TV Talk: Ashley Zilka exits WTAE; Cuban to leave ‘Shark Tank’; RMU grad on ‘Squid Game’
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Channel 4 general assignment reporter Ashley Zilka, who joined the station just two years ago, posted to Facebook this week that she’s leaving the station Thursday and leaving TV news altogether to join her family’s baking supply business, Zilka & Company.
Zilka grew up in Rostraver Township and graduated from Duquesne University. She came to WTAE after stints at KSTP-TV in Minneapolis as well as jobs in Cincinnati, Ohio; Rochester, N.Y., and Zanesville, Ohio.
Robert Morris grad on “Squid Game: The Challenge”
Kittanning’s Rick Mercurio isn’t the only competitor on Netflix’s “Squid Game: The Challenge” with Western Pennsylvania ties.
Chad Van Horn, a bankruptcy attorney who lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., grew up in Monroeville. He’s a 2002 graduate of Gateway High School and a 2005 graduate of Robert Morris University. He moved to Florida after college for law school.
A friend got Van Horn hooked on the scripted “Squid Game” series and then told him about the reality competition.
“It related to my bankruptcy practice because I deal with people that are going through financial stress all the time to the point where I can see people signing up for a show like this if it was in real life,” he said.
Van Horn, who is player No. 286, wasn’t heavily featured in the show’s first five episodes that showcased Mercurio. Van Horn gets a more prominent role in the next batch of episodes debuting Wednesday. (The series finale streams Dec. 6.)
Van Horn said he and Mercurio bonded over their shared Pittsburgh ties.
“I’ve been to his [family’s] restaurant so there’s a nice Pittsburgh connection immediately going in,” Van Horn said. “And obviously he’s a very interesting guy so we have a friendship from pretty much day one in the dorms. Pittsburghers, we find each other wherever we.”
In the upcoming episodes, viewers see Van Horn bond with another contestant, Mai, who is from the Washington, D.C., area. Van Horn said he did not form an alliance with Mercurio.
“He stopped sharing information with me because I was not officially part of his gang,” Van Horn said. “He was friends with a lot of guys, which I thought was not a good strategy for him. He found safety in that and it obviously ended up leading to his demise.”
Van Horn said he and his fellow contestants went through “trauma bonding” while filming Red Light, Green Light, the show’s first competition that’s made to look like it took five minutes but actually filmed for seven hours in a cold World War II plane manufacturing facility near London.
“My feet were killing me and my back was killing me. It was probably the toughest thing I’ve ever endured in my entire life,” Van Horn said. “I don’t know if ‘trauma bonding’ is a real thing or we made it up but we talked about it in the dorm.”
Some contestants are threatening to sue the production about the conditions during Red Light, Green Light, which they allege caused hypothermia and nerve damage; Van Horn does not plan to join that lawsuit.
Van Horn credits where he grew up with keeping him in the game beyond the show’s first five episodes.
“I think my Pittsburgh background really helped me in that I could talk to anybody,” he said. “You’ll never see somebody say, ‘Oh, you got to take out 286.’ There were a lot of targets in there. I’m a big guy and I’m a lawyer and everybody knew that. And usually on other reality shows the athletic and/or the lawyers are the ones that people try to take out early.”
Van Horn said the contestants’ emotional reactions to players exiting the show were real.
“We all really came together and had pretty strong friendships,” he said. “I’m not an overly sensitive guy but watching the first five episodes, I cried for two hours” particularly when his best friends in the game were taken out in a game of warships.
Van Horn said he was drawn to compete on “Squid Game: The Challenge” by the $4.56 million prize. If he wins, Van Horn, who’s involved with his local Big Brother Big Sister chapter, said he’d use the winnings to create a new program.
“I want to create a financial literacy program within Big Brother Big Sister to help future generations know how to deal with money,” Van Horn said, “so they wouldn’t end up on a show like ‘Squid Game.’”
WPGH/WPNT upgrades
Channels 53 and 22 will undergo technical upgrades overnight Tuesday that will result in both stations being off the air from 12:01 a.m. Nov. 29 until the upgrades are complete, likely around 8 a.m. Nov. 29. If you tune to those channels during that eight-hour period and encounter a lack of programming, this is why.
Lockup
WE tv’s “Life After Lockup” (9 p.m. Friday) follows nine former inmates and their significant others in the outside world, including Justine and Michael of Johnstown, who plan a move to Las Vegas until Michael’s parole officer denies him permission to relocate.
Kept/canceled
Hulu renewed its Onyx Collective series “UnPrisoned” starring Kerry Washington and Delroy Lindo.
Starz renewed “Power Book II: Raising Kanan,” starring Carnegie Mellon University grad Patina Miller, for a fourth season ahead of the show’s third season premiere at 8 p.m. Friday.
Netflix renewed “Black Mirror” for a seventh season and will bring back Rob Lowe’s “Unstable” for a second season, which we already knew about from when striking writers shut down production. Netflix just didn’t get around to announcing the renewal until recently.
Amazon’s Prime Video ordered another “Bosch” spin-off, this one following Det. Renee Ballard, boss of the LAPD’s new cold case division.
Prime Video canceled “With Love,” “The Horror of Dolores Roach” and “Harlan Coben’s Shelter.”
“SEAL Team” will conclude with its upcoming seventh season on Paramount+ in 2024.
Netflix canceled “Shadow and Bone,” “Glamorous,” “Agent Elvis,” “Farzaar” and “Captain Fall.”
Disney+ canceled “Muppets Mayhem” after a single season.
TBS canceled Daniel Radcliffe’s “Miracle Workers” after four seasons.
Channel surfing
Mt. Lebanon native Mark Cuban says the 16th season of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” airing during the 2024-25 TV season, will be his last with the show. … The CW pulled fall’s best new comedy, “Everyone Else Burns,” but episodes stream via TheCW digital app. The CW still plans to air the show’s second season at some point. … Disney+’s latest K-pop special, eight-part docu-series “BTS Monuments: Beyond the Star,” debuts on the streaming service Dec. 20 featuring RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook.