's all being done by a gray-haired little old man who is pulling switches to make all this magic come about. I can remember feeling sort of let down. I recall thinking, "it's not magic. It's not all wonderful.' But then you realize that you've just seen the truth, and the truth is that Oz is about human beings. And it's even more miraculous when you understand that all these miraculous things were not done by a godlike figure, but by some human beings running around to create the illusion that it was all done by someone who could control mysterious forces.
"I learned a lot about the way the news comes in and goes out and that the magic is not the technology as much as the people who make the decisions and take the chances. Now, when I look at the news and see reports coming, say from the Middle East, I know that these guys are bouncing images off satellites that are orbiting around us at thousands of miles an hour, and 36,000 miles up in space, and these news people are out there, 15,000 miles away and just as scared of getting hit by mustard gas as the military personnel.
"But you see them on camera pretending they're not scared. And you realize that they're performing electronic acrobatics that weren't around even a few years ago. When you think about it, a lot of remarkable things are going on just to bring me the news from halfway around the world from where it's happening."
Before the almost Oz-like wonders of modern technology, there were town criers. Before that, bards going from castle to castle carried news about affairs of state (and other affairs as well). "We've always wanted to know what's going on," Shea said. "The only major difference between the past and today is that we get the news more quickly, and from greater distances. But essentially, what a news reporter does today isn't very different from the Native American who sent smoke signals from a mountain top to alert people that the buffalo are coming."
Shea's character is the news director, the person who doesn't usually turn up on camera, but as he says: "He's the person who can decide what goes on the air and what doesn't. And that's not as easy as it sounds. He's got to choose from that stampede of news that comes in every day. It's a position of great power, but also of great responsibility."
Some critics have said that news editors act like censors. True? Shea replies "That's not quite accurate. Censorship implies making moral judgments about the news. A news director like Hank doesn't do that. What he does is decide which information to send out based on importance, on what's interesting and not interesting to the audience, what they're going to watch and what they won't watch. There are issues that are obviously important and watchable, and they're aired almost automatically. Then there are the marginal stories, and that's where the news director's choices may be made more on personal preferences."
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Born in New Hampshire and raised in Massachusetts, Shea entered Bates College on football and debating scholarships. An injury ended his football career. He took courses in the arts and earned a B.A. in theater. At Yale, he studied directing as well as acting. In 1976, he debuted on Broadway in "Yentl" and went on to a successful career in the theater before turning to films and TV. Much of what Shea has done leaves people thinking about issues they may not have thought much about before - such as government terrorism in "Missing" and child abuse in TV's "Do You Know the Muffin Man," and AIDS in the London production of Larry Kramer's "Normal Heart," and, of course, the Baby M controversy. Can he find the same sort of social expression through a TV series about a fictional TV news show? "That's easy to answer," Shea said. "What attracted me to 'WIOU' was the quality of the writing; it had the ring of truth. The writers knew what they were writing about. Also, since it involved the news, we could deal with political and social issues. The truth still gets told."
© Eugene Register-Guard
Excerpt from Sun Sentinel 3/13/91: John Shea
Tinker Hoping To Salvage A Future For `Wiou`
March 13, 1991|By TOM JICHA, TV/Radio Writer
Under normal circumstances, WIOU`s minuscule ratings would make it a dead piece for renewal, but Tinker`s involvement gives the series weight, especially with him reminding Sagansky of how patience paid off for them at NBC.
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ON TV Program: WIOU
With: John Shea, Helen Shaver, Mariette Hartley
Airs: Wednesday, 10 p.m., WCIX-Ch. 6 and WPEC-Ch. 12
© Sun Sentinel
Excerpt from Lethbridge Herald 8/23/92: John Shea
Touche, John Shea: Actor heads toward producing
By MARGARET M. McOOVERN
Shea has lived most of his life in New York but moved to California two years ago when he took on the hunky lead in the series "WIOU." "I did 18 episodes then Orion went bankrupt so they pulled the plug on us," explains Shea, who stayed on in California to pick up more work. He's since made five films.
© Lethbridge Herald
Excerpt from Chicago Sun-Times 11/28/93: John Shea and The Free Lance Star
Article: John Shea Relishes Evil Role
Chicago Sun-Times November 28, 1993 Author: Scott Williams
Fun did not enter into his last foray into series TV, CBS' earnest "WIOU," which lasted for 13 episodes in the 1990-91 season. He played news director Hank Zaret of beleaguered, bottom-ranked TV station WNDY. "I never shed a tear when it was canceled," Shea said. "I tried to give Hank's character an edge, but they kept writing him as the hero, the nice guy. It was boring!"
© Chicago Sun-Times
Excerpt from Los Angeles Times 4/10/94: John Shea & Orlando Sentinel 4/25/94
Also Starring : Villainy, Thy Name Is Lex
April 10, 1994 | SUSAN KING
Four years ago, he starred in the short-lived CBS show "WIOU," in which he played the earnest news director of a TV station. Shea took that series because he saw it as a chance to a play a complicated anti-hero. "But they kept writing him to be a hero," Shea says. "That wasn't particularly interesting. When 'WIOU' folded, I was relieved because I had a chance to do four or five films and in each of the ones I chose I played a more complicated character, sometimes a questionable character." Those films include the Lifetime remake of the Hitchcock thriller "Notorious," the USA movie "Lady Killer" and the Disney hit "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid."
© Los Angeles Times
Excerpt from Toronto Star 5/21/94: John Shea, posted by amac on Lois and Clark Message Board
By Jim Bawden Toronto Star May 21, 1994
So four years ago Shea moved his family to Los Angeles determined at long last to play the Hollywood game. He'd already won an Emmy for the TV movie Baby M and he was not unknown in television land. He accepted a mainstream part in the new series WIOU. ``We started off okay but it was an ensemble drama and with so many characters it takes time to make it. One day on location I saw the producer watching a TV set and shaking his dead. The U.S. had just bombed Baghdad and he said we were finished. We got pre-empted for three weeks running by the Iraqi war and then came back in a different time slot.'' That was the end of WIOU.
© Toronto Star