ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 6, 1996 TAG: 9601100005
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
After 20 years as a Navy Seal in wars from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, Matt Waters finally takes on the toughest of all combat assignments: teaching on an American urban high school campus.
That's the setting for CBS' ``Matt Waters,'' the dramatic series created by and starring Montel Williams, the real-life Navy veteran who's already one of the nation's most popular daytime talk show hosts.
``I created this show four years ago in a conversation with Jeff Sagansky, who was then president of CBS Entertainment,'' says Williams. ``We started [planning] the show in August of 1991. At that time, I'd just started the talk show and I wasn't well-known. Over the past 31/2 years, I've prepared myself to get to the point where I could do this.''
For the 39-year-old Williams, it has been an exhausting undertaking. Between Aug. 26 and Nov. 21, Williams worked 14-hour days, seven days a week - with only three days off - to continue his high-rated talk show while filming a one-hour drama in which he makes his acting debut as the program's central character.
``I do the talk show on Thursdays and Fridays - three shows a day - then I'm on the set of `Matt Waters' at 6:30 Saturday morning,'' Williams explained in a telephone interview. ``It's a grind, but opportunity knocks very seldom in this country - and in this business.''
Williams admits he has an old-fashioned work ethic. He believes in the value of hard work - and hopes to pass along the message that there are no free rides in real life to the young people he hopes will watch ``Matt Waters.''
By creating the show, becoming its co-executive producer (with James D. Parriott) and insisting on approval of all scripts, Williams has made it clear to all concerned that ``Matt Waters'' won't be just another TV series, but rather a force for social change.
``I will not participate in anything that will not try to get out a social message,'' Williams says. ``And that includes my talk show.''
Williams bristles at mention of the current wave of talk show-bashing by congressional leaders, who blame them for most of the nation's social problems. He argues he has taken the high road with his show. He's also executive producer of ``The Montel Williams Show'' and makes the final call on all guests. His show is noted for his so-called ``after care'' program, which works through the American Psychological Association, to provide his guests with ongoing help to solve their problems.
It doesn't take very much exposure to ``Matt Waters'' to notice the sort of messages he has in mind: You need an education to amount to anything in this country, so stop wasting your life while you're wasting his time.
What irks Matt Waters - and Montel Williams - is that so many students are leaving school these days with no sense of responsibility to others, which Williams considers a fundamental building block of society.
``If Matt Waters is any kind of role model,'' he says, ``it's in the sense that he's a person who has made a commitment to his community and has a responsibility beyond himself.''
Matt's commitment begins when he returns to the school where he was a student 20 years earlier, hoping to make a difference in the lives of young people.
``Giving something back - that's what this character is all about,'' says Williams.
Williams had no such role model among his own teachers. He was one of a small group of African-American students who were bused to an all-white school. Williams says all his mentors were people who influenced him by ``belittling me because of my race and telling me I couldn't be something.'' That just made him work all the harder to prove them wrong.
That positive attitude came from his parents, who hammered the work ethic into him as a child and showed him the right way by example, says Williams.
``My father worked three jobs and my mother often worked two,'' he recalls. ``My father didn't believe in anything less than A's and B's on your report card - and if you came home with less, you suffered repercussions.''
Williams blames lack of leadership for the crisis in moral and ethical standards among young people today. He blames government leaders who have earned the nation's distrust over the past 30 years of scandal after scandal. He blames teachers who don't teach. And he blames the creators of mass culture for deifying the almighty dollar.
``Our biggest heroes from the 1970s on were people who got rich quick,'' he says. ``We had `Dynasty' and `Dallas' and those stories of the ultra-rich, who could do anything they wanted without consequences. As a society, we embraced things like lotteries and getting rich very quickly without having to work. Most kids today want to be millionaires, but don't know the first thing about getting there.''
Williams believes the trend is reversible, which is why he wants to start stimulating discussions in the home between parents and their children, who may watch ``Matt Waters'' in different rooms, but still find reasons to debate it together.
He knows prime-time television is a hard place to launch positive social experiments and he knows low ratings may inspire the network to ask for changes. He already has rejected some efforts to de-fang ``Matt Waters'' and says he'll go on resisting.
``If they say the only way to keep it on the air is to do this and this and this, then they'll have to get someone else to play Matt Waters,'' he says ``and pay me for my creative input.''
WDBJ-Channel 7 will air two episodes of ``Matt Waters'' this week. The show premieres Sunday at 5 p.m. and moves to the prime-time lineup Wednesday at 9 p.m.
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Montel Williams stars as a high school teacher in ``Mattby CNBWaters,'' premiering Sunday at 5 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7. The show's
regular timeslot will be Wednesdays at 9 p.m. color.