THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 26, 1994 TAG: 9408250172
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JO-ANN CLEGG, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Nicole Livas, reporter, producer and morning anchor at WKBN-TV in Youngstown, Ohio, can't remember ever wanting to be anything but what she is.
``I always knew that I wanted to be a news anchor and reporter, at least ever since I was running around after my mother at Channel 3,'' she said.
Nicole's mother is Becky Livas, remembered by many as a reporter, anchor and talk show host at what was then WTAR-TV (now WTKR) back in the 1970s.
``I get my artistic nature from her,'' Nicole Livas said of Becky ``but I think the technical side comes from my father,'' explained the young woman who is as comfortable behind the camera as she is in front of it. Henry Livas Jr., Nicole's father, is a NASA engineer.
``And,'' Livas added, ``I come from a family of educators, so that helps, too.'' Those educators in her background include the late Virginia Beach teacher and City Councilman John Perry, and his wife, Ellen.
No youngster could be around the Perrys very long, as Nicole, her sister, Cosette, and brother, Leonard, were, and not learn. Intellectual curiosity wasn't just encouraged in the Perry household, it was expected.
It's a trait that has served well the graduate of Kempsville High School (class of 1986) and George Mason University (class of 1990). She is obviously much more than another pleasant voice and pretty young face on the morning TV tube.
She has a good grasp of the world around her and a willingness to do the kind of background work that separates the really good reporter from the merely average.
Livas landed the anchor position in Youngstown after a series of paid and unpaid internships here and in Washington, a stint as a promotions assistant with MCA records, a year as a general assignment reporter and substitute morning anchor/producer in Steubenville, Ohio, and a brief tenure waiting tables at a local restaurant.
Like other young college graduates who have found themselves waiting tables while they searched for a regular job, Livas found it to be good experience.
``I got to see how hard it was to get a job,'' she said. ``It was a humbling experience, and I wouldn't trade it for anything,'' she added.
``I'd tell anybody else never to say that they wouldn't take a job at minimum wage. Success is sweeter when you have to work hard at it.''
Livas was working behind the cameras as a production assistant at WVEC when she got a favorable reply to a resume tape she sent to Steubenville.
While she was sorry to leave her family behind, she was grateful for the opportunity to get experience where, as she put it, ``if you mess up, at least you're messing up in front of people you don't know.''
Within a year of arriving in Steubenville, she was hired by WKBN, the CBS affiliate in the much larger Youngstown market. When the morning anchor at that station took maternity leave, Livas filled in for her.
``The ratings went up while I was on, and I got to keep the job,'' she said. ``When (the previous anchor) came back, she switched to weekends, which let her work four 10-hour days and spend more time with her baby, so it worked out well for her, too.''
Now that she's done well in another market, Livas thinks about finding something closer to home, but, like waiting tables, she's glad that she's had the experience in an area where nobody knew that her mother had been a TV personality or that her grandfather had been a city councilman.
``I think my grandfather would be proud that I did it all on my own,'' she said thoughtfully. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JO-ANN CLEGG
Nicole Livas says she gets her technical bent from her father Henry
Livas Jr., a NASA engineer.
by CNB