Zev Shalev

Zev Shalev is an Israeli-South African television producer, who has worked predominantly in Canada and the United States.[1] He is most noted as the creator of the Canadian reality television series U8TV: The Lofters.[2]

Born in Israel, he moved with his family to South Africa in childhood, and began his career as a journalist and producer for Radio 702 in Johannesburg.[1] By the late 1990s he was working in Canada as producer of the morning news program Canada AM.[1] During his time as producer of that show, he became particularly noted for a feature which saw a man and a woman confined to a loft for one week with only a credit card and the Internet;[3] by 2001 he had expanded the concept into U8TV: The Lofters, which placed a group of young Canadians in a Real World-style communal housing situation while working in television production as hosts of various talk and entertainment newsmagazine series.[2]

Following the cancellation of The Lofters, he joined television station CKXT-TV ("Toronto 1") as producer of its nightly news.[4] After the station cancelled its news programming in 2005, he moved to the Global Television Network to become the founding producer of Entertainment Tonight Canada.[5] By 2008 he held the senior role of vice-president of strategic programming and senior executive producer of information and entertainment programming for all CanWest Media broadcast properties,[6] when he left that role to become producer of The Early Show for CBS in the United States.[7]

He left CBS in at the end of 2009,[8] and joined Harpo Productions in 2010 to become executive producer of The Nate Berkus Show.[9] He then moved to WPIX-TV in 2013 to become executive producer of its morning newscast,[10]

After leaving WPIX in 2015 he launched his own production firm, Narativ Studios, and returned to Canada as producer of The Weekly with Wendy Mesley.

  1. ^ a b c John Haslett Cuff, "Who's that kid running Canada AM? Zev Shalev cut his teeth in South African journalism when barely out of his teens. Now 26, he runs Canada's most-watched morning show". The Globe and Mail, November 21, 1998.
  2. ^ a b "Lofty experiment for young TV hosts: Cast of U8TV will live, work for a year in front of the cameras". Ottawa Citizen, January 10, 2001.
  3. ^ Andrew Flynn, "A guy, a girl and a computer: Two strangers see if they can survive with only the Internet and a credit card". St. Catharines Standard, November 25, 1999.
  4. ^ Murray Whyte, "Pop goes the news; Zev Shalev, the brain behind Toronto 1's current affairs shows, admits to being celebrity obsessed 'I cried at the end of Joe Millionaire. The ranch, the horse, it was all so beautiful,' he tells Murray Whyte". Toronto Star, December 20, 2003.
  5. ^ "New producer and program for Global". National Post, May 19, 2005.
  6. ^ Alex Bozikovic, "Deals and moves in Canadian arts". The Globe and Mail, March 17, 2008.
  7. ^ "The Zen Art of Early Show's Zev Shalev". New York Observer. Observer.com. Archived from the original on June 19, 2009. Retrieved September 13, 2010.
  8. ^ Colby Hall, "Internal Memo: Early Show Executive Producer Zev Shalev Is Out". Mediaite, December 9, 2009.
  9. ^ Etan Vlessing, "Shalev to produce for Oprah". Playback, April 6, 2010.
  10. ^ Merrill Knox, "On the Move, 12/4/13". TVSpy, December 4, 2013.