Biography

Fran Shea, former president of
E! Entertainment Television and founder of HBOlab, is a currently EVP of Programming and Marketing at Game Show Network. She is known for her broad range of experienced in leading executive teams toward results driven and conscious leadership.
Shea has recently begun an executive coaching practice, working with select leadership- focused clients .

​Fran is currently EVP of Programming and Marketing for Game Show Network and is an adjunct instructor at NYU Tisch teaching Distribution and Marketing for Film.

She currently serves select clients as an executive coach with an emphasis on goal focused leadership and career success.   With her decades of corporate and management experience, years of teaching and current involvement in the Brown University Executive Coaching Certification Program she is uniquely situated to offer performance and results driven leadership coaching for senior executives and creative leaders.

In addition to her years of experience in team management and corporate leadership roles she also possesses a broad range of experience in results driven television and digital programming with a key competency in content and audience development.

As such she has had a wide variety of challenges and pursuits which inform her leadership experience. In addition to her current role as EVP of Programming and Marketing at The Game Show Network Shea was President of E! Entertainment Television and she also founded HBOlab, a content driven, creative experiment within HBO. HBOlab explored a variety of business models using digital content to build and grow audiences.  When brand advertisers beckoned, Fran facilitated the sale of HBOlab to Break Media and started her consulting business.  

As the former president of E! Entertainment Television the highly successful cable channel, which is now available in over 90 million homes, reached record profitability and launched a second network (style.). In addition, Fran oversaw the international business and managed the online business (eonline) to continued revenue growth. Preceding her presidency, as part of E!'s founding team,  she originated and developed the programming and on-air brand for E! Entertainment Television (1990-1999) over a nine year period as Senior Vice President of Programming. Managing a creative and technical staff of 700, she was responsible for the creative growth of the channel including the development and production of all shows (True Hollywood Story, Talk Soup, E! News Daily, The Howard Stern Show, branded awards show coverage, etc).

Fran spent a decade as a producer/executive at HBO where she won a producer Emmy Award..  She is a graduate of SCSU with a BS in Journalism and has  completed her Masters in Media Studies at The New School in New York (2013).

Fran is a frequent speaker/teacher on the subjects of low-cost/high volume content development, audience growth.  She's conducted seminars in Audience Development and Social Media at UCLA Extension for the Specialized Programs Department.